When the dust settles and five more churches report in, more than 3,000 people are expected to have made professions of faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior during the late July visit of about 150 people in the annual Louisiana mission trip to Brazil.
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil – When the dust settles and five more churches report in, more than 3,000 people are expected to have made professions of faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior during the late July visit of about 150 people in the annual Louisiana mission trip to Brazil.
“Overall, for a new city it was the best prepared for the first year,” said Wayne Jenkins, LBC evangelism and church growth strategist.
“One of the team members got saved. We treated a little over 2,000 people both in medical and dental clinics. We built four chapels in a week, and some of them had up to 200 people in them for their day of dedication.”
The team also was involved in four vacation Bible schools, ministry in at least six prisons, and street ministry as part of their partnership with missionaries from the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, and pastors with the Brazilian Baptist Convention, Jenkins said. “Overall, it was a great trip,” Jenkins said in a telephone conversation just after he’d landed, weariness evident in his voice.
“I wasn’t supposed to go there to lay block,” said Steve Sidwell of Salem, Ore., who – with the help of Louisiana Baptists who provided their airfare – had taken two nonChristian bricklayers with him to help build the four churches. “I was supposed to go there to get a guy I’ve been sharing the gospel with for eight years saved.”
But the three, with help, got three of the four churches built, all but one-half of one roof.
This is an incomplete report, written at deadline when not everyone had returned from Brazil. Watch for more on this story in an upcoming issue of the Message.