Tom and Linda Gilmer : February 2024 Prayer Letter

Dr. Thomas and Mrs. Linda Gilmer – Church Planter, Bible Translation in São Paulo, Brazil

February 2024
Dear Friends of Zion:

Your faithful prayers and offerings helped us keep working to accomplish God-given goals. Thank you especially for the Christmas gifts that enabled us to give a substantial offering to upgrade our Portuguese Bible App and helped pay the rent on a small, tworoom apartment in Indianópolis where we had to move temporarily while our nearly 60-year-old house is undergoing major repairs. From the eighth-story perspective of the apartment building, we searched the skyline for days, trying to see the construction underway for Templo Batista de Indianópolis—then it appeared above the tree line between two buildings!

The section of São Paulo where our first church, Templo Batista de Indianópolis (TBI), is located is thus described by Google: “Affluent Indianópolis is home to Shopping Ibirapuera, a pioneering mall from the 1970’s with a mix of mainstream stores and designer boutiques.” It is a classy area of high-rise office and apartment buildings. Not so when we started the church! The tallest building was a factory with a four story water tower that stood above one and two-story houses. Our dream was to build a steeple high enough to be seen all over the neighborhood. We bought our first property in 1970, before the mall existed, for a small down payment on the street that became the principal entrance to the mall’s main parking area.

On a Sunday morning in 1968, as I was preaching about a big church and Christian school we wanted to build, a little girl came to the pulpit and extended her hand. “What’s this?” I asked. She handed me a five-cruzeiro note worth about two cents. “To build that big church you’re talking about,” she said. Now those two cents have turned into millions! The original property of TBI became one of the most coveted in the area, in spite of frequent flooding. Because it is the lowest point in the neighborhood, a higher building can be erected there. Many companies made proposals, but one said they would swap it for another location on higher ground and would put up a building as well! Thus, the dream for the church and Christian school is becoming a reality, meeting all requirements for a school and auditorium. The location is on the street that cuts off from the north-south thoroughfare and enters directly into the mall’s parking garage.

BUT this prayer letter comes at a time where our liberties are being threatened. The Congress will soon vote on a bill to pass, adapt or reject a new National Plan of Education. Should it pass, it would usurp the powers of private schools and force the use of “Woke,” communistic indoctrination. Our son-in-law Rom Ribeiro, with Missionary Bethany Thompson (who oversees the Portuguese adaptation of the Abeka curriculum), is leading a campaign to encourage people to contact their representatives, write and /or sign petitions, asking for Congress to not pass this legislation which would overrule current laws and bind curriculum for at least ten years. PRAY! MAY GOD BLESS AND HAVE MERCY ON THIS COUNTRY AND ITS PEOPLE!!!

Yours for the Messiah,
Tom and Linda Gilmer

PRAISE:

Professions of faith: 3.
Progress on updating Bible App
Pastor Alexandre, our Jewish Ministries leader, is in Israel at the writing of this prayer letter, visiting our personal contacts who live there.

PRAYER: