Mike and Beverly Creiglow have served the Lord in Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre, Brazil together since 1971. In addition to pastoring First Baptist of Cruzeiro do Sul, Mike builds his own boats and frequently travels up and down rivers to share the Gospel with those who have never heard.

May 6, 2015

Dear Brethren,

We just got our first update on the new work and missionaries at Jordão. As you may recall, we just sent them to the city of Jordão a couple of months ago. Idevaldo tells us that they have already had 9 professions of faith.

The crowd gets ready to leave after the last service at First Baptist Church of Santa Rosa.

Bev and I visited the church at Santa Rosa this past weekend. They had a weekend meeting to celebrate their 16^th anniversary. It doesn’t seem possible that it has been that long. They went through some really tough times, but now are doing extremely well. We gave them one of our home grown and trained guys, Guima, to be their pastor. He is doing a great job. They have a big piece of property on the main street. Their lots are even bigger than the Catholic church property. The building is bigger, too. They had the building packed out all three nights. On Sunday night there were well over 200 inside and I could see that outside there were probably that many, too. The building is fixed up real nice and even has air conditioning! Guima was still at home at First Baptist when we had our 80^th celebration. We baked 80 cakes for the party. He did that with his folks at Santa Rosa on Sunday: 16 cakes. Bev and I stayed over for a late dinner with them after church. We got home at 11:30PM. Good stuff.

The children of the church at Santa Rosa presented a program for their 16th anniversary.

Things continue to go well at our home church, too. Attendance has been growing month after month. We grew another 50 overall in April. We averaged 1031. We were over 1000 every Sunday. This was a first for this year. Nice and even, but building each of the 4 weeks. There have been 13 people saved since I wrote you last. Last Sunday (May 3rd) we had baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I baptized 21 new members. This time all of these were teens and adults, which is a little unusual. We usually have at least a few children.

The 21 new members of First Baptist Church of Cruzeiro do Sul who came by baptism on May 3.

On Thursday night we started a new, more rigorous candidate’s class for those who had asked for baptism. For some time we have been concerned with the quality of the teaching given to the candidates. Also, we have been really concerned about the number of folks who have been baptized and not attending regular services. Last year we gave our chapels (8 of them scattered around town) permission to hold Sunday night services. We noticed that instantly those folks dropped out of sight. Not good. They need to be in church on Sunday morning, when much of the teaching happens. Anyway, I taught this new candidate’s class, all 2 hours and 20 minutes of it. All of our pastors and chapel pastors were present. We had 40 people take the class, but only 21 were baptized. That tells me a lot. I will teach it again next month, but after that the other pastors will take their turns.

We are really building up our training, course studies and disciplinary actions. We are already seeing results. Dauro had a weekend retreat with all of his youth leaders. I had one with all the adult leaders, too. We have unified the materials used in the small groups. For now I am producing the lessons. Also, I make up a daily meditation sheet for the whole church. This contains weekly Scripture memorization, daily meditations and daily Bible readings to read through the whole Bible in the year. If your Portuguese is up to it, you can follow on Facebook, “Meditando na Palavra”.

Andrew is recovering. Any gifts are still in order. Thanks for all your prayers.

Thanks for all of your prayers and support. God bless you as much as He has us.

In Christ,
Mike Creiglow

Mike and Beverly Creiglow
Caixa Postal 24
Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre, Brazil 69980
mdcreig [at] hotmail.com

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