Smiling at All the Ways God Keeps Supplying

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.
September 15, 2017
Dear Brethren,
Greetings to all. It has been a good long while. For the last 3 months, I have had 4 different illnesses to deal with. I am over one of them and recovering (long process) from another. The other 2 will be with me for the rest of my life. It has been tough not being able to do my usual stuff.
Bev and I went to Manaus for our big conference at Nova Igreja Batista where David Hatcher is pastor. At least one of our missionaries, (José Maia) reported on the work in Peru. I was privileged to bring a message on Sunday morning. There were over 40 of our workers and wives from our area at the conference. I believe there were 160 pastors from all over Brazil. It is always a very encouraging time for us. To see a church that is doctrinally sound and growing by leaps and bounds is something to see and rejoice about. Thanks, and congratulations to Nova Igreja Batista.
Another visit was made to Santa Rosa do Purús. This time José Maia took his son Lucas and his bride-to-be to check out the field. They have another year of training. In about a year and a half we hope to send them. In the meantime, we have helped the Kaxinawá church to get their property and soon we will help them put up a building. Right now, they meet behind Pastor Moisés’ house under a little thatch roof.
The youth and the ladies have held their retreats in August and September. The youth had over 100 and there were 2 or 3 saved. The ladies had over 130 at camp.
We have had good services at church with people being saved almost every week. We have also had an unusual number of folks coming from other Baptist churches by letter and even more from other denominations by baptism. On the other hand, we continue to lose folks who move to other cities. This week a retired policeman and his whole family are on their way to Porto Velho. Another retired middle-aged couple just moved to Rio Branco where their 2 children are in college. All of these folks, who have been faithful and productive, are also people with good income. We put on 2 more missionaries this year, so things have already been really tight. We continue to smile at all the ways He keeps us supplied. It is amazing.

The teachers and staff of Colégio Cristão Cruzeiro. The principal is the man in the middle.
Our school just had a celebration of 25 years. We have continued to have first through 8th grades. This year we have 649 students. The party was at the city’s only public auditorium and theatre. Our school is now rated the 2nd best of dozens of schools in Cruzeiro do Sul and 5th best in the state. Our principal is Thiago Muniz. He and family are very faithful members. He has done an exceptional job at Colégio Cristão Cruzeiro.
We have had a crime wave in the Acre’s 3 largest cities. We had a 24-hour murder spree here. Four murders and another non-fatal shooting. One of these shootouts was right in front of the grocery store where we do our shopping in the middle of the afternoon. This is organized crime being run mostly from within the penitentiaries. The streets are now empty after dark. Some churches have set their service an hour earlier. Even our attendance is a little off.
Pray for me and for our forlorn city.
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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Two Native Missionary Families Sent Out as First Baptist Cruzeiro do Sul Celebrates 88th Anniversary

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.
June 8, 2017
Dear Brethren,
First Baptist Church turned 88 on May 12. The church was organized on May 12, 1929 by missionary Joe Brandon with 13 members. God has blessed her and brought growth in many areas. For many years we held our missions conference during the last week of July. This was mostly due to the weather! That is our dry season and made it easier for our workers to get to town. The roads have improved (a little) so we decided to make our conference coincide with the church’s anniversary. For the past three years we have held our annual missions conference in mid-May. This year it was May 12 through 14.
The Sunday morning service was a red-letter day. We started out by adding 26 new members by baptism followed by the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. We also had reports from more of our missionaries. The big deal though was the approval of 2 new missionaries. One is a Brazilian who will be taking care of the field at Foz do Breu on the upper Juruá River at the Peruvian border. José Costa and wife are already installed and will be taking care of the congregation there and the preaching points down stream as far as São João. The other new missionary is Freddy and Felicinda. They are Peruvian and also of the Kaxinauá people. They are now in Tipisca, Peru. They have 2 major tasks: working to win people from the several ethnic groups in Tipisca and to continue to reach the 5 Kaxinauá villages on the Breu River. We already had inroads into 3 of the villages through Cosma and Damiana’s family. Now we are in all 5 villages.
As you may recall, we already have a Brazilian couple working in Tipisca: José Maia and Silvânia. The work is really tough there. The town is only a thousand or so people. There is a Peruvian army outpost there. The soldiers make very meager salaries. Most of them spend their money on drinking and prostitutes. None of them come to church. They are isolated and hard to reach. There is a handful of native Peruvians who work mostly in government jobs. These, too, stay closed away. Then there are the folks from the tribes. There are Ashaninka, Jaminauas, Kaxinaua, Amauaca and Arara. The Ashaninka have one linguistic line. The other 4 tribes speak different dialects of a completely different language strain. You walk just a few feet in the town and hear Spanish and the indian languages. What a mess. These different tribal groups are open to the Gospel, but how to communicate? Progress is being made, but very slowly.
It had been some time since I checked on the works on the lower Juruá River. Pastor Rondisson went with me to visit Ipixuna. This town is in the state of Amazonas and is over 150 miles downstream. The river is still pretty high, so we had an easy 5-hour trip. There is a Baptist convention church there, but it is Pentecostal. The pastor is from the Assembly of God! We don’t have any contact or involvement with them. There is also an evangelical church that is identical to us in every way except it just isn’t Baptist. They are mission-minded and we have encouraged them and got them going on several mission projects. We started 3 congregations that they visit regularly. We don’t have a missionary to send there, so we do what we can to help. There is a large village called Pernanbuco a few miles further down the river that has over 100 families. We plan to take our medical team there soon as a first step to getting a work started in the village.
Thanks for all 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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Church Planting in Multiple “Municipíos”

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 16, 2017
Dear Brethren,
The state of Acre has 22 “counties”. Here they are called municípios (municipalities). We are trying to plant churches in all of them. So far, we have churches in 7 of the “county seats”. The 2 largest cities are the capital, Rio Branco, and Cruzeiro do Sul. These churches have been around for years. The other 5 churches are in smaller cities close to us. Now we are going for the most isolated towns that have no Baptist church. We sent a missionary family to the city of Jordão 2 years ago.
This month we made a visit to Jordão and a survey trip to Santa Rosa do Purús. We had to fly to these cities that are deep in the forest and along the Peruvian border. We chartered the New Tribes Mission plane. It was necessary to make and pay for 2 flights as the pilot had to come from way up north in Roraima to make our flights and others over a short 1 week period. New Tribes Mission has a plane here now and mechanics, but still don’t have a pilot stationed here.
Jordão is on the Tarauacá River. The population is 8000 and 60% of these are from the Jaminaus and Kaxinauwa tribes. Our missionary couple is Idevaldo, Queila and their daughters, Vitória and Ludmilla. They have already bought a house and rented a place to hold services. We had a low of 45 people and a high of over 70 in services. One young couple that they have won to Christ have already been trained to help with the music. The man did not play any kind of instrument. Idevaldo taught him to play bass in 3 months. Idevaldo plays guitar and actually made his own instrument! Very talented. Queila has started a kid’s club that has an average of 25 children attending. They have already acquired 2 lots for us to put up our first church building. They are also already doing mission work in the villages and along the streams out of town. I am so proud of them. On Sunday morning, I baptized the first 14 members.
Our visit to the town of Santa Rosa do Purús was exciting, too. This is the smallest town in the Acre: 6000 people. 70% of these are Kaxinauwa. It is almost 2 hours by air. For us to get there by land and river we have to go 250 miles east by road then up river from the bridge on the Purús River for another 225 miles. The Purús is another one of the major tributaries of the Amazon River that flows parallel to the Juruá River. It flows into the Amazon a few hundred miles downstream from the mouth of the Juruá River. In other words, we are getting into a completely new river valley.
There is already a small group of the Kaxinauwa who meet and hold services. The tribe is called “Kaxinauá” by most folks. The name means “people of the bat”, as in the animal. They call themselves “Huni Kuim”, which means “The True People”. Many of the tribes around us see themselves as the original people of the earth and superior to all others. Their “building” is really just a hut. There are 6 poles, thatch roof and dirt floor. We had 50+ in the one service we held. The singing and most of the service was in their native language. My message was NOT in Huni Kuim! They all understand Portuguese.
The town has 15 sects and cults, but no Baptist church, so we are going to try to open the work there soon. There are 46 villages along the river between the border and the bridge, so we have our work cut out for us.
I took Zico (our missions coordinator), Ruben (one of our businessmen), and Rondisson (one of our chapel pastors) along on this trip. Please pray for the new missionary that we need and the funds to support him, whoever he may be. So much to do and so few workers and funds.
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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Snapshots from works along the Juruá River

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.
April 10, 2017
Dear Brethren,
March Madness? I missed most of it since I was up river on a long mission trip. You won’t hold that against me, will you?
The river is very high right now, so travel is a bit easier. My bigger boat has a top and windshield, which make things much better, too. Three of our men went with me. Zico (our missions director), Rondisson (one of our chapel pastors) and Sisnando, a young man who just got to go on his very first mission trip. Our visits were to Porto Walter, Triunfo, Foz do Breu, Thaumaturgo and Tipisca in Peru. All of these locations are on the Juruá River. We travelled 625 miles. We used 95 gallons of gasoline at $6.70 per gallon. The trip cost just under $640.00. Gasoline here in town is a little cheaper, but I can now gas up at 2 of the towns upstream. That makes it possible to travel lighter, but pushes the cost up. The weather was perfect. We didn’t have any muddy river banks. There weren’t too many bloodsucking insects. Best of all though is that all the works are doing well. We had one profession of faith. I also baptized 6 at Foz do Breu on the border.
Tipisca is still a tough place, but showing signs of getting better. One of Damiana’s brothers, Bibiano and his wife Eva have been saved and are being trained by our missionary José Maia and his wife, Silvânia. Bibiano’s family is from the Kaxinauá tribe (pronounced kah-shee-now-ah). This name was given to them many years ago by the white folks. It means “bat people”. Nobody remembers why. The real name amongst the tribe is Hunikuim (pronounced hu-nee-ku-een) which means “the true people”. They see themselves as the “real” humans and then there are all the others. They see themselves as the “Jews” and all the rest of us are the “Gentiles”. Anyway, there have been 15 of the “real people” saved over the last few months. We now have a new missionary from their own people, who we brought from the Purús region to work with them. We now have regular preaching points at 3 of the 5 villages on the Breu River. The other 2 villages are now open and inviting Fredi and José Maia to preach to them, too. Fredi has worked very hard to win his own people and the results are coming in. He has also worked with the other tribes in and around Tipisca to get the gospel to them. As I walk around the small town of Tipisca I hear a little Spanish, a smattering of Portuguese, but mostly 5 other Indian languages. The town has grown to about a thousand people. However, the cultural, moral and linguistic jumble is a huge barrier to the gospel.
The work here in Cruzeiro do Sul is thriving. The construction of our rebuild and expansion is progressing slowly. The finish work on the annex is moving along in its final stages. The building continues to fill up every week. Our children’s services, both morning and evening have grown. Since we have added extra rooms in the annex, this has given more space in the main building for adults and youth. It will soon be overflowing again, by God’s grace. We will need the new balconies that are in the project very soon. The economic crisis in Brazil has really held us back, but God will supply. Several more have been saved. Others have come back to church. We even have had several new members by letter, which is rather unusual here.
My son-in-law, Pastor Dauro, has malaria again and some of my other pastors have been off on other projects. That means that I have been doing much of the preaching and teaching. I work on the buildings by day and teach at night. Long hours, but fun. My health has been great and have been feeling fine, so all is well here in our tropical paradise. Keep praying, though. Need it always.
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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A Visit to the Works on the Moa River

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.
March 15, 2017
Dear Brethren,
A few weeks ago Zico (our missions director) and I went to visit our works on the Moa River. The rainy season has been, well, REALLY rainy. The river broke all high-water records since they started keeping records. We put our boat in at Mâncio Lima to start out on the Japiim River. They just put in a really nice ramp there. All of this saves about 2 hours travel time. We had absolutely perfect weather for the whole trip. We didn’t get rained on at all. Yet it was overcast, so we did not get burned. The temps even dropped down into the low 80’s. No insects, no mud and plenty of wild game to eat. Thank the Lord for putting me in paradise. We had above average crowds at all the services. Since I had not visited the Nukini tribe and the folks at the mountains for several months, I decided to do more teaching than usual. Our missionary, Aldenísio, continues to do evangelism in the villages between the congregations.
Our first youth camp of the year happened from February 24 through March 1. We were able to build one more cabin for the guys. Recently we have been having more guys than gals. We can now handle about 120 people at Camp Salém. There were 4 teens saved and a number of other important decisions were made, 20 in all. My son Andrew and his team take care of this ministry.
We just had our first baptism and Lord’s Supper service at church. 30 more were added by baptism. We have also had several new members join by letter. The other side of that coin though is the fact that we constantly lose members who move away. One of our best group leaders moved to the state of Goiás. One of our keyboard musicians passed his engineering entrance exam at the federal university in Rio Branco. One of our guitar players moved to France! These and many others are saved and trained here at First Baptist Church….then off they go to serve in other cities, states or even other countries. It is sad, but we are glad to prepare folks to serve in other fields.
Since the modifications on the building, which increased our seating capacity, we have been filling those extra seats almost every week. We have continued to see people saved every week this new year. Last week 8 were saved and this week 3 more.
HELP! My satellite phone subscription renewal hit my credit card this year and it more than doubled! Last year was only a little more than $500.00. Not bad to have this essential tool for my mission trips deep into the jungle. This year they charged me $1,170.00!!! That hurt. Help me if you can.
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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New Space Already Being Filled; A Ton of Work Ahead

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.
February 6, 2017
Dear Brethren,
It has been a long time, but I am back. Way too much work and far too little internet. We have been without internet service for a couple of weeks. Before that it has been off and on. Mostly off! For the past 3 months I have been working probably more than I should on construction projects and other church programs. Most days end up being 12 to 14 hours. Just last Saturday was only 10 hours but without a break even for lunch. Beverly is not happy with me. Hopefully I will be able to slow down a little.
The church has been on my case for a long time to break out walls to 6 rooms in our main building to make room for bigger crowds at regular services. What they did not understand is that to do that would be easy, but the hard part would be finding space for those classes to meet. I bit the bullet and jumped into our first major remodel since 2008. We now have added 24 more pews and 80 chairs on the sides. We are pretty much already filling the new space. We still have a small margin for growth for a few months. In the meantime I had to finish out the annex to make room for the 6 class rooms that were bumped out of the main building. It is turning out really nice, but it is a ton of work. This is the part that the church doesn’t really feel.

A new steel structure is going up over the old building at First Baptist of Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre, Brazil.
While all of this has been going on we are also putting up a new steel structure over the whole of the old main building. The frame is up and waiting for the roofing. This means that later this year I will be taking out ceilings, roof, sound system, lighting and AC to make way for a whole new balcony arrangement. This will allow us to double our seating capacity. Lots of work and many challenges just ahead. Pray that God will grant me wisdom, protection and stamina.
Now about the actual, real work. Our Christmas program was 8 nights this time. We had the building packed and overflowing every night even with the extra 200+ seats we added. Think about this blessing: 8 nights without rain in Cruzeiro do Sul in the middle of the rainy season. That just doesn’t happen, but did. We had 24 people saved and several requests for baptism and church letters.
Even with the flurry of activity I have managed to squeeze in visits to Cruzeirão, Cruzeirinho, Miritizal and Rodrigues Alves. There were a few professions of faith at these congregations.
January is usually a little lighter at First Baptist. Last year we only had Sunday night services before going back to the full schedule in February. This year we only cancelled the Friday night service. The Kid’s clubs, Teens ministry and training programs are all off for December and January. Three of our 5 pastors were on vacation for all of January. That meant that besides all the construction work I was taking care of almost all preaching and teaching for the month. Pastor Benjamim was able to help with Sunday school and Wednesday services a couple of times.
Even so we had a good month of January. We had over 10 people saved and more than that making other decisions. The crowds were really good although we had lots of rain. More about the rain later. Our offerings were up more than R$10.000,00 (about US$3,500.00) over January 2016.
Thanks for all of your prayers, support and patience. 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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Teaching Pastors in Paraná; Another New Building Project

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.
November 21, 2016
Dear Brethren,
Just after the vacation in the States I had a visit to make to some churches in southern Brazil. This had been set up for over a year. One of our guys went to seminary in the state of Paraná. While there he met and married one of the girls from down there. After graduation, he accepted the pastorate in the city of Ponta Grossa (population 400,000) near the capital city of Curitiba. The work is new and the church is small, but already growing at a nice pace. He began with 10 members and now has 48. The history of the work is unique. Another church in town started and actually organized the new church, but then it fell apart and the mother church “downgraded” it to a mission point again! That is where and when Edeilson and Priscilla came in. Anyway, I met with the five pastors and many members of their churches to encourage and teach them about missions and small groups. The building was full all four nights. Their seating capacity is 120 max, but many more showed up and stood inside and out. This is very encouraging as the southern states are well known for their hardness and rejection of the Gospel. All the pastors are eager to grow and reach out. All of them were very welcoming, even the associational missionary….
Since returning from Paraná I have plunged in to another big building project. The church has given the OK to put up a 6,700 square foot metal structure over our present facility. After this is up and under roof we will start modifying the present building to more than double our seating capacity. We have already put up the pillars along the outside and in a few more days the new steel trusses will be in place. Our major gains will be by increasing the total height by over two times and adding balconies all around three sides. We can now seat around 850 people and hope to get at least room for 1700. Yesterday proves, yet again, that we desperately need the added space.
Yesterday morning we had our last baptism service of the year followed by the Lord’s Supper. The building was completely full. The men had to fill the aisles with chairs and the walls along the sides and the vestibules were full of people standing. Our communion trays hold about 700 cups, but the men had to fill a bunch more cups and distribute them before everyone was ready to partake. I baptized 54 more new members. 15 of these were from the home church. All the others were from our 9 chapels here in town and 2 of our congregations up river. In my 50 plus years in Cruzeiro do Sul we had never had a cold front in the month of November. Well one came through on Friday and sent the temps into the mid 60’s. The water was COLD. Easy on the air conditioning though! The building was packed again at night. We have had 2 more saved and a number of other decisions, including more requests for baptism.
Our church has 4 basic courses that are taught 3 or 4 times every year: Discipleship, Membership, Personal Evangelism and One with God. Last week I taught the last round of the Membership course to about 25 new members, giving the 8 lessons over three nights.
This month I have also been making the rounds visiting some of our other works. The last visit was to Cruzeirinho. They are now in their new building although they still don’t have windows, doors or ceilings. Over 200 were present for that visit.
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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Progress in the Village of Gama, Praying for Permanent Missionary

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.
October 12, 2016
Dear Brethren,
Well it has been a while. Bev and I took a month off for a much needed vacation. We just arrived back from the States. This time we went through Peru to catch our flight out of Lima. Now that many of our flights in Brazil have been cancelled due to the economy it was closer and cheaper to go through Peru. Part of this trip was by car from Rio Branco to Puerto Maldonado, Peru. A nice adventure overall. I like Peru and the lovely people there. Great visit with family, friends and churches in the US. Would have been nice to see many more of you, but time was short.
Before the trip Stateside I made a last minute visit to one of our newest mission points. Gama is in the state of Amazonas. It is on a tributary of the Boa Fé River (Good Faith River). To get there by river is a long hard trip. Down the Juruá River for almost a day, then up the Boa Fé for a day to the Generoso creek. Only a couple more hours up this small stream sits the village of Gama. There are over 300 people living there. However, now there is a dirt road through the jungle that is open in the dry season. That is how I went this time. It is “only” 30 miles from Cruzeiro do Sul by road. I have never been on this so called road in the rainy season and can only imagine the mess. It is all red clay and sand, with many stream crossings.
We have taken our doctors and dentists there twice now. Our evangelists make regular visits. Zico (our missions director) managed to locate and purchase a nice big lot to put up our first building there. While I was there we laid out the plot. While I was in the States some of our bricklayers went up with Zico to dig the foundations and start laying brick. Zico has been great with all the work, but it is outstanding to see how he gets and keeps things rolling even when I am away. I don’t even know how he raised the money to start the building! Since we are on the subject, if you would like to chip in with a little extra offering, make your self right at home. We still don’t have the permanent missionary for this new field, but are praying that the Lord will raise up one soon.
Also, while we were away the church here continued to grow. 25 new members were added by baptism in September. I preached this last Sunday to a packed house. There were two young women who had been saved for a while, but not yet baptized that presented themselves. We also took up the first of a couple special offerings for our next big building project. More about that later.
Our youth have had to spit up into different age groups. We have a big group 12 through 14. The middle bunch is the biggest. They are 15 through 24. (This works in our town, for now, but must sound like a strange grouping to you in the States). The newest group is singles from 25 years old and up. They just had their first retreat with 25 at Camp Salem.
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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