New Missionary & First Baptism Service of the Year
July 7, 2021
Dear Brethren,
Time flies when you are having fun. It has been a long time since I reported to you. For several months there wasn’t much positive to tell. For most of this year, it has been kinda rough. Things are improving a little though, so here goes.
After the last trip to the Moa the rivers went down quickly. Just as I was to go to the upper Juruá River the bottom dropped out and things opened up for us to start having public services again. For the first six weeks I put in a lot of long hours on the building and sermon/lesson prep. At first, we were having all the services streamed live until folks could get used to coming back to the in house services. Now we stream just the Sunday night service. Attendance has not yet gotten back to normal levels. However, we feel that things are looking pretty good, given the level of fear that so many people suffered. We have services on Wednesday, Sunday AM and Sunday PM. For the 2 months that we have been back there have been at least 300 people in every service.
We had our first baptism service of the year. There were 528 people present and 41 new members were baptized. Pastor Ezi baptized the adults, and I baptized the children. We also observed the Lord’s Supper.
Here is a little side story about this particular baptism. My granddaughter Kayla came to my office to talk to me. She had already requested baptism at church, but wanted to talk to me about her baptism. First she gave me a pretty good lesson on the doctrine of baptism. Not bad for an 8-year-old. Then she got down to talking to me about what she really wanted. She wanted to know if grandpa could “bapticize” her. Now I am not sure that I got the spelling right, but I got the meaning!
She is Crissy’s only girl. Later Andrew’s youngest came with the same request. So that is how I came to baptize (or “bapticize”) the 17 children, Kayla and Devin among them.
Last Saturday we had an activity here at the house. Occasionally we have what we call “Breakfast with the Pastors”. It is an opportunity for people to have some casual time with the 7 pastors. About 80 people showed up at 7:00AM. We spent a great couple of hours together. We had a surprise announcement during the gathering. One of our evangelists, who works at our chapel at Cruzeirinho, announced that he was going into full time mission work. His name is Jeverton. The pastor of the chapel and he had met with me 3 other times over the past few weeks to talk about the fields that are ready and waiting. He is going to be our itinerant missionary on the Juruá River from Ipixuna to the border. He will be checking in on all of our congregations and preaching the gospel house to house. Next, we need those other 2 missionaries, for those 2 other fields!
There have been one or more saved on all weekends since we started services again. Also, our youth (15-24) and Youth+ (25 and older) have started back. The nursery is also back. We are still not able to have our children’s programs, but hope to begin soon. The lockdown here has been severe, to say the least, but we are getting things back as soon as possible, trying not to have the authorities breathing down our necks. We still have whistle blowers reporting us all the time. We are doing our best at trying to be bold and wise at the same time.
Well, that is pretty much what is going on. Busy, tired and happy. Hope you are, too.
Thanks for all your prayers and support. God bless you as much as He has us.
In Christ,
Mike Creiglow
CONTACT INFO
Mike & Beverly Creiglow
Caixa Postal 24
69980 Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre
Brasil, SA
mdcreig@hotmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280 | Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online.
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First Mission Trip of 2021
January 27, 2021
Dear Brethren,
Things are far from normal. Yet the rainy season has started and the rivers are coming up. We are enjoying pretty good health. The church continues to meet, albeit with much lower than normal attendance. People have been saved in almost every service. Fear and panic is still widespread. We have lost many friends and brothers. Many more are still coming down with the virus. Vaccinations have started here in Brazil. So it is a mixed bag.
Pastor Ezi and I went on our first mission trip last week. We went up the Moa River to visit 2 of our works. We were in the open boat with smaller outboard. I was not sure how I would do manually starting and running the engine as my strength is still not where I was. On top of that we got rained on big time going and coming. Rain always presents a big challenge and even bigger on a small, winding river. All went very well though. God continues to give me strength and He is a great pilot.
We dedicated the new building at Serra do Moa (Mountains on the Moa River). We held 4 services with them. Missionary Rivaldo is doing great. He worked there when we first started the congregation. Later he took care of 2 other fields. Now he is back where he started his ministry 24 years ago. This is he fourth building that we have put up. The first three were tiny wood frame structures that didn’t last that long. This time they put in a concrete foundation and partial brick walls. The rest is wood, but this one should last much longer. The last building is still in good shape and is used for Sunday School.
There were over 200 people present. Most of these were from 5 of our other congregations downriver. There 4 professions of faith. I baptized 8 on Sunday morning. This was squeezed in between rainstorms. The rains hardly ever stopped. In fact, we were scheduled to be with our mission at República (Nukini Indian reservation), but the missionary and his family were not able to return because of the rain. We plan to visit them in a few more days.
One thing that was sad was seeing the reach of the panic over the virus reach all the way up river. They were handing out masks and spraying gel at the door of the new church building. Now, I am not against masks at the right place and time, but this was very disheartening to see. Many of them had their masks on upside down! The reach of tyranny seems to have no limit.
The new 25HP 4 stroke outboard worked very well. Thanks to all who have helped me purchase and maintain my boats and motors.
Thanks for all of your prayers and support. God bless you as much as He has us.
In Christ,
Mike Creiglow
CONTACT INFO
Mike & Beverly Creiglow
Caixa Postal 24
69980 Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre
Brasil, SA
mdcreig@hotmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280 | Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online.
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The Lord at Work in Tipisca, Peru
March 21, 2019
Dear Brethren,
A few days ago Zico (our missions director) and Lúcio Maia went with me up river to the border and beyond. The first leg of the trip took us all the way to the border village of Foz do Breu. It took us over 11 hours to do those almost 300 miles. We had some engine trouble, but still made it before dark.
People are moving back to the village and we had really good crowds for the services, over 70 people. Before heading into Peru we held a morning baptism service. I baptized 12. One couple had been waiting for some time to first get legally married then baptized. Ercílio had been one of the town drunks and enemy of the gospel. Now he is a go-getter missionary. He has made 22 mission trips in the last 12 months. He used to detest the native tribes up the Breu River. Now he has become friends and has made 5 mission trips to visit our brothers from the Kaxinauá tribe.
We continued to Tipisca, Peru. On arrival, our missionary José Maia (Lúcio’s dad) took our baggage to his house on his 4 wheeler. I stayed behind to get the boat and motor bedded down. Just as I finished, a huge tropical rain storm came in. There is no pavement in Tipisca and this time of year the mud is knee deep in many places. When I saw the rain was not going to stop I decided to go ahead and make my way up the slippery bank and into town through the driving rain and mud. I had to go barefoot and on the way I slit my foot open on who knows what. For the rest of that week my feet were wet and muddy most of the time and could not bandage the foot. A week later it had pretty much healed up though, so no harm no foul.
We dedicated the new building on the weekend. José Maia did an admirable job and built the building to match the design we use all over in our congregations. It seats over 100 people, is on a corner lot, right on the main street of Tipisca. This newly purchased lot and what we already had, gives us over an acre. We had over 200 people in at least 2 services and well over a hundred in the other 2. The army brought most of their soldiers out for 1 service and the local police department came on Sunday morning. This is a first. In fact we had never had crowds like this in the several years since we opened the work there (over 10 years). Up to now we had made inroads among the children, but no progress with the adults. They now have a big group of kids and a number of adults that attend regularly.
Let me tell you about one of the ladies who trusted Christ while we were there. Dona Mila and her husband are in their 70’s and were what you might call founders of Tipisca. She was born over on the coast of Brazil and moved to Cruzeiro do Sul as a little girl. Her husband is Peruvian and was working in our town as a young man. They met and married. When the Peruvian government put in an outpost a few miles up the Juruá River from the border the young couple moved there. This became the town of Porto Breu, which the locals call Tipisca. Dona Mila and her husband were drinking buddies. It was not uncommon to see the couple sleeping off their liquor in the grass along the paths of town. They were both at church with us. Both have stopped drinking and Dona Mila has trusted Christ!
We came all the way back to Cruzeiro do Sul in one long day, but not without more engine trouble. I had to stop in the middle of nowhere and repair the motor at high noon, lots of bugs and mud, too. This motor is now over 10 years old and broken down on me on my last 3 trips. It is about time to replace it. I will be looking to you to help me with this in the near future. For now, just pray.
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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Missionary Update: The Tates in Kenya [July 2012]
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I am excited to report to you this month of the new developments in our church planting ministry. As you hopefully know, our goal here in Kenya is to start independent, self-reliant, self-governing, and self-reproducing Baptist churches. We were privileged to be able to see part of that goal come to fruition this month. I have read Nathan Radford’s monthly update and know that in it he has mentioned the start of this church. I would like to fill in the details of that day when the church was organized.
After months of teaching and preparing, on the Sunday morning of June 24th, we organized a small group of believers into the Kanisa la Baptisti la Shangalamwe (Baptist Church of Shangalamwe). Shangalamwe is a small village off the beaten path where Nathan and I have been working for many months. Richard Wafula is the owner of the house in which the group meets and the leader of the family there. Richard is over 70 years old which is quite an old age for most Kenyans (he is in very good health and very good shape as it takes him nearly two hours one way to ride to town from his house on his bicycle). He has lived long enough to remember pre-independence days forKenya when the country was ruled by the colonial British.
On the 24th of June, Nathan, Julie, my kids, and I rose early in the morning to make the half hour drive to Shangalamwe and arrived at Richard’s house at 8:30am. We shared chai (tea) with the group members as it was still pretty chilly that morning. After chai we began our worship. We praised our God and Savior in song and drums, lifting up our voices to glorify the Head of the church that was about to be organized. After we finished singing and praying, Nathan reminded the group what it meant to be a church of the Lord Jesus Christ and what was needed for the group to move from group status to becoming a New Testament assembly. He then proceeded to read the covenant that had been written for this occasion. In short (this is a very brief summary) the covenant expressed the intentions of the members to organize into a church, to function as the body of Christ on the earth, to follow Christ as its only Head, and to diligently search the Scriptures and obey all it commands for a New Testament church of the Lord Jesus. Nathan then read the membership requirements for becoming a member of the new church (these are what you would expect for any Baptist church: You must be a believer in Jesus as your Savior, you must be Scripturally baptized, you must express your intent on becoming a member, you must sign the covenant, etc). All of the members then signed this covenant and membership requirements.
Following this we had baptisms to perform. We left Richard’s house and walked 25 minutes to the lake where there was enough water to immerse the candidates. I then had the privilege of baptizing three children who had previously trusted in Christ. I baptized Nuhu (Noah) – age 13, Musa (Moses) – age 10, and Timina – age 8. While standing in the water I explained the meaning, purpose and method of baptism because the whole practice of baptism inKenya is wildly misunderstood and misapplied. Afterward I baptized the three children. After finding a secluded and private bush in which to change into dry clothes we walked the 25 minutes back to Richard’s house and added the names of the three children who had just been baptized to the membership role of the church. We all then sat down and I taught from Acts 2:40-47, showing what kinds of things the first church inJerusalem did and challenging this new church to follow the same kind of model. We finished with more singing and prayer and with thanksgiving in our hearts and smiles on our lips we headed home.
It was truly a blessed day, one I would like to repeat here inKenyamany times. Please pray that God would richly bless with spiritual blessings the Kanisa la Baptisti la Shangalamwe and that it would grow in obedience unto maturity. To our great God be all the glory.
Until next month, beloved.
May God’s peace and joy be with you.
For the glory of God in East Africa,
Roger & Julie Tate (and Emily, Amy, & Josiah)
P.O. Box 96
Kitale, Kenya 30200
rojuta[at]gmail.com
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