The Ander­sons spent their first few years ana­lyz­ing the Cur­to lan­guage, devel­op­ing lit­er­a­cy mate­ri­als, prepar­ing oral Bible sto­ries, and trans­lat­ing the first Scrip­ture por­tions to pro­mote inter­est in the Gospel. Some seeds of inter­est began to grow. In 2013, the first Cur­to fam­i­ly began to study at the Ammi Train­ing Cen­ter, a school where indige­nous peo­ple from all over Brazil come to learn about God. Although the Cur­to fam­i­ly came to Ammi pri­mar­i­ly seek­ing phys­i­cal safe­ty, they soon found safe­ty for their souls as one-by-one, the entire fam­i­ly came to know Christ. The Cur­to church is grow­ing despite per­se­cu­tion and more new believ­ers are study­ing God’s Word at Ammi.

In 2015, Mike and Kel­li moved to the Ammi Train­ing Cen­ter and cur­rent­ly serve by teach­ing, dis­ci­pling and work­ing along­side these new Cur­to believ­ers, as well as stu­dents from oth­er lan­guage groups. They also help lead mis­sion teams both going out from Ammi to local vil­lages and receiv­ing teams from the States to serve at Ammi.

Due to Covid restric­tions, their min­istry focus has shift­ed and they are cur­rent­ly min­is­ter­ing in Madras and the sur­round­ing towns. They desire to return to Warm Springs, Lord will­ing and resume their min­istry there. 

Since they began, Bren­t’s goal in Warm Springs has been to main­tain the exam­ple of Athey Creek by teach­ing verse-by-verse through the Bible and to fol­low the Acts 2:42 mod­el of wor­ship, prayer and fel­low­ship. While serv­ing in Warm Springs, the Wrights had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to min­is­ter to trib­al mem­bers and hear some of their accu­sa­tions and mis­giv­ings, learn from them, and share the real love of Christ. Because of abus­es and free­doms tak­en from the trib­al mem­bers by past mis­sion­ar­ies in the name of Chris­t­ian ser­vice, a deep mis­trust of Chris­tians has developed. 

A word from the Wrights: ​“The reser­va­tion is an area high in crime and drug and alco­hol abus­es, so we have found the most fer­tile ground to be in the jail. Week­ly Bible stud­ies with the men and women sep­a­rate­ly have giv­en us abun­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties to share God’s love, truth, and mes­sage of free­dom with a fruit­ful har­vest! In the few short years we’ve been here, we have seen the Lord’s faith­ful­ness to open doors and hearts that were closed to the Gospel and pro­vide a hunger for His Word. We feel so priv­i­leged that God allows us to share His love and truth with these won­der­ful peo­ple. Our hope and prayer is that hearts will con­tin­ue to open to Jesus through His Word, so the lost and bro­ken will find peace and grace in Christ. We are so thank­ful for and depend on your prayers!”

Asia:

Athey Creek part­ners with a fam­i­ly serv­ing in Tibet. 2021 is the C. Fam­i­ly’s 11^th year in Chi­na. They have been able to use their busi­ness­es to fur­ther the Gospel, lead bible stud­ies, and share the love of Jesus. Please pray for bor­der restric­tions, oppor­tu­ni­ties to open for good dis­cus­sions, and their busi­ness­es to pro­vide a way to share the Lord.

Mid­dle East

Athey sup­ports a mis­sion­ary stirred to serve in the Mid­dle East after read­ing the Bib­li­cal account of Ish­mael cry­ing out to God in the desert. God heard Ish­mael’s cry and pro­vid­ed a well of water to drink. Today, the descen­dants of Ish­mael remain thirst­ing, thirsty for Liv­ing Water. This mis­sion­ary has served in the Mid­dle East for eight years as an Eng­lish teacher, but his ulti­mate focus is wit­ness­ing and shar­ing the Gospel. He reg­u­lar­ly shares ​“sto­ries of hope” in a newslet­ter with those of us pray­ing for him back home.