Bro. Mário Rodrigues, Missionary & a Hero of the Faith, Called Home
November 23, 2021
Dear Brethren,
We are home, earthly home, that is. It took us 54 hours. It was raining in all six cities that we went through. It was freezing in Kentucky. It is 80 degrees here in wonderful Cruzeiro do Sul. The trip was an ordeal, but He worked things out. I won’t bore you with the details. We are home! Thanks to all our family and friends who were so gracious to us in this long 3 months away from our home and life work.
We arrived here on Saturday, November 20th. The services at First Baptist Church were just amazing on Sunday. It was so good to hear a church really belt out praises to our wonderful Lord. Our church is known for how well she sings. Not always perfect pitch, but you can hear them! They wanted me to preach, but I declined. We had 4 adults saved, there was one request for baptism and another young woman for membership. Wow! What a homecoming.
On Sunday night one of our missionaries died. Brother Mário Rodrigues, 56 years old, died of cancer. He had been sick for many months and suffered terribly. What a story though. Let me share it with you. When Brother Joe Brandon came to Cruzeiro do Sul in the mid 1920’s, besides founding First Baptist Church (May 12, 1929), he also traveled the rivers with a small group of believers preaching the Gospel. He had a boat called “Peregrino” (The Pilgrim). It had a small inboard diesel engine, which was rare for that remote place and time. Everyone knew about this boat and her crew. On one of those first mission trips Brother Brandon planned to preach at a small village named Porto Walter. This is about 100 miles upstream on the Juruá River. As they approached the riverbank to land, Brother Leônidas grabbed the rope and prepared to jump ashore. Brother Leônidas was one of the original 13 members of First Baptist, a poet, musician and preacher.
However, there was a mob waiting on the riverbank. This mob had been sent by the Roman Catholic priest to prevent any “invasion” by the “crentes”, believers. One of the men in the crowd, wielding a machete, told Leônidas, “If you come ashore, I will chop the rope and chop you.”
Brother Brandon decided to back off and continue on upriver. From then on, the village continued to be sealed off and off limits to the Gospel. That was decades ago. For a long time, I was troubled by this. After much prayer and preparation God made it clear that “enough is enough”. When the time came for us to send a missionary there, Brother Mário Rodrigues stepped up. I personally went there ahead of him to survey the village and get property and a house for his young family. I went with him in 1994 to kick things off. He worked there faithfully for 15 years.
Every morning at 6:00 0’clock sharp the priests and nuns wake the town up with praises to mother Mary on a loud speaker atop the tower of the Catholic church. It was not easy. Plenty of resistance and even persecution. Mário was a mild, softspoken man. He was the most unlikely person to succeed in such a hostile setting. But, greater is He who is in us. Succeed he did. Today the church has over 200 members installed in a big 2 story building right downtown. The church is doing mission work on the river and tributaries. There are 3 congregations with over 100 baptized believers.
Although Mário is a big loss to the kingdom on earth, he is a hero of the faith. I count it a great honor to have known him, worked with him, spent many tearful hours with him and be a small part in the ministry of such a giant.
Well, I must close, but I still have an unusual request that I must make. Bev had cataract surgery on both eyes while we were in the States. They also corrected her distance vision. She couldn’t see much at all far away. They corrected the astigmatism and the glaucoma, too. It was a total success, but it was also very expensive. Our insurance covered a small part of it. We had to cover just over $9,500.00. This had to be paid before the surgery, so we plopped down the ole credit card. We have since borrowed money to cover this. If the Lord should lead you to help us with this, we would be much in your debt.
Oh! And did I mention? It sure is wonderful to be home again! Thank you, Lord.
Thanks for all of 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.
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Celebrating the Church’s 90th Birthday in New Building with New Professions of Faith!
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.
June 18, 2019
Dear Brethren,
For a long time, we have known that we needed to expand our facilities if we wanted to continue to absorb growth. To that end we built a new steel building over the top of our old building. That was the easy part. Getting up the gumption to tear down the old building and rebuild was the hard part. It had to be done though, so on January 13th we held our last service in the old building. From there on out we held services on the third floor of the annex.
On January 18th we started the demolition. The goal was to move back in by the church’s birthday on May the 12th. Those four months were intense, to say the least. I only made three mission trips during that period. For the whole time I worked 10 to 18-hour days. Naturally, I caught a lot of grief from my wife (not so much because of the long hours), but because from time to time I was 30 feet above the ground in the rafters. The Lord protected us all and there were no serious accidents or injuries.
On May the 10th we held a three-day meeting to celebrate the church’s 90th birthday. Brother Joe Brandon organized the church with 13 members on May 12, 1929. Today the church has well over 1600 members including those who are in our 9 chapels here in town. Pastor David Hatcher was our guest speaker. On Saturday we had our annual pastors and missionaries meeting with over 100 workers present.
Our former seating capacity was 830. The goal was to double that with the new building. We put every available bench, pew and chair in there. We still had room for another 200 seats. We filled the building every night. The guys who take care of stats for me counted over 1400 on Sunday night. The best thing though was that during the meeting there were 24 professions of faith.
A few months ago, I designed the new pews for our new building. We managed to get 8 of those finished for the church to see in time for the anniversary services. We will be building over 100 of these to be able to fill those extra spaces and replace some of the older pews. I am telling this mostly for the following reason: I told the church that once we got moved back in, I was going to take off a month and rest. So just before I left Cruzeiro do Sul, I stretched out on one of the new pews to begin my rest!
Bev and I have been in the States for almost a month. We will be returning to Brazil on June 20. I still have most of the finish work on the building awaiting me besides 3 other building projects, not to mention all the other regular jobs that I must keep up with. So, pray and rejoice with us about all the great things that are happening in Cruzeiro do Sul.
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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Two Native Missionary Families Sent Out as First Baptist Cruzeiro do Sul Celebrates 88th Anniversary
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.
June 8, 2017
Dear Brethren,
First Baptist Church turned 88 on May 12. The church was organized on May 12, 1929 by missionary Joe Brandon with 13 members. God has blessed her and brought growth in many areas. For many years we held our missions conference during the last week of July. This was mostly due to the weather! That is our dry season and made it easier for our workers to get to town. The roads have improved (a little) so we decided to make our conference coincide with the church’s anniversary. For the past three years we have held our annual missions conference in mid-May. This year it was May 12 through 14.
The Sunday morning service was a red-letter day. We started out by adding 26 new members by baptism followed by the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. We also had reports from more of our missionaries. The big deal though was the approval of 2 new missionaries. One is a Brazilian who will be taking care of the field at Foz do Breu on the upper Juruá River at the Peruvian border. José Costa and wife are already installed and will be taking care of the congregation there and the preaching points down stream as far as São João. The other new missionary is Freddy and Felicinda. They are Peruvian and also of the Kaxinauá people. They are now in Tipisca, Peru. They have 2 major tasks: working to win people from the several ethnic groups in Tipisca and to continue to reach the 5 Kaxinauá villages on the Breu River. We already had inroads into 3 of the villages through Cosma and Damiana’s family. Now we are in all 5 villages.
As you may recall, we already have a Brazilian couple working in Tipisca: José Maia and Silvânia. The work is really tough there. The town is only a thousand or so people. There is a Peruvian army outpost there. The soldiers make very meager salaries. Most of them spend their money on drinking and prostitutes. None of them come to church. They are isolated and hard to reach. There is a handful of native Peruvians who work mostly in government jobs. These, too, stay closed away. Then there are the folks from the tribes. There are Ashaninka, Jaminauas, Kaxinaua, Amauaca and Arara. The Ashaninka have one linguistic line. The other 4 tribes speak different dialects of a completely different language strain. You walk just a few feet in the town and hear Spanish and the indian languages. What a mess. These different tribal groups are open to the Gospel, but how to communicate? Progress is being made, but very slowly.
It had been some time since I checked on the works on the lower Juruá River. Pastor Rondisson went with me to visit Ipixuna. This town is in the state of Amazonas and is over 150 miles downstream. The river is still pretty high, so we had an easy 5-hour trip. There is a Baptist convention church there, but it is Pentecostal. The pastor is from the Assembly of God! We don’t have any contact or involvement with them. There is also an evangelical church that is identical to us in every way except it just isn’t Baptist. They are mission-minded and we have encouraged them and got them going on several mission projects. We started 3 congregations that they visit regularly. We don’t have a missionary to send there, so we do what we can to help. There is a large village called Pernanbuco a few miles further down the river that has over 100 families. We plan to take our medical team there soon as a first step to getting a work started in the village.
Thanks for all 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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