What an amazing worship we recently had at our church here in Belo Horizonte, Igreja Batista Reviver! It included baptisms, a marriage proposal, the collection of goods for a mission trip to a poor community, an appeal for teachers for the after-school tutoring program, announcements about an upcoming youth retreat and the church’s first mission conference, prayer for our missionaries in Albania and Guinea-Bissau, and more. During the sharing time, one brother exclaimed, “Our church feels so alive!”

The highlight for us was Asa’s baptism along with five other candidates. It was doubly special for our family, because when it was Asa’s turn Ann came down into the water and baptized him.

Jesus looked at them .. Jesus looked at him and loved him….Jesus looked directly at them…(from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke)

Hundreds of families squeeze into a relatively small area in this  favela perched on a steep hillside.

There are many “invisible people” around us every day – the clerk at the grocery store, the young man who picks up the garbage, the homeless woman on the street. It is perilously easy to close our eyes and our hearts to them, something Jesus never did. Jesus looked at those forgotten or rejected by others – and he loved them.

Dear Friends: as we mentioned in our April newsletter, at the end of their month-long intensive English for Mission course our students write a letter of encouragement (in Portuguese) to the students in next year’s course. We decided to translate this one into English. Perhaps you are going through a time of frustration and discouragement right now. If so, these words written by Dôra are especially for you!
 

Dora (left) listens in class

The experience that we go through here at JAMI isn’t very easy since everything is new to those of us who are getting ready to answer the call of the Lord. But by His grace we are learning day by day how to overcome every obstacle, and so we walk in the way of the call that He has given to each one of us.
 

As we mentioned in a recent newsletter and some follow up prayer requests, we traveled to the town of Varginha about 4 hrs. south of here to help a young church with its very first mission conference. We wanted to let you know that your prayers were answered, and the conference was very successful.

We left early Saturday morning, and got back about 7pm on Monday evening. It was a ton of work to prepare our materials, but after speaking 5 times and spending a lot of time with the pastor and church members we can see it was really worth the effort. The church is only about a year old, and what started with 8 members in a Bible study now has about 80 members, its own building, its own new church plant in a nearby town, and a cell group started in another town far to the north of our state. Something is happening in this church, that's for sure! The pastor invited us to plan and be the resource speakers for the church's first ever mission conference because he wanted it to start out focused on mission and not on itself.