We are church-planting missionaries with ABWE and work in the city of Bauru in the state of São Paulo in Brazil.

Dave, Val, Adam, Ryan and Shelly Smallman

This website is designed to help you get to know us and our ministry. 

Thank you for visiting.

SECRET CHRISTMAS MISSION COMPLETED!!!!!!!
Since Adam is in the states, he was planning to spend the holidays with his grandparents in the Cleveland-area. As you know, our official furlough begins in January. Some of your also know that we planned to surprise Adam for Christmas.....and surprise him we did!

We left Brazil on Thursday (Dec 18th)  and arrived in the states on Friday morning, the 19th. Our flight from Chicago to Cleveland was cancelled due to winter weather and re-booked for Saturday morning. Thank God we have family in Chicago! We called Sharon and Alan (Dave's cousins) and we spent a fun-filled day with them. On Saturda the 20th, we left for the airport at 5:45 and arrived in Cleveland around 10am. Adam's flight from Grand Rapids arrived at 11:30. Since we were already on the other side of security, we were able to find his gate and wait for him to arrive. We stood right outside the door. He was one of the last ones off the plane and had had just dialed Granny's number to let her he arrived. When he glanced over at us, he thought we looked familiar and gave us a smile and then he realized who we were. He put down his cell phone and just stared at us for a while in disbelief. Then we all hugged and cried happy tears. We then went to the baggage claim area and met up with our folks, then went out to lunch with the whole gang: Val's parents, Dave's parents and sister, Margie.


We've been "enjoying" winter weather here. The temperature late night was 0 degrees with killer wind chills of -26. There isn't a whole lot of snow here in the Cleveland area right now, but there was 6 inches in Chicago and Grand Rapids had 13 inches on Friday and other 6 inches yesterday. We were supposed to go see the cantata at Val's folk's church yesterday, but her Dad ended up flat on his back in bed with a horrible sinus infection. Please pray that he will recover and that no one else gets sick. This weather has been quite a shock to our bodies, especially since the day before we left, it was over 90 degrees.

We plan to spend time with family and friends until the beginning of January when we will head up to Grand Rapids for the kids to go to school.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers and for keeping this secret mission a secret. It was honestly much better than we could have imagined. Adam's reaction was priceless and all we needed to make this holiday season bright. Being with family is the best Christmas present we could ask for!

Our love to all of you!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the happy, frozen Smallman family!