Skip to main content

A Day in the Life of a Missionary

By

          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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Second Generation, Part II

By
In 1993 when we came in contact with a young struggling couple in Caruaru, Paulo and Simone, we never imagined what plans God had in store for them. Now 18 years later (Wow, has it been that long?), after conversion, ups and downs, growing pains, working to further the Kingdom and living it, they have had the pleasure to witness the beginning of their daughter's life in Christ. Juliana (age ten) was baptized by her older brother, Jheymerson, who was also ten years old when he gave his life to Jesus. What a wonderful blessing to have one's whole family saved in Christ! Maria and Cícero were also converted when we lived in Caruaru, though single at the time. They dated and got married, the ceremony performed by yours truly. Maria has been faithful to Jesus all these years though going through several difficulties. Cícero, on the other hand, fell away, but came back and renewed his life and his marriage, and now, along with Juliana, his daughter Vitória (age ten) was baptize...
Post a Comment
Read more

Out And About

By
    Last weekend I traveled to Patos, where I conducted the state-wide plan meeting, spent time with an evangelist, helped plan the Great Supper in October and met with two different congregations.              The state-wide plan is still moving forward.  Their goal for this meeting was to have someone prepared who is able to prepare another person.  Each congregation is still working towards this goal.  They each have someone in place that they are training.  The short-term goal is to train men and women who will be able to train other men and women.  The mid-term goal is to prepare the congregation in various aspects of the work and spiritual life so that it, the congregation, can continue to grow without the current evangelist.  The long-term goal is to prepare the congregation to send out the current evangelist or other men to establish a congregation in a new city....
Post a Comment
Read more

Pandemic Connection Strategies

By
Since the Covid-19 pandemic and its social distancing, we have had to work out other ways to connect:  We started a telephone ministry to keep members connected, to verify needs, and to keep our prayer lists updated. Some conversations last five minutes, others have lasted two hours. The idea is that every member receives at least one phone call a week. As we discover needs, we are able to act. One thing that surprised me was that I was expecting to hear about many financial needs. This has not been the case. Many requests have been of an emotional nature. Most requests have been of a spiritual nature. This type of contact has brought us closer together. It is interesting how God can use difficult times to bring about good. May God be glorified! Also, we began small group Bible studies with 3 to 6 members depending on the group. We would normally organize groups like these according to neighborhoods. However, since we are online, we created several groups, days and times and let th...
Post a Comment
Read more