There is just too much to tell so for all those who say I write too much, I am going to make the letter brief, but also have a link to where you can read more.
We left at the beginning of the month to drive through Ohio where we had a meeting at Mill Creek Baptist and then shared briefly once again at my uncle Drew’s church in State College, PA. From there we went to Field Prep Seminar. We learned a ton while there. Everything was so practical and applicable for us right now. In fact, since being home we have started to do all they were talking about in getting prepared to leave.
This past weekend we drove down to Panama City Beach where we met the youth group from Blackburn Road Baptist Church, one of our supporting churches. They were having a youth event where they were at the beach for the weekend. I spoke 5 times (and Sarah taught the girls once) while we were there from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning. It was tough suffering through all the heat and sand, but we understood our role as ministers during this time of prefield. We were sad that we had to leave early, but glad for the opportunity to speak at Tiftonia Baptist Church in Chattanooga. We had a good time there and had the opportunity to meet a couple of missionaries that were attending their church. It was especially neat when it only took 15 minutes to drive home after a meeting! That doesn’t happen very often.
Thank you all so much for your prayers. We are still right at 83%. I can talk all I want about leaving, but unless we receive full support, we will not be cleared to leave. So please pray to that end. The date we would like to be able to buy our plane tickets for is July 15. Language school in Brazil starts in August, so it would be good to get there and get settled in and then be able to start language school. Please also pray about our Visas. We are going to be applying for them soon and I just received an email from our administrator sharing a prayer request for Amazon missionaries and their permission to be in that area of the country. I will post the article that he attached in case you would like more details about that. It sounds like it may be more difficult to get Visas now (and it was difficult before this also).
If you would like us to go to your church before we leave, please let me know as we do still have some dates that are open.
Thank you all and God bless. If you would like to read more, just follow this link: http://davidcarrel.blogspot.com/ (There are three posts I just wrote)
All for HIS glory,
David and Sarah Carrel | 
