Adam & Melissa Gibson
Missionaries to Portugal
Association of Baptists for World Evangelism
July 2024
The beginning of June brought on a list of different tasks. The main one being that our teammates at the church plant went back to the US for their furlough for a year. We also had four other families on our ABWE team that went back for the summer, so we have been trying to keep everything running while continuing to do our normal roles in the church plant. ABWE has a center about 10 minutes away that churches and groups rent out. We no longer have anyone to run the center so we have been booking groups, cleaning, getting plumbers and other workers out there of fix problems at random times. Adam was helping at a youth camp with Natalia and Annaelise about two hours away while at the same time Melissa was at home with Enoch and GiGi because there was a camp we were hosting at the center. Melissa was called twice to come up to the center at 10:30 pm because of problems with plumbing and keys not working, which meant she had to wake up Enoch and GiGi and go up there. Needless to say, even through the tough weeks of camps and business of going back and forth, at each camp there were children who made professions of faith! Those kids have been directed to a local church in their area and are being discipled. We started a youth group at IBEC (the church plant) that meets on Saturdays. Things have been going well with that and we have been encouraging them to bring their friends. In June we were invited to go about two hours north to a town called Castelo Branco (White Castle), to preach at a church. The church has been around for a number of years but sadly due to the sin of the pastor running of with the church secretary, the church fell apart and ended up in a split. It is so sad to see this happen, this is the third church we have seen this happen to in our 9 years of living in Portugal. While our teammates are in the US we have a wonderful Portuguese family (Pedro, Graça, Pedro, Ana) who have been helping us on Sundays. He is a pastor of another church in another city that has services in the evening. He and his two children are musically gifted and they play the piano, violin and guitar. It has been a huge help for us since Melissa and I are not great at being the lead music people. Pedro preaches sometimes as well. It is very helpful that he is fluent in English since we have an international service, and being Portuguese he of course speaks excellent Portuguese. We had a new missionary arrive in June. She is a single lady (24) and is currently in language class at the university in Lisbon. She came as a church planter and will be assisting in a church with discipleship of young ladies as well as evangelism. It is exciting to see new people come to the field and to see their heart for ministry and the spread of the Gospel. We are so thankful for your prayers and support for us. We truly could not be here with our you. We apologize for the long gap between prayer updates. Feel free to email us anytime you have a question or just want to talk. It is always special to have people contact us to catch up and hear more than what is written here.
Prayer Request: -Please continue to pray for us to find a bigger church building. We have been looking for over three years. -Please pray for the girls as they are staring a new school year. -Please pray for Melissa as she homeschools our girls. -Please pray for Melissa as she is doing three Bible studies per week. -Please pray for Adam as he is preaching every Sunday and doing discipleship as well. Praise: -We have a new missionary -We made it through a very busy July filled with youth camps -The salvation of 17 campers!
