As is common for the new year, we felt a restart button had been pressed. We were ready to start again for 2025, and we had several goals in mind. One goal that we are finally conquering is an early morning routine! This last year, I discovered the power of a 5 am routine, but lost my momentum when I had a kidney stone, and never was able to return to my routine. So far, for all of January, we have become 5 am people! Life on a ranch in the middle of summer is hot and busy! It has been amazing to have the time to slowly wake up, read my Bible, take some personal time of reflection, cut grass, and harvest blueberries all before breakfast! We are basically finished with all of our major tasks for the day before lunch! We have been praising God for this secret that we have learned about the morning hours. Are we tired? Surprisingly no! We have our sluggish days, but mostly we feel energized and excited to begin our day. It has been encouraging for us to feel that drive again. And this month has been full of progress.

Thus ends the most challenging year of our lives. December naturally has the most events of the year with Christmas and New Years. Additionally, we conducted my first Lord’s Supper as pastor! We added new members to our church! We had many new visitors! I also ended up preaching every service for two weeks while our other preachers took some much-needed vacation time! It was very challenging, but was very encouraging to see how far my Portuguese has come. Our ministry was very fruitful, and this month we have noticed incredible spiritual growth amongst our members! Without any prompting from Joneia or myself, they have expressed desire for further outreach, and more involvement! We are seeing incredible fruit at the end of the year. After such a challenging and heart-breaking year, seeing the fruit that our members are producing has been the biggest blessing for a young, new pastor.

We had a wonderful time with my parents here in Brazil, but they have now gone back home to the States. So our lives return to normal again…sort of. Life on the mission field never feels normal. God blesses us a lot, and sometimes our valleys are deep. But this month was very blessed. My parents blessed us with a dishwasher, which has helped us so much with our daily lives! Joneia also found a new horse! Our vet took a three hour drive with us to visit this horse, and Joneia took the opportunity to talk with her about spiritual things and salvation! Please be praying for our vet Vitória to get saved! We ended up bringing a new black stallion home that week! My horse Brego, and our new horse Moby, have gotten along like brothers. It has been a relief to have two healthy horses mowing our grass for us again. We still have our sick horse Socks, who we hope will make a recovery soon. Our vet actually taught me how to give him shots! This has been an incredible accomplishment since both Joneia and I tend to get woozy around needles…but now I can do it! It’s been another opportunity where the Lord has made me stronger. Other than the horses and my parents, our ministry has been pretty normal. 

October started normal and slow, but ended full of events! Our major event this last month was children’s day, which is usually one of our BIGGEST events of the year! It is as big as Christmas here in Brazil. Since the Yelle’s are in the States, we were concerned about being able to do this event. But last month, our ladies approached us and said, “WE want to do the Children’s day event!” So we decided to take a hands-off approach, and let them lead and prepare for the event. We helped them make sure they were remembering every detail, but they did an incredible job with the decorations and preparations. When they day finally came, everyone was involved, and the event was so much fun! We were so proud of the diligent work our ladies put into an incredibly successful event. We had over 45 people in attendance, and they all heard the gospel! Joneia and I led the songs, and Sabrina gave the lesson. It was a wonderful event, and we couldn’t have been happier.