General Conference

Liz and I got up at 5:30 am on Friday and left home at 6:30 am headed for the EAB/ACEV General Conference at our Catolé church in Campina Grande. We took Gerlânia (Patos school's headteacher) and Dedé (leader of our Ipueira church in Rio Grande do Norte State) with us in our car.

At 10 am we started the first of 3 meetings of the senior leaders committee and at 12 noon all our pastors and leaders had arrived for the opening fellowship lunch. After lunch we held our second senior leaders meeting followed by the first general assembly at 2:30 pm. At 6:30 pm we had our evening meal together and at 7:30 pm we started our second general assembly. Liz and I stayed at someone from the church's house where we had breakfast on Saturday morning. The 3rd general assembly started at 8:30 am on Saturday and finished about 1 pm. We had lunch together and then the senior leaders had our 3rd and final meeting together. On Saturday night at 7:30 pm we held our Conference Celebration service. It was a night of electric praise and worship and Pastor Lindon Carlos (from our Imaculada church) brought a brilliant sermon entitled 'It is time to take care of the church'. Then my book on the history of ACEV/EAB between 1938 and 2018 was officially launched. All the pastors and leaders were given a signed copy and after the service copies of the book were sold with me signing them.

In the general assemblies a wide variety of issues were discussed and debated. 3 new leaders were given probationary ministerial status: Matheus and Hortência (who now lead our Soledade church) and Naldinho (who leads our Belém village church in the County of Tavares). 2 further leaders were defined as candidates for probationary ministerial status next year: Vera (co-leader of the Belém church) and Fábio (who leads the Travessia and Fonseca churches). It was defined that Pastor Betinho will take on the leadership of our Conceição church as from July 1st, and that new leadership will be sought for the Ibiara church where Betinho had been pastor. Brother Ramos will now be the leader at our Curral Velho (Old Cow Pen) church. A new church has come into being at Mata de Oitis which is 7 km from our Barra de Oitis church. At Mata de Oitis we already have 12 adult members. A youth leadership team has been elected with Pastor Matheus (from João Pessoa) the chairman. The leaders fellowship conference will be held in September at Green Pastures. Next year's General Conference will be held in João Pessoa and next year's 10-day special evangelistic outreach will be held in the town and villages of Tavares. It was said at the conference that it seems quite possible that we will soon be able to open a new school at Vazante. Also our Juazeirinho church requested the opening of a school to meet the need of extremely poor children there. We need 5 or 6 new school sponsors @ 20 pounds a month to meet this need. Linked to our schools programme the following churches are evangelizing children and adolescents through sport at: Flores, Juru, Barra de Oitis and Campina Grande - Catolé. Patos will be using sport to evangelize in the second half of this year. We have radio programmes at Imaculada, Flores and Campina Grande - Presidente Médici. 

Thank you very much for praying for our general conference. It was a great time of blessing and progress.