Tag Archives: Music

Cujubim – Rondônia – Brazil

Posted on by Leave a comment
I just returned from a weekend holiday trip to the city of Cujubim where I participated in a type of youth congress teaching young people about music. The Lord blessed in a great way during the trip!

There were representatives from about five or six different churches present at the meeting. The fellowship was wonderful and the Lord was working in the hearts of the young people as well as the adults.

Bro. Adelmo is working in the church there. The Lord put him in Cujubim about eight months ago to help the church. He will soon be ordained and become the pastor of the church. Please pray for him as he works for the Lord in Cujubim.

During my three day stay, he took all the teenagers out several times to hand out tracts and do some soul-winning. Though no one trusted the Lord as their Savior during these times of outreach, I was glad to see some young people out talking to people about the Lord and inviting them to the meetings.

From my point of view, the leaders benefited more from the lessons than did the young people. They were quick to admit their need to change the music in their churches. Some, I believe will take steps of improvement, while others will continue doing what they have always done because it is the “easy way”. Many times we have the opportunity to hear good preaching and teaching on certain subjects, but how often do we actually act on those things and change something in our lives because of it?

The challenge many times is not only to present truth, but to encourage people to act on it. A quote, I believe to be by Mark Twain, gives us the truth… “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that Give me fits, it’s the parts that I do understand that trouble me the most.” We have the Bible and truth at our fingertips, but yet we are many times unchanged and unaffected by it.

Please pray for our churches here in Brazil. Many stories could be told of the churches that have strayed into Pentecostalism because of music. Though I am certain that music was not the only factor, it is one of the signs that will most certainly pop up before the church heads that way.

The churches in this particular area of Brazil are very needy. This is not only in the area of music, but in every area. There is very little teaching on doctrine and few qualified teachers or pastors. Out of the eight closest churches to us, four of them are without a pastor and being monitored by the same missionary. Each of these churches has a male leader, but many of these have little if any training and some do not even understand the basic fundamental doctrines that we teach, yet they are in leadership in that church for lack of others who will take on the role.

People are begging us for a Bible institute, music training, pastoral leadership, and much more. Where do we begin? Should we just neglect what God has put in our hearts to help these people with their needs? By no means! Yet at the same time we must pray to our all-knowing God who said that He would send laborers at our request. Let us not be guilty of “doing everything we can” without doing what God has already asked us to do.

Posted in Ministry, Old Blog, Preaching

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