God's Wonderful Work - Part 1

I have often marveled at “how God uses us”, in spite of ourselves. A few years ago, Dona Maria Rosa, the matriarch of our church in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil surprised me with that statement. Maria Rosa has been greatly used of God in our denomination here. She came to know Christ as her personal Savior at our church in Iretama, Paraná in the mid 1960´s and since then has helped us plant three churches. At the end of last year her husband Arthur, who was of a simple background, yet a great man of faith who had been a leader in our church, passed away. In his last few years of life he was blind and deaf, but he never ceased praying for the church and for those of us who served it. After Arthur’s death, Dona Maria made a trip that she had been planning for many years, but never had the chance to do because of the dependence of her husband on her. Now free of that responsibility she left on a mission to visit all her family around Brazil to share the gospel with them. This trip took about a month and a half to achieve most of her goals and also covered about one third of the country. She shared how wonderful the trip was, and she had taken with her 1500 tracks and had not just distributed the tracks but shared the gospel with each person that she gave the track to. So she gave witness to 1500 people and saw many of them come to receive Jesus as their Savior. She was also excited to lead some of her family to Christ and see that others of her family had become Christians. When a lady like this says that you are an answer to prayer, you kind of go WOW! That’s what she said to me some years ago. She told me that she had been praying specifically to God that He would send someone who could really establish an AFLC church in Campo Grande. A call went out to three others before me to go there and to start a church, but as these men looked at the situation they all turned down the invitation. Finally due to a variety of circumstances I was sent as the last resort and I praise God that He used us. But there is more to this story.

Check back for part 2