Category Archives: Family

We Made It

Posted on by Leave a comment
If you recall in the last post about our move, we were very unsure about what the next few days would bring. As a testimony to the goodness of God, we are safe and sound in Itapuã do Oeste, in the State of Rondônia.

I posted on Thursday, March 1st that we were waiting on our moving truck. Late in the day I called the owner of the trucking company and he told me the truck still was not unloaded and would not be unloaded before Friday. However, he said there was another truck coming from Rio de Janeiro that could come by and load our things.

He said the truck could come by early Friday. So I agreed to that. The problem is that our non-refundable airplane tickets were for 7:40am on Friday. I considered sending Amanda and the kids ahead and purchasing another ticket for myself later in the day or Saturday. After praying about the situation, the Lord gave us peace about taking off and leaving all of our things for someone else to load.

On Friday morning, we went to the airport to catch our plane. The check-in line for our flight was just about as long as the airport. Their network was down and the employees were writing everything out by hand including boarding passes and luggage tickets. However, the Lord blessed and we arrived at our final destination only 20 minutes later than expected.

While we were flying, we prayed that the Lord would bless in the move. There were plenty of helpers and things went very well. The truck did not arrive until after 9am. They loaded the truck and they were able to load the car on the back of the truck also!!! Praise the Lord. This will expedite our ability to get around here. It will also allow us to trade it in or take our time selling it.

It took the truck four days to get up here to Rondônia. It arrived on Tuesday the 6th. We hired a few boys from the church to help unload the truck and carry our belonging to the appropriate place. 

NOTHING TELLS THE STORY BETTER THAN PICTURES!

Loading the truck from São Paulo – Thanks for the help guys! Not only did all of our belongings make it, but the van load of things we brought the day before and the car made it also.

Move_001
Move_002
Move_003
Move_004
Move_005
Move_006
Move_007

These pictures are of our trip here to Itapuã. On the way back to Bro. Brewer’s house where we are staying, his truck broke down and we were on the side of the road for several hours before we were able to get a taxi to pick us up and take us the rest of the way.

Move_008
Move_009
Move_010
Move_011
Move_012
Move_013
Move_014
Move_015

These pictures are of the unloading process. Yes, it was a meat truck, but they did not turn it on for us while we were unloading. However, they did turn in on for my Dad when he was loading. It was huge. Notice the picture of the empty truck and look for the driver all the way at the front of it. I wish I had pictures of us unloading the car here. The truck driver backed up to a pile of dirt, we found two boards to bridge the gaps and I drove across those two boards.

Move_016
Move_017
Move_018
Move_019
Move_020
Move_021
Move_022
Move_023
Move_024
Move_025
Move_026
Move_027
Move_028

Thank you for your prayers for us over the last few weeks. The Lord was very good to us. We are thankful for His blessings and for His protection.

–Jeremy

Posted in Family, Old Blog

Igreja Batista Bíblica – Paraisópolis

Posted on by Leave a comment
My wife did an excellent job blogging about our visit to Paraisópolis, so I asked her if I could post her comments on here also. If you would like to look at her blog, you can visit TylerFamilyTales.blogspot.com.
Jeremy had the opportunity to preach for a Brazilian pastor who has a church in an area of the city called Paraisópolis (translated Paradise City).
It is actually the second largest favela (slum, shanty town) in São Paulo, and far from what I would call paradise. Jeremy preached here once before in 2004 when the church was just beginning. It was exciting to see how they have grown and expanded since that time.
Click on the picture above to explore the area using Google Maps Street View


Judson enjoyed his class and was proud of the picture he colored.
The neighborhood of Paraisópolis has about 100,000 people living in it. According to the stats that I have found, there are 1000 persons per hectare. For those of you who (like me) who have no idea what a hectare is, it is 10,000 sq. meters, or 100m x 100m. Only 25% of this population live in houses supplied with sewage system, half of the streets are not paved and 60% use irregular means to obtain power. These “irregular means” are usually hooking into wires themselves and not paying for electricity.

São Paulo is a city of extremely rich and extremely poor, and many times these two are located right beside each other. This is the case with this neighborhood as well. These apartments that you see in the background sell for over $1 million.


Please pray for Pastor Washington and this work in such a needy area.
Posted in Family, Ministry, Old Blog, Preaching

Back in Brazil!!!

Posted on by Leave a comment
I just wanted to let everyone know that we are back in Brazil. We arrived safely last Friday. The trip was very smooth other than the two lugnut studs on the car that broke off on the way to the airport. The other three were loose and about to come off when the car started shaking. The Lord lead us to a mechanic who had the car fixed in less than 45 minutes and we were on our way to the airport with no further incidents.

Our flights went very well. On the long flight from Detroit to São Paulo, we had a row of seats for each of us. There were only 30 people on the entire flight.

Since our arrival we have found out that our car needs a little work done to it, but the mechanic that I use has left for the holidays. We are waiting a few days to see if he returns, but we might have to take the car elsewhere if he delays.

We knew our arrival would not mean settling down. Next week we will be gone for 3-4 days. I will be preaching and helping in a conference in Limeira. The week after that I will be gone for 3 days travelling to Campo Belo to meet with a missionary friend and several pastors from the area to discuss Christian literature and our involvement with their ministry.

Please pray for us as we are starting to make preperations for our move northwest. Very soon we will be making plans and looking for transportation. Pray for the Lord’s timing in everything we do over the next 6 months. There are dozens of events that must fall into place at the right time. We are thankful for those who have prayed for us and continue to pray for us.

— Jeremy

Posted in Family, Ministry, Old Blog

10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – 5 – 4 -3 – 2 – 1- Blastoff!!!

Posted on by Leave a comment

We will be leaving for the US in TEN days! We are anxious, excited, and somewhat still unprepared.

Today we are moving out of our temporary housing and into my parents house. We still have much left to do before we leave. Though a good part of the ministry we can attend to from a distance, there are still many things we must care for personally before our departure.

Here are a few things we would like for you to pray for…

  1. The finalization of the second issue of the publication. It has been in its final stages for a couple weeks, but because of busy schedules, it has not yet been sent out.
  2. Meeting with a young man developing a very resourceful tool for churches here in Brazil. This meeting has been postponed several times, so please pray I can meet with him this next week.
  3. Preparations for meetings in the US. We want to put together a small presentation of where we are and where the Lord is taking us in the near future. We also need to put together an new prayer card and have it printed within a few weeks.
  4. Planning and scheduling meetings for our trip to the US. The Lord has opened a few doors and we are excited about sharing what God is doing here in Brazil.
  5. Safety traveling. We will be traveling thousands of miles by airplane and on highways in the next six months.

Thank you again for your faithfulness in praying for us.

— Jeremy

Posted in Family, Furlough, Ministry, Old Blog

Lack of Communication

Posted on by Leave a comment

Just this last weekend we were away from home and I was not able to keep up with my regular e-mails. I had planned on that and was ready to answer the 30 or more e-mails that were in my inbox when I returned. However, I was not expecting the recent trouble we had.

On Monday when we returned home we were able to get online and catch up on a little communication. In the afternoon, the phone company had some men working on the lines and our phone and internet were cut off. A few hours later everything was back on, at least that is what we thought.

The phones came back on, but we were never able to connect to the internet. While I was out at a prayer meeting on Monday night, my mother called and said she was not able to call our house. We soon found out that the lines were crossed and we now had a new number.

On Tuesday morning I called the phone company and asked them if they could come fix the problem. All day long I kept answering phone calls of people who wanted to reach a certain business. All day long that business received phone calls from people who wanted to reach us. We even communicated back and forth a few times checking to see if the numbers were working yet.

Tuesday evening I decided to go to my parents house and check my e-mail there. When we arrived we found their phone and internet were both off also. Just as we were leaving the internet came on and allowed Amanda an opportunity to call her parents to let them know we were ok even though we were not able to communicate easily.

On Wednesday, I called the phone company again and they said a technician was on the way. Later in the day I called them again. They told me the issue had been fixed! HAHA! I still had no internet and could not receive calls at my own number. They told me I would have to wait up to 72 hours to get another technician.

Welcome to Brazil! Not everywhere can you get service like this. I had devoted this week to finishing our second issue of our publication. I finished editing three articles, but I could not access the other nine articles. This was very frustrating! So, I must remember that the Lord has a purpose. He is working in our lives and is in control of everything.

Thursday went by and we heard nothing about the phones. I called the company again on Friday and I called the company again on Saturday.

On Sunday, when we arrived home after church in the morning, there was a note on our gate. The phones had been fixed!!! We were excited we walked in the house and tested the lines just to find out that nothing had been accomplished.

Then the Lord gave me an idea. I got in the car and looked all over the subdivision for one of the phone company cars. After about 10 minutes I found one. I took the note with me and showed the technician the other mans name. He did not know him, but after hearing the issue, he said he would stop by after lunch and check out the problem.
Though he had said otherwise, he stopped by immediately before he went to lunch. I stood there with him and helped him repair the lines by throwing up the pliers, wires, etc… that he asked for. Within ten minutes we had our phones and internet back on.

Some people may think that as a missionary we should not count on communication such as internet and phones. Well, I try my best to communicate, because part of our ministry is communication.

Yes, we complain and gripe, but I will give you four good reasons we are thankful the Lord allowed the lines to be repaired…
  1. I was doing my best to communicate with people in Portugal about a lady who had recently received Christ through the internet! She has now received a visit and has promised a visit to church this coming week.
  2. We had contact with two men in Pakistan about the Gospel! Both registered on our Gospel website.
  3. A man had sent me his testimony of salvation. Unfortunately, he recounted his salvation as being a vision he had seen. I had to make sure he received a clear Gospel presentation.
  4. A lady that has been writing to me periodically for over a year had questions about her salvation. Pray that God gives her peace!
The Lord has given us an opportunity to communicate with people who need the Gospel. We want to do our best to show these people that Jesus is salvation and He is the solution of every problem we have.
— Jeremy
Posted in Family, Ministry, Old Blog, Websites

Josiah and Jonathan Get Baptized

Posted on by Leave a comment

A few weeks ago Josiah and Jonathan asked me if they could be baptized. This situation came up because they had just seen one of their friends get baptized. We made it a point to wait a few weeks and see what the real motive behind it was.

About a year ago, Josiah spoke to me at church one night and said he wanted to be saved. He had previously said he was saved, but did not know when he trusted Christ. He was reluctant to even admit that he was a sinner, so we did not believe that he was truly saved. However, after hearing Bro. Jimmy Rose preach at a mission conference, he came home and trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior.

This was a pretty clear decision and you could tell that it was from his heart. Jonathan, on the other hand, was a different situation. He was always saying that he had trusted Jesus as his Savior. We did not put much trust in his decision because of the way he prayed. Of course the way you pray does not affect your salvation. I had asked Jonathan to pray before the boys went to sleep one night. In that prayer he quickly said, “Please forgive me of my sins and save me.” That was it! With children, who pray for dogs and other unconventional things, we did not think he was serious. The tone of his voice was very playful.

However, after a year or more of putting it off, he still insists that he was saved that night. We clearly remember the day, but did not believe he was saved. I questioned him quite thoroughly on this matter and he did not give in. He was confident of his salvation! AMEN! I am glad when a person cannot be shaken on the matter of their salvation.

The Lord gave us peace about the whole situation and we scheduled the baptism. Please watch the video to see our two precious boys being baptized. This was also my first time to baptize. I must express with the apostle John, that, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” 

Here is the video…

— Jeremy

Posted in Family, Old Blog

Update on Recent Events

Posted on by Leave a comment

It has been a good while since I updated the blog with any real news. So, here is what has been happening lately on the Tyler side of the ministry…

 

  1. Gospel Tracts – In December we saw the opportunity to print a few tracts to use. We have just about been out of tracts for the last five months or so. Because of this we wanted to print some very nice looking, attractive tracts that we could give out with the Gospel website name on them. We did not realize it would be so hard to print them. Yet, the Lord has still kept our hopes up. Printing here in Brazil is a bit different than the US with less technology. Though, the system they use is pretty modern, the programming used is different. The printers have also asked us to meet certain qualifications with colors that we have never had to do before. Because of this, I have spent days trying to fix things for the printers. We are still waiting, but are praying they will get printed this week.
  2. Music Lessons – I am now giving lessons to about 10 young people and children. This is an opportunity to help churches here in Brazil develop their music programs. It has been exciting to see them improve. Yet, we know our time here in São Paulo is short, so we must do what we can to move these students along quickly.
  3. Lightning Strikes – This is not normal in the US, but here it has become quite a trying circumstance. It has rained almost every day in the past two months. About 4-5 in the afternoon, the clouds roll in and we get not only rain, but lots of thunder and lighting. In the middle of January, we heard a very large crash on a Sunday evening. We had not unplugged everything that evening. So, we got struck by lightning. No, not personally, but our internet and everything connected to it got hit. So we are still working on getting everything back to normal. After weeks without internet (at home) and much time trying to figure out how to set everything up again, we are back online. We are praying we will be able to get things back to normal in the next few weeks to keep up with our correspondence as we should.
  4. Future Plans – Please pray with us about what this year holds for us. We would like to move to Porto Velho by the end of the year. Though nothing is set in stone, we are beginning to plan toward this goal. We are also praying about taking a short trip to the US to visit a few churches and see family and friends. Our goal is to take this trip so that we do not need to worry about returning to the US for several years after our move.
  5. Publication – We are designing and planning an online bi-monthly publication. The idea behind this publication is to promote good doctrine, unity, a high view of God, holiness, salvation and many other such things that are lacking in this country today. In the beginning of this year, we started sending out a monthly publication created by a fellow missionary, Jim King. This has been rewarding and a new source of encouragement for many people and pastors in our Baptist churches here in Brazil.

–Jeremy

Posted in Family, Literature, Ministry, Old Blog
Recent Entries »