XM, Author at Xingu Mission

The Wilderness

This week I had a vision. I was driving on that narrow, winding stretch of road through the canyons between Idaho and Montana. Mountain cliffs with dark outcropping of rock were on one side of the narrow, winding road, and a black abyss on the other side. I could see the way forward clearly, but only for about 200 meters as that is as far as my headlights shone. This is the kind of wilderness region that I love. There were lots of unknown dangers if I got off the road. I sensed that God was with me in the car, and I would get where God wanted me to go if I followed where I could see.

Later this same week I downloaded Braving the Wilderness from our online library in Canada. The library has a waiting list and I received an email it was my turn to read this book this week. Brene Brown studied why she and many others often felt alone, even in groups. She calls owning your own pain and developing compassion and empathy for people who think differently than you, the wilderness.

Brown interviewed thousands of people about loneliness and acceptance. She condensed her findings into four paradox truths. sometimes known as truths in tension. She expands on these paradoxes in the chapters of this book.

1. People are hard to hate close up. Move in.
2. Speak truth to bull*. Be civil.
3. Hold hands. With strangers.
4. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart.

(Brown, 2015, p. 76)

Today we choose more and more to hang out with people who think just like we do, with our people, and yet there is reportedly even more widespread loneliness. “If our faith asks us to find the face of God in everyone we meet, that should include the politicians, media, and strangers on Twitter with whom we most violently disagree. When we desecrate their divinity, we desecrate our own, and we betray our faith” (p. 155). This week I was in the land office in Marabá when this family walks up to me. It was Tiago’s mom, sister, and niece. Tiago was a friend I had done some Discovery Groups with. He had experienced Jesus in Immanuel prayer. He was shot and killed after doing an armed robbery about a month ago. His mom had tears in her eyes in the land office as she told me, “He was such a good kid. He had some bad friends, but he was a good kid.” When I told this to another friend he rolled his eyes, yet I could see Jesus in Tiago. I could connect with him quite easily. For me it is sometimes harder to feel accepted by people who I assume think similarly to me. I get caught off guard and enter into an unknown wilderness zone. That is where the sub-title of Brené Brown’s newest book intrigues me: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone.

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have trouble and suffering, but take courage—I have conquered the world” John 16:33.

How is this working for you?

References

Brown, B., (2017) Braving the wilderness: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone. Random House, New York. Kindle Edition.

Abundance Thinking

I often dream about our Brazil churches sending out overseas missionaries. I don’t see this happening real soon, but dreams turn to words, and words turn to reality.

Scarcity Thinking suggests that if we used our limited resources on a faraway project like sending a missionary couple to Mozambique, this will take away from church planting in Brazil.

Abundance Thinking, on the other hand, believes that if a disadvantaged neighborhood is pooling collections to help a missionary to an even poorer country, this will spur that church on to do even more in their own neighborhoods. Can you imagine someone growing up in a high-risk Marabá neighborhood sending Facebook or Youtube updates back to their on-fire Christians friends and family.

CLICK HERE to learn about Scarcity Thinking and Abundance Thinking

^{Luke 6:38}“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Oct, 31

What sin would you like to do . . . ?

“I like this kind of Bible study. What religion are you again?” The guy beside me, who always admits that he killed someone, had a big smile on his face as he was looking at the Bible verses, and then at me. We were looking at John 3:16-18, and especially v.18a “The one who believes in him [Jesus] is not condemned [judged guilty].” The guys were discussing how or if this could be true. The majority of the 25 prisoners in the cell were participating.

One of the guys had a question. “What if someone decided they would like to sin their whole life and then repent and give their life to God right at the end? Would that work?” A lot of the guys thought that was a good question. Some thought that wouldn’t work. Others remembered the thief on the cross. I kept encouraging them to go back to the Bible text, rather than just base their beliefs on good ideas or opinions.

Finally I made an observation. “It sounds like you think a sinful life is better, and you would like to have fun now and then right at the end repent, and get into heaven. It seems like you think this would be the best of both worlds. Is that right?”

There were several cautious nods, and then smiles.

“Well, what sin would you like to do, if there were no consequences on Judgement Day?

For example, what if it was ok for us all to shoot each other when we don’t agree? Do you think this would be a better life?

No, the group didn’t think that would better.

Or maybe you like to divorce several wives and have children scattered all over without you as their father? Is this your dream?

No. Nobody was thinking that would be ideal.

Or maybe we could all have anything for free. What if everyone could have guns, and everyone could demand that everyone else give them their stuff? Is this what you are talking about?

Or maybe you would like all the drugs you can have for free? Then you could easily get addicted, and then you could feed your addiction until you finally die. Is this your dream of the good life?

Or maybe you would like it if everyone could be free to be addicted to pornography. Do you think that would be better than God’s plan for your life? Do you know people who are addicted to pornography?

Or maybe you would like to hold a grudge if someone offended you, and never forgive them and never let it go?

This led to a big story by one of the guys of a time (maybe that week?) he accidently bumped someone’s shirt, which was hanging up to dry near the shower, which is over the toilet area. Huge confusion. He let it go. “The other guy had issues. I apologized and let it go.” Can you imagine? Twenty-five criminals live in an area the size of your living room, with laundry lines hanging overhead full of damp clothes. It is hot and sweaty. They are there for an indefinite amount of time as they wait for their processes to come up, usually many, many months, and often well over a year. I think this is a crash course on not being easily offended.

My question remained: What is it about the sin life that most appeals to you?

Thoughtful pondering.

I asked a guy sitting out on the fringe. “Which sins would you choose, if you could do them and still get into heaven?”

“Yeah, you got me there. Just right at this moment I can’t think of any.”

Finally the first man, who was sitting right beside me, said, “Well, some guys just like doing bad stuff.”

Lots of thoughtful nods.

“Yes, I believe that is true . . . but is that the life you want?”

I left them with the question. I sensed everyone really enjoyed that hour and a half. I sensed God was present in the room with us.

Please keep praying for these guys.

Mozambique Connection

Deanna and I got home from our honeymoon. That same week we went to our pastors and told them we were ready to be sent out as missionaries. “Wait a year. You just got married. Enjoy life and learn how to live as a married couple.” We appreciated the council and we thoroughly enjoyed those twelve months. The year was over on a Tuesday. We went to our pastors again. We felt called to Mozambique. They gave us the green light to start taking steps in that direction. Over the next weeks the Lord clearly told us in different ways we were not to go to Africa at this time. “Africa will not be what you think at this time.” I remembered a two-year-old issue of Equipping the Saints magazine. It talked about Vineyard churches in the Amazon. I knew the people of Mozambique and the Brazilian Amazon both spoke Portuguese. I talked to Luke Huber and he agreed to train Deanna and I to learn to plant Portuguese-speaking churches in a tropical developing-nation environment. After 10 years Luke said he would help us lead a team of church-planters to Mozambique. That was our plan, but life turned out differently. Luke died in an airplane accident nine months after we arrived in Brazil.

1991 – We (Rick and Deanna) were married. We wanted to be missionaries in Africa.
1992 – We (Rick and Deanna) went to Perspectives, in Pasadena CA, and felt called to Mozambique.
1993 – The Lord clearly called us (Rick and Deanna) to Brazil. We planned to go for 10 years.
1995 – Elba came to work for us while she went to Grade 11 high school.
1996 – Elba moved 500 kilometers with Clenildo, Angelita, and us to the Xingu River Basin.
1996 – We started the Xingu Mission, and we started planting Vineyard churches in Altamira. Our goal was to start a church-planting movement that would grow to 1,000 churches as a first step, and then to pray about next steps.
1996 – We gave our Mozambique dream back to God, trusting that He would show us when the time was right to move on. We did this because we were a new, untested, start-up mission, and we wanted to send the message that we were committed to starting a mission in Brazil, and to starting a church-planting movement that would outlast us.
2008 – We moved to Marabá to start a new sending center.
2017 – “Yesterday we (the Brazil Vineyard churches) became family with the Mozambique Vineyards!” Elba spoke these powerful words as she opened her speech to the General Assembly at the African Vineyard Leadership Network (AVLN, pronounced Avalon) Conference.
2017 – We (Rick and Deanna) are still working towards our goal of helping Brazilians start 1,000 churches. There are now 42 Vineyard churches, 55 Vineyard church plants, and 6 churches in the adoption process in Brazil, counting all the churches in Southern Brazil. The movement is growing. Deanna and I are starting to travel more within Brazil to equip church-planters.

Who could have guessed how this would unfold? Prophecy is like a winding trail on a steep mountain range. If you try to go straight from Point A to Point B, you cannot. But if you stay on the winding trail, when you get to Point B you will recognize is as a marker that you are on the right path.

We also connected with the Angola Vineyards during the AVLN conference. Both Mozambique and Angola speak Portuguese as their main language which makes sharing resources easy. Brazilian worship music and our translated and written material will be a valuable resources these African nations, and they will also share resources. Bernardo from Mozambique, for example, is helping to develop a free App for smartphones that has Bible translations, and allows pastors to upload their sermons so people out of town can listen to them.

Church leaders from Mozambique meet with leaders from the Brazil churches. Savimbi (far left) has been very instrumental in planting many of the 60 Mozambique Vineyard churches. His own church of about 200 people does not have electricity yet.

Angelita (Clenildo’s wife) listens to Katarina (Savimbe’s wife) tell about their church of 200 members that does not have any electricity yet.

Leaders / Partners from Vineyards in Mozambique, Angola, Brazil, and the USA (and Deanna and I from Canada) get to know each other. It is much easier to work together as you develop personal friendships.

Disciple Making Movements Update

The Marabá Church had a training event about Discovery Groups. This group is wiser now. They have tried some things that worked a bit, and other things that didn’t work out as they hoped.

Two things I especially love about Discovery Group training:

1. It is easier for the trainer, because rather than prepare lessons, you ask the group to study a certain Bible text.

* What does it say?
* What does it mean?
* How will I respond?
* Who will I talk to about this?

2. It is easier for the group. When someone talks too long (yawn) the group gets restless. Soon there are several secret conversations going on in the background and their social media friends continue to lure them away. When individuals are engaged discovering truth from the Bible with a few friends, the study is much more enjoyable. And there is life-giving energy in the room.

Win / Win.

São Paulo Flowers

It is Springtime in Southern Brazil.

The Fish Project

Ivanildo put another 1,000 fingerlings in our pond . . . and then the guy threw in three more scoops of the fingernail sized fish. Here in this photo they are already several weeks old and have grown considerably. Ivanildo is planning to have them ready for market at Easter 2018. Brazilians love fish at Easter.

Oct, 28

Discipline?

Discipline is like going to the store with cash in our pocket. We use it get what we want.

“Discipline your children.”
“What disciplines are you majoring in?”
“I am not disciplined enough to lose weight.”
“What spiritual disciplines are part of your life right now?”

“Discipline is doing what you don’t want to do for a result that you want” (Michael Hyatt?).

The opposite is also true. Not having discipline will get you results that you do not want.

God wants us to use discipline to develop new habits to get the good things He has in store for us.

Geice e Fábio

In 2015 I was out running at the break of dawn, far from traffic or people, when a motorbike drove up and stopped in front of me. A couple jumped off the bike, and the man started violently beating his wife. Long story short, I started a Discovery Group with them and we quickly became friends. When I first met them they had a two-month-old baby girl, Ana Yssis. Tiago had a very nice side to him but he didn’t know how to work through frustrations well, and he had developed some bad habits, like armed robbery. In spite of this I heard that he was the most beloved and youngest son in his family. Tiago was shot and killed about a month ago, leaving behind three children and two broken relationships.

Tiago’s sister-in-law and family attended the first couple of Discovery Groups with Tiago, but then they quit. When I asked them why Geice told me it was because Tiago was involved in bad stuff and if the police came she did not want to be in the room.

Last night Geice, Fabio, and I went together to a Baptist Church that has helped over 100 couples get married this year. I signed as the testimony to their marriage. This has been a process of many months. In our conversations Geice told me that she had opened a bible and started reading, and it was the same text as that first Discovery Group. She remembered the story and the Discovery Group atmosphere over two years later “where you can just say whatever you want, because I’m not good at keeping my mouth shut”. Sometimes seeds lie dormant for a long time. Please pray with me that God will bless Geice and Fabio and their family like never before, and that they will start Discovery Groups with their friends.

Mabely is a live wire.

Baby John. Fabio and Geice have four daughters between the two of them. All daughters. The first three ultrasounds all indicated they were having another daughter. And out came John.

Hannah, in the background, has a super sweet spirit. May God bless her and protect her, and fulfill His plans for her.

Ana Yssis is Geice and Fabio’s beloved niece, one of the children that Tiago left behind. She was two months old when I first met them. There are so many unfair things in this world, so I am praying for an unfair amount of blessings to protect and raise up Ana Yssis. We know that God specializes in this sort of thing.

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. Psalm 68:5

Bárbara, Fabio, Geice, João, Mabely, and Hannah.

They are a lively crew with rarely a quiet moment, unless they are all sleeping.

Oct, 27

A Real Puzzler

When you think of people who do not know Jesus, what do you feel?

i) Hopeless, like you are losing a cultural war
ii) Anger at their activities
iii) Envious of their freedom
iv) Frustrated at their unhealthy choices
v) Nothing. They are non-people
vi) Compassion because of their lostness
vii) Other ?

Awhile back I was doing a Discovery Group in a dimly lit house. They had one 20 watt light bulb. I read the Bible I brought with the light from my cell phone. Some of the reasons for their poverty was because of their unhealthy choices. During our second meeting one lady said, “I am so tired of this life. I am tired of the drinking, the smoking, the drugs, all of it.” I was encouraged. But the next week this lady and her husband did not come to the meeting. Nor the next week. Finally I asked them what had happened. “Thiago (her brother-in-law) who is leading this group is into some bad stuff. If the cops come we will all be implicated. We don’t want to be around him anymore.” While this reason is logical, this couple did not want to start their own group either. So I let it go, but I still stop in to say hi occasionally. During one of these visits my friends told me more of their story. Her husband loved to smoke pot. He used up all his wages so her and their three small children often went hungry. After that Discovery Group meeting her husband never smoked pot again. He was standing right there. “I never wanted to again.” Six months later, it’s all still true. They don’t want a Discovery Group, and the husband still doesn’t like pot. A few things changed though. They got legally married, and asked me to be the testimony / best man. And she is giving birth to their fourth child this month.

The original group, with the violent brother-in-law, continued for awhile before disbanding because they moved back to his mom’s house. The environment there was not conducive to a group so they asked me to wait until they were in their own place again. In the meantime I did an Immanuel Prayer session with him. Thiago easily found Jesus in a positive memory. They were in the back of a 5-ton flatbed truck coming in from a village when the truck his a huge bump. His cousin flew over the side so Tiago grabbed him in such a way that he lost his balance, so his mom pulled them both back into the back of the big truck. Jesus was in the back of the truck with them, laughing. He could describe Jesus, and see the expression on His face. “So what was good about that memory?” His response was immediate. “The adventure.”

I told him, “Tiago, you have no idea of the many adventures God has planned for you.”

Still, we never could get a Discovery Group going again. We continued to meet every few months. We were always going to start just a little in the future. Tiago’s dad left their family when he was three. His mom never did forgive the dad, who lives with someone else in a neighboring town. Tiago was affected by this, for sure. It shaped who he became, though he is still responsible for his choices as an adult. This week-end I am travelling. I just got word that Tiago was shot and killed. I am really sad. I think God is sad too. It seemed to me like Tiago was so close to the Kingdom of God.

Jesus instructs us in Luke 10 to let go of the people and groups that are not ready, so that we have more time to find and help people who are ready to receive Jesus. This is difficult, because as we get to know people’s stories, we realize they are so close to a much better life. Jesus Himself was motivated by compassion for lost people. I realize that many people are not suffering quite to the extent of Tiago and his family, but that is even more difficult for these people to recognize their need for God. Jesus says the gospel improves our life in this age and in the age to come (Luke 18:29-30). What need can God possibly meet in your friend’s lives? Everyone is poor in some ways. It might be financial, social, mental, physical, or spiritual. When we look for People of Peace with the intent of preparing them to receive Jesus’ in their home we are 1) obeying Jesus, 2) helping people meet their needs, and 3) lining up with our purpose in life. It is satisfying. To do this in the most efficient way possible, we spend the most time with the people who are the most ready.

When I think of people who do not know Jesus I feel like I am asking the question, “Would you rather be poor and sick, or rich and healthy.” Or “would you like to suffer for nothing, or would you prefer to suffer for a boss who pays huge and eternal rewards for suffering?” I can see my friends thoughtfully pondering these questions like they are real puzzlers.

What is your attitude towards non-Christians?

« »