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Muay Thai for friendship.
The Xingu Mission plants churches through a strategic approach of involvement in the community in which they live, sharing Christ’s love, identifying local leaders, and training and equipping them to lead and reproduce the church within their sphere of influence.
The Blaylocks moved to João Pessoa in Dec. 2024. After taking care of personal living logistics, including finding a rental house in the exact neighborhood they felt called to, they have been finding ways to interact with their community. After making some contacts, they started a small group in their home. Shortly after, another group was started in a harsh neighborhood, called a favela. The groups are growing in discipleship and learning how everyone gets to do the stuff like Jesus did.
A story from the Blaylocks on connecting through Muay Thai that gave them encouragement:
We have been looking for more ways to be active in the community so we can meet more people. One of the ways we are interacting with our community is that we joined a local Muay Thai studio. We were the only 2 people in the class time we chose to attend, but felt like God told us to stay at that time slot. One day in class, Derek felt God prompting him to bring up a certain word. He found a way to casually bring it up in conversation, and this connected with our Muay Thai teacher. This led to a personal conversation and an invitation to church, which he and his girlfriend attended that weekend. At church he was brave enough to share his heart and some hard things, despite being with many people he had never met before. The people in our church surrounded this couple with love, and spent a great deal of time praying for them and encouraging them. It was so neat to see everyone get involved that night in loving on this couple! Some received words of knowledge and boldly shared them, while some prayed for them out loud or silently. Some also received a mental picture to share. This is the very heart and soul of what we are planting and we are so happy to be a part of it.
Pray for the Blaylocks as they continue on their mission journey in João Pessoa. God is the God who sees, therefore, we pray for his attentiveness and his presence in the difficult struggles in the lives of those we encounter. God is our protector, therefore we pray he fights the spiritual warfare against our small groups.
May you be blessed today to see God working in your sphere of influence.
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