The Oldest New Believer: 109 Years in Darkness, Now a Child of Light!
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 8, 2025
Dear Brethren,
Lots of news. My problem is that I would rather be out making news than reporting the news. My last report was January and here we are in May!
Here at First Baptist Church things are moving along nicely. Attendance is moving up steadily. We are now well past pre-pandemic numbers. We have had several services with over 800. Sunday morning and Sunday night attendance are running neck and neck at 600 plus, which indicates to me a healthy church. We had 6 more saved last week and baptized 27 the week before.
Our missionaries are very active. We had 2 teams on the Boa Fé River last month. One team worked from Gama upstream. The other team worked from the mouth to Gama. We have nice size congregations at Gama and Generoso which are at about half the length of the river. We have a full-time missionary couple at Gama.
Last week we had 2 more teams working the Liberdade River. The Transamazon Highway crosses the Liberdade 82Km from Here. Our teams went house to house from the bridge to the mouth of the river. There were a number of professions of faith. The largest village, Santa Catarina, (over 300 people) had been closed to us until recently. One of our missionaries is José Rondisson. He won another José to Christ. That in and of itself is a big deal. But even bigger is that Sr. José is 109 years old! He lives by himself in a little house beside his daughter’s house. He gets around quite well and was sitting in his rocking chair when Rondisson came to share the gospel with him.
The river has been high for several months, so I have been out there taking advantage of the high water to visit churches and congregations. There is plenty to tell, but I will limit to just one visit.
On my last visit to the works along the Peruvian border I was at São José on the Breu River. The Breu River is the border between Peru and Brazil. The river runs from east to west and dumps into the Juruá River (our main river). I went in my larger boat. The river was high when I left, but very low when I arrived at the border. They had gone 8 days without a drop of rain. We took 5 canoes up the Breu River to get to São José which is a Hunikuim Indian reservation 35 miles upstream.
The canoe I was in had a top, so I was somewhat protected for the elements. When we reached the village, the natives were all decked out in their outfits and paint. They had their clubs and bows and arrows. They were dancing and singing on the riverbank. All friendly, by the way. It had started to drizzle a little bit, so I stayed in the canoe hoping that they would forget about me. I knew what was coming, but the chief came down and asked me if I could get out. So,alas. I had to face the inevitable! They grabbed me by both arms and paraded me around the grounds and up to the “great house”. This is a large thatch covered meeting hall with crude plank benches around the perimeter. They had planned to circle around the compound 3 times, but because of the rain they cut it back to one round. Once inside the great house they seated me in a hammock which was the white “chief’s” throne of honor. This is how they see and treat me, so that is what I have to put up with and go along with.
That night we dedicated the building that had just been finished. We gave them the zinc roofing last year. The Indians sawed the lumber (much of it mahogany!). They had to carry it piece by piece for over an hour and a half through the jungle. They had some 50 guys carrying the lumber for several days. We sent a carpenter with the plans to do the actual construction. The building was packed out for all services. I preached in Portuguese and the Hunikuim pastor, Brother Aldenir interpreted. Most of them understand Portuguese and many of them speak it, too. Their services are all in their native tongue using a translation of the Bible in Hunikuim. Many of their songs are from hymns or choruses that you would recognize. Others are their own compositions. It is an interesting situation to say the least.
These folks like to eat. Lots of food, just don’t ask questions! They have horn made out of a reed and the hollowed tail of a giant armadillo that they use to call everybody to the mess hall for meals.
On Sunday morning they blew the horn at 4:00AM. I didn’t get up. Later I asked the horn blower what that was all about. He said that was the special call to the women to get up and go to the kitchen to make breakfast. So, wake up the whole village so that 10 or 15 women can go fix breakfast!
Okay.
On Sunday morning I baptized 16 as the tribe sang “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” in Hunikuim. Now I know that this letter is way too long already, but I can’t resist telling you 2 more things about my visit to the tribe. One is an oddity, the other is a miracle. Late on the first day there somebody informed me that the schoolteacher has a Starlink satellite antenna and if I wanted, I could get on the internet. So I went up the hillside behind the village to the teacher’s house. When I got there, I saw about 15 Indians with their cell phones surfing the world wide web! This is just crazy. I whipped out my phone, pulled up WhatsApp and made a video call to Beverly. Still crazy. Years ago Bev had no idea where I was or how I was while on these long mission trips. Now I am hundreds of miles out in the bush and can talk to here and see her beautiful face. That is not the miracle though.
It had now been 10 days without any real rain on the upper reaches of the Juruá River. The river is already critically low for my boat, and I am still 2 days away from time to return to Cruzeiro do Sul.
That means I might not be able to return, so I am a little concerned. After calling Bev I decided to take advantage of the teacher’s internet service to look up a site that shows satellite images of current weather conditions. Lo and behold there was one, just one giant rain cell in Peru over the headwaters of the Juruá River. This storm was just about 20 miles across the border and centered right over the main river. The rest of the region had not one little cloud in a radius of 600 or more miles. My next prayer was not, “Please Lord, send rain”, but rather, “Thank You, Lord, for the miracle”. That night the river was still going down. The next morning, I got up at 5:00 AM and went to the riverbank to see the effects of that miracle. The river had already come up 3 feet! The God who created everything created a downpour on one isolated place that had not had rain for many days and where there was no rain in the forecast for many more days. He did that. Not an accident. Not a fluke. He loves me that much. My team and I had a leisurely breakfast with our missionary at Foz do Breu then sailed easily back to our homes on Monday morning. He loves me beyond measure.
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.
Read more
Missionary Update: The Creiglows in Brazil [April 2013]
Mike and Beverly Creiglow have served the Lord in Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre, Brazil together for 40 years. 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.
Dear Brethren,
Hudson and I made two major trips this past month. The first was up the Moa River. Even though the rivers are up this time of year, I decided to take a smaller boat and motor. The Moa can be out of its banks at the mouth, but be shallow up in the mountains. We ended up having pretty good water for the whole trip, but the 20HP outboard saved us on gas. We visited the congregations at the mountains and the congregation at the Nukini reservation.
The congregation at the mountains is actually in a national park. It was “created” in Brasília way back in 1989. It just exists on paper. Nevertheless the government has been pressuring the people who live there to get out. When I first preached the Gospel there in 1967, the state had a policeman stationed there. That family stayed there until last month. The last of the boys moved out the day I arrived for this visit. We still have about 40 believers there, but the group and population is shrinking. There is a humorous side to this tale. The Assembly of God has been jealous of our work there (as everywhere) and now they have announced that they are going to put up a building and start a work there! What vision these folks have! We won’t pull out until the last believers and settlers leave, but the handwriting is on the wall.
The congregation at the Nukini reservation is doing great. The population is more stable there. Our worker there is Aldenísio. He is in his 20’s, still single, but very dedicated young man. He just did house-to-house evangelism on the whole stretch of river from the reservation to the mountains. He also made a trip preaching house-to-house on the Zumira River. This is more of a creek than a river and not many folks live there, but they have all heard the gospel multiple times.
My last trip was along the Transamazon highway (highway = joke) to the city of Manoel Urbano. This town of 10,000 people is on the banks of the Purús River just about 3 miles downstream from the road. We have a team from our church that takes the Gospel and all kinds of activities to cities across our state and the state of Amazonas. Our team was 74 people strong. Besides the dozens of activities open to the public, the message of Christ was shared door to door in every house in the town.
Besides the souls that were saved, the most exciting thing about this trip was that all of the doctors, dentists and nurses were saved in our church. This was the first time that we did not have to fly a doctor or dentist from other cities of Brazil for this clinic. We had 2 doctors, 2 dentists and 3 nurses. One of the doctors and one of the dentists were born to church members and were later saved and actually grew up in First Baptist. We even have one more doctor in our church that was not able to make the trip. This has been in my prayers since we started these medical mission trips in 1996. When I stop and think about it, the answer to this prayer has been pretty swift.
Here is something most of you don’t know. When I was a teenager I had some very nasty health issues. I had some pretty close scrapes with death. At 15 I decided to become a doctor. Back then there were times that there weren’t any doctors at all in Cruzeiro do Sul. The Lord changed that plan when He called me to be his missionary. I was 17. Two things that I always wanted to do, be a doctor and work with the Indian tribes, are now a reality…through the others that He has called. I get to be there and see it all unfold, His way.
Thanks for all of your prayers and support. God bless you as much as He has us.
In Christ,
Mike and Beverly Creiglow
Caixa Postal 24
Cruzeiro do Sul, Acre, Brazil 69980
mdcreig [at] hotmail.com
Read more
