Sharing Jesus in Bible Studies & English Chats
October 15, 2021
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We hope you are enjoying the Lord’s blessings. This week has been busy as we have started some new meetings and are getting back in the groove of the school year schedule. Our Sunday meetings continue to be held in person with some joining us by internet.
The restart of Bible Studies in Mazere this week went very well. We are studying through the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Philip and Amanda are restarting Bible studies in the home of a church family in the city of Cugnaux. A couple of other weekly Bible studies are also held. Small group meetings are a very effective means of communicating the Good News of Jesus Christ to seekers and helping those who trust Christ to grow up in Him. This has been our primary method of outreach to adults since we arrived in France.
The first Youth meeting of this school year is tomorrow evening. The Lord has enabled us to communicate the Good News to many Middle School and High School students through these meetings.
This week Judy and I also began meeting with three ladies who want to practice speaking English. We have found this to be a great way to connect with people in order to tell them about God’s offer of eternal life through Jesus Christ. One of the ladies in the present group is an acquaintance made on our trekking path. Each time we crossed the friendship grew. When she expressed a desire to work on English to be able to communicate with a possible future son-in-law who is Australian, we offered to meet with her for English chats.
Another participant was a kindergarten teacher for our granddaughters years ago, sang in the community choir in which I (John) sang and “by chance” (another way of saying “divine appointment”) we crossed her (while trekking) as she was going to sign up for English improvement classes at the local community meeting house. She decided to cancel the English improvement classes and meet with us! She brought a friend who also sang in the community choir.
Please pray with us that God will open hearts to Jesus for eternal life and help us all to keep growing up in Jesus.
Your sister and brother in Southern France,
Judy and John
Contact Info:
John & Judy Hatcher
4, rue d’Aspin
31170 Tournefeuille, France
JMHatcher@aol.com
Present USA phone 1-812-416-1033
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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Missionary Update: AJ and Barbara Hensley in Brazil [June 2015]
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.
June 3, 2015
Dear friends and family,
What an amazing (AWESOME) month, needless to say we have been busy with our mobile Seminary traveling to Garça São Paulo for a week—teaching, visiting, and making new friends and spending time with old ones. We were also able to present our Seminary to a group of pastors. There were around 500 local pastors and leaders. What a great week.
As we were leaving Garça, the rental car of Pr. Deeic had a problem with the radiator. It sprang a leak and we had to have it towed to São Paulo about 250 miles. Then we had to hire some transport for us to get to São Paulo with our luggage. This lost us a full day in our schedule. As a result of this, we lost the class in São Paulo til September. As a result, Dr. Derek and Dr. Edge were able to spend the weekend with us here in Caraguatatuba. Then we continued to Orlando where we spent the second week of Seminary classes. It was two weeks of great classes and much learning. We returned home elated by the results but really tired.
The dates for the fall semester will be announced soon. Our hopes, desires and plans are to have this seminary in 5 different cities: Garça, Sao Paulo, Orlandia, and next year also in Rio de Janeiro. All this can be accomplished by prayer. So here is a BIG prayer request: start praying for the seminary and all that God has in store for this upcoming semester. We feel that this Seminary will be one of the ways that Brasil can be reached with the gospel.
We no sooner got the Seminary classes finished than we began planning for the groups that are coming in June. We will be doing evangelism in the schools and catching up with some of our construction needs. What a blessing to have Churches coming down to assist with the ministries here in Brasil. AWESOME!!
Running out of space and seating for Sunday School.
The repairs and construction projects involve painting two homes on the school property, putting a roof on the front porch of one of the houses, and working on some more room for Sunday School. It is good to have space problems. Our Sunday School has doubled in the last months. So we are out of space, as you can see in the photo, and we don’t have enough seating either. By the way, we would like to give a shout out to Churches that have helped us with the purchase of new chairs. Thank you all so much.
Not only are we out of space, our sound system is old and giving us continual problems. Please pray for help in this area. What we really need is new speakers, but you know what? Problems are good—they keep us on our knees, and looking up. We serve an AWESOME God!!!
We have our small groups back up and running since our return. We are seeing many new faces that are not involved in our regular Church services. We are using our small groups to minister to people that would not normally come to the Church; however, we are praying that after some time attending the small groups they will want to come to the other services also.
We are planning many evangelistic and ministry projects in the coming months. Pray with us and for us as our goal is to win many souls for Christ.
We would love to have you all come and see what God is doing here in Caraguatatuba, Brasil. The light is on and the beans are on the stove. So come on down.
In His Service,
Aj and Barbara Hensley
Aj and Barbara Hensley
ajcaragua[at]gmail.com
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