October Amazon Update! Steve and Elba

Thanks for all your prayers for us.  We are so grateful and could not do this without your intercession.  We pray that you will be blessed with the below update.  .

A team of dentists from Brasilia, Brazil’s national capital, came again to serve the needy by providing dental services.  They had a busy two weeks.  They first went to the Marabá church, then the Pacajá church, and then on the river.  They served 405 people that required a total of 1244 procedures, and provided 887 fluoride treatments.  This is almost double the amount from last year. 

During their time with us last year, they had to perform hundreds of teeth extractions.  They were shocked by the poor condition of the people’s teeth and in an effort to relieve some of the trauma from the extractions.  The team decided to come and make dentures.  The team (including Elba) helped create the molds of the teeth.  We then took the molds and created the denture a couple of days later.  It was a monumental task but they were able to complete the goal and the results were amazing.    

During their time at the churches and river communities they had a chance to share about God’s love and pray for the kids and adults

This month the missionaries got together and had their first missionary retreat.  You might ask “why have a retreat?”  It is said that 29% of the reasons American missionaries leave the field were unpreventable. Leaving the estimated world-wide preventable attrition (A gradual diminution in number or strength because of constant stress) at 71%.  Preventable attrition included six major categories: 1) marriage and family reasons; 2) agency reasons; 3) personal reasons; 4) team reasons; 5) cultural reasons: and 6) work related reasons. Early intervention in the missionary life cycle, even before departure, would have made a difference in these attrition rates.

Craig and Linda Heselton came and taught us about Emotional Intelligence to help retool us and build up the team. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is simple defined as “the ability to recognize one's own and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior.”    It was definitely a learning experience for me and one that I hope will create more growth personally and professionally.    

It was also very good to just get all the missionaries together to spend time with one another.  This time together helps to build up our team and re-energize us for the continued road ahead. Our mission is looking to have marathon missionaries, and not sprinters.  For this reason, we are committed to the care of our missionaries so that we can help sustain the calling that the Lord has on their life as life-long missionaries. 

During the missionary care the girls had a great time reconnecting with the other missionary children.  They were essentially inseparable during the whole time we were together.  Every morning they were antsy to go and play with the other kids, and at night they did not want to come in.  We were so grateful for this time.  Also, pictured is Camilly and Alyssa trying to log roll. 

Please continue to pray for spiritual, physical, and emotional health for us. 

Love and blessings, Steve, Elba, Camilly and Alyssa

 

Tax deductible donations can be written and sent to:

The Xingu Mission

P.O Box 340785

Columbus, Ohio  43234

Or On-line donations at:

https://xingu.org/opportunities/giving/dolan-ministries/

June Amazon Update! - Steve and Elba

The church had a “Pink tea party” for the women in the community.  The women members of the church were asked to invite one of their friends to come to the church to participate in the event.  They served food, played games, did a raffle giveaway, had a small fashion show, and then shared the Love of God.  It was a fun and a great way to introduce Jesus into these women’s lives who did not know Him as their Savior.  It was also a very special time for some of these woman to get a little pampered and to step away from their lives that at times can be very complicated. 

The Vineyard Institute (VI) also had its kick off here in Brazil.  Vineyard Institute is an educational provider for the Vineyard movement, formed to develop leaders at all levels of church life through high quality theological training.  Training our existing and future leaders is one of the keys to planting more churches and making more disciples.  These courses will hopefully help the leaders realize the giftings that the Lord has given to them so that they will use them to promote the Kingdom of God.  It will also assist us to instill the DNA of the church as we pass the baton onto the future generation.  We have more than 80 participants signed up in the program just here in Altamira.   http://vineyardinstitute.org/

We will be coming back to Ohio for the International Vineyard Conference being held at the Vineyard Church of Columbus.  Elba was honored with an invitation to speak and she will be sharing on July 9^th between 2-4pm.  Please keep her in your prayer as she prepares her message and that the message she speaks will be according to the Lord’s will. 

The big highlight for this month was Camilly’s public decision to get baptized.  It was a really special moment for us as parents.  It was even more special because I got the opportunity to actually participate in her baptism.  We were all very excited.  Here is a picture of Alyssa.  She makes these bracelets and necklaces out of little rubber bands and has been selling them to the students at CDR.  She is saving up money for her trip to the States. 

Please continue to pray for spiritual, physical, and emotional health for us.  Also, please pray for our trip back to the States and that our time may be filled with family, friends, joy, peace, safety, and more importantly full of the Holy Spirit.  Thanks!

Love and blessings, Steve, Elba, Camilly and Alyssa

 

Tax deductible donations can be written and sent to:

The Xingu Mission

P.O Box 340785

Columbus, Ohio  43234

Or On-line donations at:

https://xingu.org/opportunities/giving/dolan-ministries/

One of our members during Mother’s Day being touched by the Holy Spirit.

May Amazon Update! - Steve and Elba

This month we had our annual pastor’s retreat.  We were fortunate to be able to bring in Jerry Reddix and Penny Meyer to help minister to the pastors.  The objective of this retreat was to get the pastors to stop and get re-centered back to the Lord.  The pastors lives are mostly give, give, and give some more. It is easy to neglect their own needs and their soul.  Jerry and Penny helped bring some more tools for these pastors so that they can go forward working in a more balanced way and not get burned out.  We are so fortunate to be working with and serving these pastors.  They have such great relationships with the Lord, and they are very faithful and dedicated to His call. 

The church also had the opportunity to go to one of the local schools and share about Jesus.  Such an amazing privilege to be able to go to a public school for the express purpose of sharing the love of Christ.  Elba used a visual display to help the students understand Christ and sin in this world.  She had three containers, one represented Jesus, the other sin, and the other us.  The sin container contained dark colored liquid and she poured it into the “us” container and we became sinful.  Then Christ enters our life.  She then took the Christ container and pour it into the “us” container and then we became clean again.  Here is a youtube video of the demonstration.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZN0DzWLthU. The children were in awe and loved their time.  Camilly and their dance group also danced for the kids.

Camilly turned 10 years old on April 10^th.  She is now in the double digits.  Time goes by so quickly.  We had a birthday party with some of her friends.  The girls also got the opportunity to go horseback riding at a local farm.  They really had a lot of fun.  The only problem now is that they want us to buy them a horse. 

Please continue to pray for spiritual, physical, and emotional health for us.  Thanks!

Love and blessings, Steve, Elba, Camilly and Alyssa

 

Tax deductible donations can be written and sent to:

The Xingu Mission

P.O Box 340785

Columbus, Ohio  43234

Or On-line donations at:

https://xingu.org/opportunities/giving/dolan-ministries/

April Amazon Update - Steve and Elba

We pray that this you well and that you had a wonderful and blessed Easter.  He has Risen, Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord.  

We had our traditional Easter early morning church service and celebrated the Lord’s resurrection and then served breakfast.  It takes a lot of work to pull this off and it is essentially a whole church effort.  Each of the home groups were responsible to bring an item that would be enough to feed 300 people.  Everyone chipped in and made it a great and inviting time for all guests.

The church went down to the local corner grocery store and pitched a tent and asked people if they wanted prayer for healing.  We prayed for over 80 people and people claimed to be healed.  It was really encouraging and a great blessing for the ones who received prayer.  We prayed for a man who walked by on crutches.  He was obviously touched by the Lord in such a great way that he went away carrying his crutches.  YAHOO!  Praise the Lord indeed.  Lord, continue and soak us more with your presence and power to heal the sick, the blind, the lame and the deaf. 

We also had the pleasure of baptizing 4 people into the Lord.  I got the privilege to be able to experience this moment with them.  We celebrated the baptism while the church was worshipping the Lord and celebrating these new births in Christ as they were washed from their old self and into their new identity in Christ.  Please pray for these new converts. 

Praise the Lord the girls continue to do well.  They both participated in dance presentations for our Easter service.  They both did a great job.  We also found this snake in our yard and we killed it.  They said that it was poisonous and we did not ask any more questions.  J The girls were brave and held it after we killed it.  Camilly will be turning 10 years old on April 18^th.  She is so excited and is in total party mode. 

Thank you so much for all your prayers for Elba.  Praise the Lord she is feeling much better and is running at 100%.  We feel so privileged to have you in our lives praying and supporting us.  Thank you so much.  Please continue to pray for spiritual, physical, and emotional health for us.  Thanks again. 

Love and blessings, Steve, Elba, Camilly and Alyssa

 

Tax deductible donations can be written and sent to:

The Xingu Mission

P.O Box 340785

Columbus, Ohio  43234

Or On-line donations at:

https://xingu.org/opportunities/giving/dolan-ministries/

March Amazon Update - Steve and Elba

The church is continuing to do well and by the grace of God we are still seeing people come to know Christ.  However, the last few weeks we have seen attendance down.  Pray that we continue to be relevant to the unreached around us.  Elba preached at one of our churches in Brasil Novo.  The Brasil Novo church is still in its infancy but Pastor Ademir has been doing a great job pastoring this church, gathering people and teaching the Word of God.  Sorry that the picture is real fuzzy.  Please continue to keep the church and its members in your prayers, as well as all the other churches. 

CDR, our community center has been reaching out to the community to help the underprivileged with affordable education in English and computers.  This semester alone, we have around 400 students participating in our programs which is considerable more students than we had last year.  We are also providing the community with free internet access and free computer classes to the local schools.  Below are some pictures of an English class playing a game to figure out what word was on their forehead.  It is nice when you can make learning fun.  Continue to pray for more favor upon CDR, and that it will be a greater influence in the surrounding community to help people come to know Jesus as their Savior.      

Here is a picture of Camilly and Alyssa playing a dance game at our new mall in Altamira and the girls got dressed up for the occasion.  Yes, you read this correctly, we have a mall in Altamira.  Granted, it probably only takes 5 minutes to walk through its entirety, but hey, we had a good time. J  I took the next picture on international women’s day.  It is a picture of Elba’s Mom and sisters, as well as her niece Apolana, and our girls.  Elba was quite sick but struggled through (read below).  We prepared a nice breakfast on the lawn with all kinds of goodies and Apolana sang them a song.  It was really special for them. 

Please pray for Elba.  She had dengue fever, which is a mosquito born disease that has no treatment, only symptom relievers.  They call dengue “breakbone fever” because of the severe joint and muscle pain that is causes.  She is still not feeling well and now has a severe ear ache.  Please pray the Lord will heal her. 

Please continue to pray for spiritual, physical, and emotional health for us.  We need it. 

Love and blessings, Steve, Elba, Camilly and Alyssa

 

Tax deductible donations can be written and sent to:

The Xingu Mission

P.O Box 340785

Columbus, Ohio  43234

Or On-line donations at:

https://xingu.org/opportunities/giving/dolan-ministries/