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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