The Hensleys have spent nearly 15 years serving in Brazil. They run a vocational school and orphanage in Caraguatatuba and have also established a church and mission points throughout the city.

Well, Miss Barb and I have had a wonderful week and month here in Caragua. December has been very active, especially with the children at church. We have enjoyed a wonderful Christmas program with the children. The children completed some wonderful practices and the church was amazed at how well the program went. Not only that, but the children all received some wonderful Christmas gifts as a result of several people and churches in the States helping us with their presents. We are planning many things this coming year. We hope that with your prayers and your financial support all of these programs will be a success.

Let me review some of the things that we have accomplished this year. We have had some wonderful times at the Indian village. We have constructed a playground there and delivered over 50 food baskets to them. They received the food baskets with grateful hearts. This is a very poor tribe and they need a lot of help.

Some the other things that we have been able to accomplish this year, we have had four seminary classes. There were over 150 pastors from four different cities in attendance. This is helping reach more Brazilians for Christ. Because when you teach Pastors they go back and teach their congregation. In this manner we are able to spread God’s word faster and more efficiently.

Our evangelism this year with another Baptist Church and with our church has just been totally AWESOME. We had over 200 people accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. We have done a lot of discipleship this year and according to our records we have over 768 hours with one-on-one discipleship. I think this is just truly AWESOME.

We have also started small groups in different homes. We think this is going to be a great resource for our church. At this moment we have seven that have been started. One of these seven is having a hard time getting people to attend but we realize that you cannot be successful in all fronts at all times. We know that the Lord is in control and He’s going to make successful where He wants us to be.

We’ve also had another great opportunity, we’ve been certified as police military chaplain. This is really going to open up a lot of other areas for our ministry. Pray for us in this area as this will open up all the hospitals, the prisons, and other areas that are state-run in our area. Speaking about prisons, we have been able to minister with the youth prison and the warden at this particular prison is especially open to to our church visiting the prison. Evangelism there at the prison, which includes a basketball camp and some games that we have made for them, has been a great success and opened the door for our ministry there at the prison. We have had success in the evangelism part of our ministry there. At the prison, we have seen 54 of the young men accept Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. We have been able to give to the prison from our church 75 Bibles.

January 4, 2015 we celebrated our two year anniversary of Igreja Batista Caragua. We now have 44 members baptized with around 7 to 10 people moving their letters. In regular attendance in the big church service which is Sunday nights, we have around 60 to 70 people regularly.

We’re also here in our particular area able to minister and work in the public school system. This is really an AWESOME blessing as this gives our church exposure to many young people who might not otherwise hear about Christ. We are able to give an invitation at the end of each presentation in these.

Something we’re going to need a lot of prayer warriors for this year is going to be our pastors conference in November. As I have mentioned before we had 175 in their last pastors conference. We’re going to be praying for 300 in this years pastors conference, just another AWESOME way to reach Brasil for Christ. Pray for this ministry and if you would like to help a Pastor attend just send your donation to BFM marked “Pastor’s Conference”.

Well I’m going to shut up for now, but what I would love to really leave with everyone is a prayer request. Pray for our ministry here in Brazil and for more opportunities for us to present the gospel.

Hopefully were finalizing the legal paperwork for the operation of the vocational school. This is been an ongoing I would say problem but it’s really more than a problem. Here there is so much legalism involved in the paperwork that it is unreal. So it looks as though it’s going to happen this year for us to legalize our vocational school, pray for this to happen and for God to give us wisdom in the running of the School.

We’re going to be home the second week or third week of January. We are planning to be there until the 13th of April. We are planning to renew fellowships with different churches and to give reports on what has been going on here in Brazil. If you would like us to come to your Church you can contact us at our e-mail address and we will see where we can fit yo into our schedule. Thank you so much for your time, your prayers, and your financial help over this year and all the years that you have supported us. Your prayers and your concern for us as we minister to the people of Brazil are greatly appreciated.

As always, we would like to invite you to come down and see what is going on here in Caraguatatuba. The bed is made and the food is on the stove. So COME ON DOWN!!!

In His service,
Aj and Barbara

Aj and Barbara Hensley
ajcaragua[at]gmail.com

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