The team has been finalized, the tickets purchased, and preparations begun for our Brazil 09 short-term mission trip. CrossWay is sending a team of 16 people to Governador Valadares, Brazil from August 8-18. We will be serving one of CrossWay’s mission partners, Nelson Salviano.
ESCALE
Nelson, and his team, provide leadership to ESCALE, which stands for “School for Equipping Christian Leaders.” The bread and butter of Nelson’s work is going into the shanty towns of Brazil and training, pastoring, and caring for pastors who have had no formal theological education. As Nelson visits different pastors and churches, he effectively provides apostolic-like oversight over those churches.
CrossWay Team
The CrossWay Team will be doing primarily five things.
First, we will be caring for families in the shanty towns. These will be mostly women and multiple children who have been effectively abandoned by their father(s). The situations are fairly desperate: extreme poverty, uncleanthliness, no fatherly influence, drugs, and prostitution (adult and child). We hope to go in and show them the love of Jesus by hosting some events for the ladies, helping them around their homes, and caring for their souls.
Second, we will host an evangelistic sports camp. In one of these shanty towns, we hope to rent a sports complex, bring all the families to the resort, feed them, enjoy sports with them, and then share the gospel with them.
Third, we will be doing some evangelistic preaching on the street. This will be a combination of preaching, skits, puppet shows, singing (hopefully), and one-on-one sharing.
Fourth, we will be preaching and teaching in churches every night. It sounds like we will be in three different churches on each evening, so every man on the Brazil 09 team will have some teaching responsibility.
Fifth, we will be training other pastors. Nelson has asked me to come along him and build into these men with a series of talks centered on the gospel and its role in the local church.
Prayer Requests
- We have a team meeting this Sunday. Please pray for our unity, our spiritual preparedness, our servant’s heart, and our practical preparedness.
- Pray for the remaining fund raising that we have to do. Pray for those who still need to hit their $2,000 goal. Pray for a special offering that we plan to take at CrossWay on a Sunday morning that God would provide for our needs and the needs of the pastors.
- Pray for the CrossWay men who are preparing to teach and preach. Pray that God would give them understanding of their passage, pray for clarity of composition, and pray for joy in the process.
- Pray for the pastors in Brazil. Pray that they would eager anticipate our arrival, that they would have prepared the churches and area for ministry, and for strength and faith for the work God has called them to.
- Pray for the people we will be serving in the shanty towns. Pray that God would prepare their hearts to hear and respond to the gospel. Pray that they would experience the love of Jesus Christ through our ministry.
