January 25th, 2026
Dear Praying partners, I blinked a couple of times and mercy, the first month of the year is gone and I have not even updated you all yet. So here goes.
When we returned with the 500 Torches in mid October to the village, I wanted to head out to start placing them while the river was still high. But the elders of the church in Cosh asked us to wait and help them get everything ready for the Yanomamö annual conference, which went from the 25th of December to the 1st off Jan. We agreed. Since that time, we have planned and changed plans and continued planning. So frustrating, but I kept reminding myself that our schedules are in the Lord’s hands, so every time, we would console ourselves with the knowledge that HE does all things well, but since most of our changes came about due to someone of our group’s family member dying, it was still hard to accept. Finally, we set ourselves to leave on the 13th, then got word that the merchant whom we have been waiting for since the 20th of December was finally getting close, so we had to wait for him to get in, he finally arrived on the 18th, so we decided to give ourselves one day to help put the food and fuel away, so we would leave on the 20th. But then, we got word that Nando and Abram’s brother, who lives up in a far away village was dying, so we helped them get up there and kept waiting. He is recovering, but by the 22nd, they still were not back, so we figured we would leave on the 23rd. Well, 4 guys came down from a very far away village, so we decided to wait and talk with them. We finally got away at 2 pm on Saturday. I only share all this to say that we have really felt opposition to our going from the enemy. Please pray. I think God is going to use this trip and these Torches in an amazing way for eternity.
But we did finally get away. Remember, this is our dry season, but sad to say, we seemed to have brought a Jonah with us, it poured on us the entire afternoon, finally stopping around 7 pm. But at least we did get a start. Today, we started up the river at about 6:30 and traveled all day, finally stopping around 6 when it started raining again. Speaking of who could be our Jonah, in our boat are Joshua, his brother Jason, Jaime, in my books, you know him as Yacuwä, my nephew and coworker Andrew Lee and his son Elliot, and two guys we picked up from the Mavaca river area, Miguelito and Benito, but those two can’t be the Jonah because we had the rain before we picked them up. Don’t tell him I said so, but I think the Jonah is Andrew. He gets rained on every time he goes hunting.
We are excited to get up to these villages we have found on our sat map. These are villages that no one has ever spoken the name of Christ in, so we are excited to do some preaching and teaching in these villages as we place the torches. We had thought we would stop and visit in the villages we passed, villages where we have already placed torches, but after stopping at two villages and people begging us so bad for torches, we couldn’t take the pressure, especially some people did not take a no well, so will keep heading up to the villages where we have not placed any, place the torches we have, then plan on stopping at the villages we are passing on our way home. Then, all we will have to say, is, “sorry, we don’t have any more….” Now, everyone knows we have torches to place and everyone wants one.
All this to say, we covet your prayers on this trip. We are asking the Lord to direct us and even now be preparing the hearts of the persons who is going to get these torches.
Also, please continue to pray for my niece Megan, she is still in the ICU unit now
struggling with pneumonia. Poor girl, it has been a very difficult time for her and her family.
Mia continues to struggle with debilitating head aches.
My sister Faith had a hernia operation and recovered well from that. The blood pressure medication the doctor put her on seems to have taken care of her high blood pressure. She needs eye surgery but the pressure in her eye was too high so the doctor started her on drops to lower that pressure and is hoping the pressure will drop to a level when he can safely operate. She will stay out in town doing the drops until she can get the eye surgery done. Thanks for your prayers.
I am sending out this letter using a StarLink mini. Who would have ever thought I could be pulled into the side of the Orinoco River 100s of miles from anywhere and sending an email. Praise the Lord!
Also, praise the Lord for you all, our partners. Without your prayers and giving, we could not be here doing any of this. We are so excited to see how the Lord is going to use this batch of Torches! Thank You all!!!!
Michael and Keila
PS. Please excuse any typos or unfinished thoughts or sentences, the mosquitoes are terrible and between slapping myself trying to hit the mosquitoes, it is hard to even think, let alone type.