November 23, 2023

Dear Praying Friends, Happy Thanksgiving! Looking back at our year we find we have so much to stop and be thankful for. I was walking a bit this evening and was thinking about all that has happened this year and realized again how absolutely blessed we are. God has showered us with HIS abundant blessings. I might add, He has used so many of you all to do some of the showering. Thank you!

This time back is not a furlough but we had to return as Keila's USA passport was expiring and since there is no US embassy in our country, we had to get back stateside before it expired. Funny, our southern border is wide open, but if a US citizen's passport expires while outside the USA, they won't allow you to return until you get it renewed. So here we are. We are going to take advantage of our time here to clean up audio files and get them ready so ReNew Outreach can get them on our next batch of Torches. Lord willing, we will be returning to our country of service in January, hopefully, with a fresh batch of Torches.

As we said in our last letter, we were finally able to leave the jungle on the 26th of October and got back here to the USA on the 30th. We already had an appointment set up with the insurance people regarding Mia's car for the 31st, so after meeting with them and collecting the settlement, we began car shopping the same day. Thankfully, via the internet, our son Ryan had already found a few cars we could look at in the Macon area, and we found a nice replacement for her with the second car we looked at. We had a church activity on the 3rd and 4th and started driving for IL at 10:30 the night of the 4th after the church activity was finished, getting to IL the next day. We had such a great reunion with our kids, Josh, Stephen and Loran and all our grandkids! It was so good to be able to go to some of our grandkid's activities. For the first time, we actually got to go to some of our their school games. What a treat!

As I hugged Mia, I could not help but praise the Lord she had not been hurt during her accident. We had a great time in IL visiting with them and also visiting my younger brothers and their families.

From there, we went to Imperial, NE to visit Ry, Jenny and family. We had a wonderful week visiting with them and catching up on their mission work in Peru and of course, doing our best to spoil our grandkids.

We got back to GA last night and I am already working on the audio files for our next batch of Torches. These new files for the Yanomamö torches are the audio book, King Of Glory which we translated last year. The published books are already in the hands of readers in villages, but we wanted to do an audio version for the many villages where there are no readers. Then, for the Dyecwana tribe, we have the Gospel of John audio version ready along with some of their Gospel songs sung by some of their church groups. This tribe is so excited to get even this much of their New Testament audio. They are excited to finish it, but we ran out of time. Lord willing, we can help them finish their entire New Testament audio when we get back.

With the Yanomamö, there are so many villages we still would like to place torches in. Pray about this. I had thought before that we were finally making headway in the Yanomamö work, but with the maps available today on computers, as I was marking the villages where we have placed torches, I looked past these villages and there are so many villages out there in the jungle where there has never been a missionary, they have never heard the name of Jesus and it almost makes me discouraged. But thanks to you who have given to the Torch project there are so many Yanomamö who even today can listen to God's Word in their own language. Thank you!

Michael and Keila

PS. for those of you not on FB I am going to send a second email with a poem written by my sister Sandy regarding my panic ridden ride from the airport in Puerto Carreno looking for pesos to pay for our extra bags.

Also: Don't forget, Books make great presents! Please order your books through us here as 100% of all proceeds from the sell of books through us, go to the Yanomamö medical fund. This last year there have been so many emergencies! You can order books just via email to me or via our website.

link for books: Mike’s Books

Picture below is a foto of the South Eastern portion of Amazonas State. The 96 small red dots are marking villages where we have placed torches. We have actually placed torches in over 120 villages but for some reason, the map would not allow me to mark them. Am working on this issue. Will update when possible.