We just got back from a most beautiful eight day trip. Natural highlights include an passage of the river that was so narrow the trees often touched each other above the boat. It took us 5 hours out of the 25 hour trip to cross this stretch each way. In the early morning we saw a big black toucan with a bright orange bill, illuminated in the morning sunlight against the darker backdrop of the green and blue canal. We saw countless macaws and parrots, and even monkeys a few times. One time, right above the boat, I saw a small monkey with an even smaller baby monkey clinging to it's back.

On the more human side, we discovered that most of the people in these two towns work for a huge paper mill or a huge calcium mine. Or they wish they did. The thousands of industrial workers are relatively well off. The majority of the rest seem very poor. There are probably miles of boardwalks connecting small wooden houses, and full of garbage and stench below, in one of the towns. It seems this is a very needy place, but since most of the people live in the towns there is a smaller rural unreached / unchurched population. One city official pulled up some statistics that showed there were 247 families living within a one hundred mile radius of the town. While it seems a great mission opportunity, because there are already some churches in the towns we are feeling it is a lower priority than some of the other places where we have traveled.

Please pray with us as we seek to find the place where God would have us plant the next mission base.

End.

“If you have something to confess you need to do that right now! We are here to pray for you, but you have to cooperate if you want to be healed!”

"Yes. I have something to confess. I made a pact with a saint, that if he would heal me I would wear his black cape for six months."

Virgilho went with Keith and Marsha to the house of a neighbor. She had been slandering him, the church and the mission. But Virgilho felt he needed to forgive her, and go and pray for her. She has (had?) tumors in her stomach. When he got to her house she was laying on the floor and had been there for some days. Her voice was very weak, and she looked like she was dying. "When I started praying for her, my prayers just bounced off her. They wouldn't go anywhere." Virgilho was telling me at church what happened. That is when he told her she needed to confess something, and she confessed about the pact she had made with the spiritist. As they were praying for her another spiritist came over with more council. Virgilho kindly declined, then asked the 70 year visiting lady if he could pray for her. "She spun on her heels and was gone like a flash. She wanted nothing to do with Christian prayer." When they were done praying for the sick lady she sat up and was speaking in a much stronger voice. Three days later she was much more alert, still not walking, but significantly improved. 

About two weeks later the lady is in our state capital city of Belem, getting a medical checkup for a lump.

Please keep praying for Virgilhio and Joanna. They are fairly new Christians, and pastoring a new congregation out in the bush where they now live. Prayer would also be appreciated for Deusemar and his wife, and for Keith and Marsha, who are working with these people.

End.

Here are a few questions?:

1. What is our goal?

2. How will we know if we have done a good job?

3. When is our job done?

Here are a few responses:

1. We want a plant a church planting movement...plant churches that train leaders and plant churches.

2. We want to be careful not to create long-term dependency.

3. When it becomes a lot of fun, but we are not really needed, our job may be done. A few questions we can ask to find out are:

a) If I leave, what churches, events, organizations or momentum will die?

b) If I don't go to the meetings, what will really happen?

What is our plan?

1. Go where there is no church like the one we want to plant.

2. Make disciples of local people. Plant a church with sufficient leadership, finances and infrastructure to keep making disciples and planting churches when you are gone.

3. Give it away. Move on. Do it again.

Remember

1. Missionaries go where few invite them to come, and leave when few think they should leave.

2. The harvest field is still huge. (This is understated).

3. We need to find the people who God has called and help them get on the right path. They may be trapped in really bad lifestyles and patterns. God will train them, and they be far more effective than we could ever hope to be. Find them. Help them get to the right place. Move on.

4. Missions are really good at starting and equipping.

5. Missions need a local exit strategy. Work until the time is right. Then go and do it again.

6. The Harvest Field still has a tremendous need for many more missions and missionaries.

AND THE BIG QUESTION?

7. What in life could be a greater investment than starting a church-that-plants-churches-that-plant-churches? What if you could be part of a team that does more than one of these in a lifetime? How would you feel about that? What if together we could build a team that will plant a whole bunch of these, in several countries? How much time and money and effort would YOU be willing to pour into a project like this?

Hmmm...