Skip to main content

A Day in the Life of a Missionary

          I have kept track of every single hour of every single day of my life for a long time. My goal is to use the precious, non-renewable commodity called “time” allotted to me in the best way possible for the Lord, for my family, and for life. I still have a long way to go.

          This day (11/5/2020), I decided to take pictures and share one whole day with you. 

5 a.m. Waking up – Edda and I spent some time catching up.

6 a.m. Men’s breakfast at Reinaldo’s and Borges’s (they live on the outskirts of town). Everybody brought fruit and Reinaldo made his cow’s hoof stew (weird breakfast). We prayed, sang, and read two chapters out of the Bible. 



 

8:30 a.m.  Back to the Luna Church of Christ to teach my AME class on Religions: How to Evangelize People of Other Faiths. One of the AME students did a presentation on Candoble (a prominent African, spiritist religion here in Brazil).

 


 

11 a.m. Helped the AME students clean out the dead, rotting mice that had chewed into their food supply – Gross! We had to throw out several kilos of food. (I won’t include a picture of that)

 

12 p.m. Lunch at home with Paulo and Simone Rodrigues, staying the week with us from Curitiba. He works with the church there, and we talked about methods of church growth.

 

1 p.m. Phone calls: setting up the Caravan of Love for the night time.

 

2 p.m. At Luna, continuation of the AME Religions class, teaching how to reach the major religion group of Brazil: catholics.

 

5 p.m. Doctor’s appointment for Samuel. The doctor didn’t show because he was in surgery.

 

6 p.m. Last minute preparations for the Caravan of Love

in the Bancarios neighborhood.

 

7 p.m. Caravan of Love: we gathered 20 people and visited four houses. We met in the street, sang, prayed, and shared a Bible verse and encouraging words. We took a couple of the visited along with us to visit the next families.  

 


JESSICA (AIM student just arrived in Brazil), TIAGO (contact from my English Bible Study), 

 

 


BARTOLOMEU/ASSUNÇÃO (to undergo surgery two days later), 

 

 


and JULIAN  (soon to be married with Isabel). 

 

We happened to be on a trash truck’s route, and it disrupted each one of our praise circles in the streets.

 

10 p.m. Visiting with Andrea, Miguel, and Mikael from Caruaru at our house. They came to stay the weekend.

 

12 a.m. Bed

ANALYSIS: This was a good day for connecting with people. That is what a missionary does: connects with people. That is what all Christians do: connect with people, sharing our Lord. I did miss slowing down a moment on this day in quiet time to connect with the Father. It is so easy to let busyness push those refreshing moments out of our lives.
The next day, though, was our day off – except we had 14 more people coming from Recife to join the weekend camp (total 19) at our house. It was fun! It was a lot of connecting!   

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Planting, the Watering, and the Increase

Emesson started coming to Bible Club over a year ago, when Neil Schultz and Cait Beckloff, our AIM team, were teaching it. For several months, they planted the seed in his and his sister's hearts. Unfortunately Neil and Cait's time in João Pessoa ended. In 2014 Bible Club received a boon when Erick and Jenny Paddy, former AIMers, returned to the field and picked up teaching the Bible Study for English speakers. They watered the sprouting seed in Emesson's life until God's Word became more important for him than just practicing his English. Last Wednesday night, God gave the increase, adding Emesson to the Family of Christ. Sometimes things don't happen when we think they should, but God is in control; His time is best, and we must thank Him for playing a small part in His plan. 

For the Kids, Part III

    In the USA, there are two special days during the year that children love: birthday and Christmas. Brazil adds one more: Children's Day. On this day, children receive a present and since it coincides with Our Lady of Appeared Conception, Brazil's patron saint, it is also a national holiday.     Each week we get kids from the Castelo Branco neighborhood together at the square in front of Dona Terezinha's house to talk about Jesus. For Children's Day, we invited the parents to watch the kids perform a play of the "Prodigal Son," then each kid receives his or her fill of cotton candy, cake, and a sack full of goodies. The parents who came received a Today's Portuguese New Testament and an invitation to the weekly Bible study at Terezinha's.     Lori Hagewood has organized this activity for three year with the help from Terezinha, Joseph, and Michel (from the China Taiwan restaurant). Michael, Ashton, and Tif...

Weekend VBS

           The end of April, my wife, Monica, traveled to Patos with the AME (Adventures in Evangelistic Missions) group to have VBS with the church there.  It was the first VBS for the AME class and for the church in Patos, the first one in about 10 years.              Monica said that there were 24 children on the first day and 26 on the second.  It was a weekend VBS, Saturday morning, afternoon and Sunday morning.              They also did a campaign around the church building inviting people to the VBS, the church meeting, and an adult class on Friday night.  They also had a couples meeting as well as a youth group meetings happening in between other activities.              Needless to say, they were pretty busy.  They all came back exci...