The Hensleys have spent nearly 20 years serving in Brazil. They have established a church in Caraguatatuba and mission points throughout the city. They have also recently started a seminary to train pastors.

February 4, 2017

Friends and family,

Well January has been a very active month. We have been trying to complete needed construction for Sunday School space upstairs. We had a group from Mt. Eden Baptist Church that came to celebrate the New Year with us. While with us, they helped us with this construction. They helped with painting, electric problems, doors, fans, closets, shelving, and they provided the financing for these projects. Also this church, under the leadership of my longtime friend Pastor Foy, helped the missionary to the Indians in Rio de Janeiro with their home.

We continually live and worship around and in construction projects. The upside of dust, walking around materials and lots of cleaning in the kitchen when we feed the children on Sunday mornings is that we are a growing Church and our members are very understanding. HOW AWESOME is the Lord we serve!!!!

Speaking of children, what a blessing. Pastor Walmir has been talking with a couple in our area who also work with children about bringing those children to worship with us. They were very happy to find a Church that would welcome them as they had been rejected by various other Churches as they had been told that to many children would disrupt their services. These children, about 20 to 25, live around our neighborhood so we were a great match. With this joining of work, our Sunday school grew about 30%.

Pray that the Lord would supply more space for their growing children’s ministry.

Well, while this mission group was here we had planned to have a Vacation Bible School. So we planned to have the children to come in the afternoon and stay through the church service on Wednesday night. We visited the neighborhood nearby and was expecting around 40-60 kids. But oh me of little faith. As the Bible School was beginning, I was taking care of a transportation problem, so when I finally got upstairs, WHAT A SURPRISE. We did not have enough chairs, much less enough space nor enough teachers nor materials. While we were expecting 40-60 children, imagine my surprise when I saw that there were 108 children packed in our upstairs.

Well we began to divide and conquer—we put some downstairs and left some upstairs, ran out and bought more hot dogs and drinks, and an AWESOME time was had by all. GOD is so AWESOME!!

Now Sunday school is more challenged and with one class offsite already, we are out of space again even before the building is finished. These are good problems to have, don’t you think? Just so you know, we have a lot behind our building that would solve these problems (hint, hint, hint). Pray with us for the Lord to supply.

I will be in the States for the next shot (which I thought was to be the last) in February, but I had to come home sooner as I was having some severe pain, not necessarily related to my cancer problem. Because of this pain I had to have lots of tests. Though they did not find the cause of the pain they have been able to tell me that they see no cancer in these tests. God is so good!!!

Plan a mission trip, see the work, have fellowship, make friends that could change your life and get out of your comfort zone as Barb always says. Come on down to Caraguatuba. The light is on and we will turn your bed down. Come see what your mission dollars are doing.

In His service,
Aj and Barb

Aj and Barbara Hensley
ajcaragua[at]gmail.com
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