Dear Praying and Supporting Friends,
We would like to begin by thanking you for your prayers and words of encouragement. We have certainly needed them in these last few months. We apologize for the delay in our letter. As you will see we have had a lot going on. Since our last letter we went and sought the advice of our assistant field director. He got in contact with our Field Director and the President of our board and the three men agreed we should go ahead and take our furlough immediately. This led to packing and storing and saying goodbyes. We went and spent Thanksgiving with my brother and his family. Next we took our pets; our dog Bo, our parakeet Birdy, and our fish on a 7 hour journey to their new temporary home with my parents in Londrina. We were quite a sight as we went down the road with a dog, a bird and a bucket full of fish.
On December 10th we began our journey to the states. As we look back it was a humorous trip but at the time we were not laughing. We had rented a large vehicle to transport ourselves and our 20 pieces of luggage to Sao Paulo to catch our plane. When I went to the rental agency they did not have our car. With minutes to spare we caught a bus heading to Sao Paulo. The bus arrived late and we missed our connecting bus to the airport. We were already late for check in so we worked for 30 minutes and finally got 2 cabs to stop for us at one time. We loaded up the 2 cabs and made a run for the airport. Praise the Lord we were able to check in and make our flight. They were boarding as we arrived. We landed in Chicago around lunch time the 11th of December.
We had purchased a used minivan sight unseen while we were in Brazil to use here in the states. On December 14th we finally got it from the mechanic who was fixing a few minor problems. December 16th on the way home from church we were hit by a drunk driver. He tried to pass us on the shoulder, hit the wall, hit us and then rolled his vehicle several times. Praise the Lord only Rebekah was injured. Rebekah received a very nasty bruise on her arm and has been under chiropractic treatment for injuries to her lower back. Our van was totaled but we did not even receive what we had paid for the van and since we had borrowed the money from my wife’s parents we have had to look for another option.
We were blessed to spend Christmas with my wife’s family. It was a wonderful time of renewal and love. The boys were thrilled to see snow as a heavy snow storm hit Indianapolis the day after Christmas. Jeff had a little mishap when David’s shovel connected with his head. He was pretty dazed and lost his breakfast, and dyed the snow a bit. A little liquid band-aid and some rest and he was on the mend.
Rebekah has been dealing with kidney stones the last week. Please pray for her that they do not return. This is her second bought with kidney stones and if you have had them you know they are quite painful.
We are starting to call and book meetings. Since we had not planned on being her quite so soon we did not have time to book up. If you would like to have us in for a report please feel free to call us at 219-595-7475 or 219-682-4047 or you can email us at [email protected].
ELO is continuing. We are just finishing up formatting our latest book. It is Jerry Ross’ book Stay in the Castle. It has been translated, proofread and is just about ready to go to the printer. We will also be sending our first book out for it’s second printing as soon as some minor corrections are received. We have 4 more books being proofread at this time and as the fiances come in we will print each of these in turn. We are very excited about this vital ministry of getting good materials into the hands of the Brazilian Nationals so that they will be better equipped to lead their churches.
In His Service,
Bryan & Rebekah Johnson
Jeff, David, Lee
