Brooklyn Alliance Church - Faith Hope Love Fellowship

Missions to South America

Dear praying friends,

Greetings! We hope all of you have been well! However, we haven’t really been very well and therefore this prayer letter is late again! Our whole family has been sick. Please pray for our health as we are still recovering from our sickness. All of us, except Joanna (she only has the cough), suffered from fever and cough at one point or another in the last month and a half. Jonathan first came down with fever and cough, then Nikki got it the very next day after we came back from our church’s retreat on 1/2. She felt really sick for about 2 weeks; she had fever and was coughing day and night. The cough was so bad and energy draining that she woke up a few times at night and did not have strength to sing, stand up for a long time or even talk. She is now feeling much better but is still recovering from the sickness. Then the virus hit Timothy and James. Their symptoms were not as bad and are recovering from the cough also (the cough seems to linger for a very long time). We pray that God will bring us complete healing and that He will give us the strength and health we need to better serve Him in the year 2002.

Besides our sickness, this past month and half had been very eventful. Our Christmas celebration was held in our new church location in Liberdade. It was a wonderful day as there were about 150 people attended our Christmas celebration, with the majority of them being new comers (our average Sunday service attendance is around 50). We needed to shuttle the church van from the old church in Centro to the new church in Liberdade three times to bring the people to the celebration. Different brothers and sisters performed different programs and the short-term mission team from Detroit was with us. We had a really great time that day and got to meet a lot of new friends. We pray that God will give us the wisdom as we continue to share God’s love with these friends, and that what they learned about Christmas in the celebration will remain in their hearts and the seed of the Gospel will one day grow, blossom and bear fruits.

A few days after our Christmas celebration, our church held a retreat from 12/29 to 1/1. Some of the new comers who had attended the Christmas celebration joined the retreat as well and therefore we had about 100 participants. Although those four days were extremely busy for us, the brothers and sisters were encouraged by the different messages and workshops God gave us through Rev. Shen and his short-term mission team (Detroit) and even the new comers (non-believers) seemed to have enjoyed the retreat. Praise the Lord!

A few days after the church’s retreat, we attended our annual 5-day Field Forum. This is the only time of the year when all the C&MA missionaries in Brazil will get together from all different cities and spend some fellowship and praying time together. It was a very refreshing week for us, being away from our church ministry and spending some time with our missionary family here. We shared each other’s burden and struggles, cried together and prayed together. We really enjoyed our fellowship together.

After a little bit more than a month of staying home, today (1/30) is the first day of school for Jonathan after the summer vacation. The summer vacation went pretty well for him, and we could tell that he enjoyed spending more time at home. However, there was one thing that we did not expect, which was Timothy’s becoming emotionally unstable and insecure, most likely because of the less attention that he was getting when Jonathan was home. Timothy of course enjoyed playing with his big brother during those usually quiet hours in the afternoon, but at the same time the change in his behavior told us that he was not adjusting too well to Jonathan’s staying home with him all the time (or we should say he has adjusted too well to Jonathan’s going to school in the afternoon). When Jonathan was in school, Timothy became the “big brother”, but when Jonathan was staying home during the summer vacation, he became the little brother again. He cried and threw tantrum a lot, became rude and argumentative, and was less content. Now that the new semester has started, we could already see some improvement today. And as for Joanna, she is still our happy baby. She has been singing a lot lately (her babbling sounds like singing), and she is getting ready to craw! She moves around with her tummy down, and she can push up on all four and rocks back and forth. We pray that as the three of them grow up together, God will teach them to love one another and become each other’s best friend.

Thanks for praying for us and being supportive in so many ways!