Tom Gilmer: September 2013 Prayer Letter

Dear Friends of Zion:

Linda and I are grateful for your continued support of our ministries with your prayers and offerings.

Pastor Marcos Infante, whom we mentioned in our January-February letter, is now, officially, a missionary of our Brazilian Jewish Ministries organization.  His hour-long radio program, now called “Shalom, Jerusalem,” is developing very well and can be heard on a local station in Vitória da Conquista, Bahia.  Its purpose is to make Christians aware of Israel’s need to know the Messiah and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.  We are working with him to try to make part of it a BBN Radio quality program.  At one point in his training, he did a one-day per week internship with us.

Pastor Ricardo Moura also studied with us, preparing to work with Jews.  But God had a different plan.  The Lord called him to work with Arabs.  His associate will assume the pastorate of his church at the end of this year.  Pastor Ricardo and his family will move to another city in the state of São Paulo, which has a large Arab population and Brazil’s second largest mosque.  At one time we considered helping him start a mission to Arabs but, better yet, he has been accepted by another Brazilian independent Baptist mission that serves general purposes.

The Emanuel Baptist Church, originally started from our bus ministry, celebrated its 28^th Anniversary in August.  We attended the last Sunday evening service.  Seven people made public professions of faith for salvation, and nine were baptized, including two entire families.  Praise the Lord!!!

Translating from a paragraph in Pastor Alexandre’s letter to his Brazilian contributing churches:  “Since the beginning of this year we have been very involved in helping a Jewish couple.  The wife (Luna) is very ill.  They believe in Jesus as Messiah.”  Luna’s mother and sister live in Israel.  They befriended Pastor Alexandre and his family when they were in Israel several years ago.  They called the Pastor and Jane, asking them to help Luna.  They received her into their home for more than a month and took her to many doctors and hospitals.  She and her husband now live precariously in a Sunday school room at our first church, Templo Batista de Indianópolis (TBI), which provides their food.  With the help from some of the Friends of Zion group and others, Luna is rushed to the hospital when an attack comes on.  Not even an MRI scan has diagnosed anything other than “panic syndrome.”  Her 85-year-old father, Sr. Isaac, an invalid living in São Paulo, is a Holocaust survivor who was one of the soldiers that liberated Jerusalem in l967.

A dentist from another church, who sometimes attends Friends of Zion, has taken Luna and her husband to the doctor several times; recently he took them to visit her father and found him very open to the Gospel.  He asked him if he would like to receive Jesus as his Messiah.  Sr. Isaac fervently replied, “Yes, sir!”  Many times Pastor Alexandre and Jane had witnessed to him and I had greatly desired to have the privilege of leading him to the Lord myself!  But our goal is to involve everyone we can in the harvest.  Prayer is needed for this family’s spiritual growth and for Luna and her husband to get established on their own in Brazil, Israel, or the USA, where she has citizenship and he has a Green Card.

May the Lord continue to richly bless you all.

Yours for the Messiah,
Tom and Linda Gilmer