Hey Friends and Family!

This has been a busy month for us! Now that we have a modicum of language facility we are able to take additional meetings with neighbors, Brazilian church leadership, and discipleship initiatives. This has all been quite fun and invigorating. 

We launched our services in our new location in downtown Macapa! We have a healthy attendance, not just on Sundays but also in our small groups where more focused discipleship takes place. We also have new leaders rising up and new folks being trained for various ministries. 

We also were able to commission a new youth leader at Vineyard Macapa! See this month’s ministry highlight below for more info and please keep Erica in your prayers. 

Additionally we have assumed some new responsibilities within the two churches and launched a monthly outreach to our neighborhood which has been well received. 

This is also our first Carnival season in Brazil. We are excited to participate in some of the festivities even as we discern what it means to be a faithful witness to Jesus and his Kingdom in the midst of this season. 

Overall our family is doing well and we sincerely appreciate your prayers, texts, emails, and generosity. Thank you for all that you do. 

Please also know that we are praying for you. Taking our cues from Jesus and the Apostle Paul we maintain a discipline of praying for you all regularly. Be on the lookout throughout the month as I reach out to you for prayer needs!

Much Love, 

Derek, Amanda, Selah, Amaris, Josiah, and Adalee

In the Vineyard we place a lot of emphasis on proclamation, teaching, and demonstrating the Kingdom of God in both posture and power. The Kingdom of God is essentially every sphere of life in which God’s presence is attended to and where He has the final say-so. It’s available here and now. And it’s also not yet fully realized and will not be fully realized until Christ returns. 

The typical way this passage is taught would have us strive to have a more child-like attitude with regards to trusting in our Father. We are admonished to approach Him with a posture of childlike humility. Yet for all the admonishment – what is typically left out is the practical how-to. 

The word ‘welcome’ in verse 5 is the word dechomai. It means to embrace, pay full attention to, and offer hospitality to someone. Jesus explicitly states here that when we offer welcome – offer dechomai – to a child – we also receive His presence and enter into the Kingdom of God!

If you desire to “become great” as it were in the Kingdom – Jesus offers a practice. Welcome children and fully attend to their presence. Do this communally in the church and see the Kingdom in your midst. 

At Vineyard Macapa we are attempting to do just that. We recently invested in safe and comfortable meeting rooms specifically for the kids in the neighborhood. As we made space to attend to them God raised up a new leader from our midst to help guide, serve, and teach them – with the full support and attention of the church. 

On Sundays the kids stay with us during our time of worship, giving, and the Lord’s Supper and then go their classroom to receive tailored instruction and ministry time. During the week we have small groups specialficlaly for kids and a youth group! The Holy Spirit is inviting Vineyard Macapa to love and serve the kids of this neighborhood and is opening up a door to reach the neighborhood through this ministry. 

Recently Erica felt invited by the Holy Spirit to assume the role of leading the youth group. She has a true heart for them, and this last month the church recognized her commission from Jesus to serve these precious kiddos! 

Please be in prayer for her as she is assuming her new responsibilities and for the church as we follow the teaching of Jesus and the Spirit’s guidance in extending the Kingdom into the neighborhood!

• Recently Amanda and I have assumed the role of coordinating the children’s ministry at Vineyard Viva. Additionally one of us serves weekly in the ministry. This has been a joy and has also helped our kids become more involved in the life of the church. 
• I have also assumed the role of treasurer at Vineyard Viva. Our previous treasurers served faithfully and well, but reached a point where they could not continue. 
• I also serve in the kids ministry on Saturday evenings at Vineyard Macapa. It suits me well because I have the Portuguese proficiency of a young kid. We tend to relate! 
• We are doing well in our physical health and have been making it a priority to eat well and exercise daily. 
• Our kids continue to develop friendships and are coming along in their Portuguese lessons with Teacher Abi!
• We are thoroughly enjoying getting to know our neighbors and are starting to have spiritual conversations with them! Game night is a blast and since they have learned that I am a Texan – they are after me for some Texas-style BBQ. 
• Learning how to keep up with the laundry for 6 people in the wet season with no dryer is a real challenge, but we are learning some of the tricks of the trade.

Prayer Support – I have been working hard on laying the foundation necessary to recruit a robust prayer support network. We need it! The success of our church planting here is very much dependent upon the faithful and fervent prayer of God’s people. If you know someone that might be interested in receiving these updates and praying with us please send this link. They will get an introductory letter about us and the mission when they sign up. Also please share my signup links if you see it on Facebook.

Financial Support – Our family is currently taken care of thanks to your generosity.  There are always needs here in the churches and if you would like to contribute additional resources please use the link below!

Hey Friends and Family!

It is kind of hard to believe that we have been here for six months already! Time has truly flown by as we have begun to settle into new rhythms and ways of life here in lovely Brazil. 

Six months in there are three aspects of being here that standout the most. Our Brazilian friends have a drastically different approach to inhabiting time than we do in the States. Generally speaking, the tend to prioritize relationality over efficiency. They are warm, engaging, and genuinely curious about others. Because of this they tend to have more margin in their schedules and have make the time to invest in relationships. Brazilians are very hospitable and we have been very much the recipients of this hospitality! What a blessing. 

The other side of this is that well – the pace and efficiency of everything else is equally slowed down. Finding peanut butter could require a visit to three different grocery stores. Navigating the federal police system to file all required documentation is very time consuming. A simple trip to the bank can take hours.  Working in foreign missions sometimes amounts to what is essentially standing in line at the DMV several days a week in order to comply with local law or process. And yet if you are able to maintain the same same attitude and posture that Jesus exhibits, namely that our Father is always at work around us, you often find divine appointments in even the most mundane of circumstances. 

We are also incredibly grateful to be serving with our fellow missionaries: Christopher, Denise, and Bob. Their love, guidance, and perseverance serve as a remarkable example of Christlikeness. Being able to serve as part of a larger team has made these first six months more manageable than they would have otherwise been. Christian mission is always best accomplished in community. 

Much Love, 

Derek, Amanda, Selah, Amaris, Josiah, and Adalee

In December we hosted a Christmas-cookie decorating party and invited the entire neighborhood as a come and go event. Overall we had around 40 people come through and it was a blast! 

Snowflakes are not something that people who live in the tropics typically associate with Christmas. However, once we showed everyone how to make these crafts it ended up being more popular than the cookie decorating! Our neighbors wanted to decorate our carport so we left up until Epiphany as a collective thanksgiving. 

We made several new connections with people we did not know before, and likewise many of the people who came met neighbors they had not otherwise know yet. 

As a result of this we have decided to start a monthly brunch gathering. There seems to be some enthusiasm for this and our next monthly gathering is this coming Saturday the 28th! 

Additionally, we are endeavoring to have at least one family over for a meal, or go to their house for a meal, on a weekly basis. 

Our purpose in all of this is to begin to notice what our Father is doing in our neighbors lives and then join Him in how He is already working. Our job in this season is gathering and being attentive to how the Holy Spirit is already at work. 

Please pray for us in these gathering practices. 

Our first service in our new location is this coming Sunday, January 29th!

All that remains is some last minute setup and we will be prepared to receive our Vineyard Viva family and new first time guest into our new worship space!

Thank you to everyone who has advised, prayed, and given financially to make this possible. We look forward to a fruitful work in Macapa as a result of this labor. 

We issued a challenge to the community to be very intentional about inviting people, and to ask God to place people into our hearts and minds that He would have us invite. Please pray for these conversations and people being invited. 

• Christmas season good but hard. We enjoyed making some new traditions, were able to practices some of our traditions (we made room for our Christmas tree decorations when we moved), and generally had a relaxing and worshipful Christmas season. And just like in South Texas it was 80 degree and rainy!  We did miss seeing our families, and had to navigate some tough emotions with our kids, however, they displayed a remarkable resilience. 
• So much of our prayers during this transition have revolved around community for our kiddos. It has been delightful to see the neighborhood kids begin to include them into teh community. They have a group of friends that they regularly play with. Additionally, we try to join in with the neighborhood pickup futebol games at our neighborhood field.
• We are acquiring enough basic language proficiency that are day-to-day interactions are reasonably self-sufficient, fluid, and can be fun. Our new friends are all pretty patient with us, but eager to help. Some of the dudes at church like teaching me (Derek) slang. When I use it in a future conversations they practically double over with laughter. 
• Amanda’s headaches have greatly improved. At the time of this newsletter it has been quite some time since she has needed to take her special medicine. Thank you all for praying for this. 
• I started the last semester of my Master’s program! If everything goes well I will be heading back to the States for graduation in May. This program has been especially life-giving for me: laying some important groundwork for our missions activity and setting some things in motion that will be with me for the remainder of my life. Ill be writing more about this in the future. 

Prayer Support – I have been working hard on laying the foundation necessary to recruit a robust prayer support network. We need it! The success of our church planting here is very much dependent upon the faithful and fervent prayer of God’s people. If you know someone that might be interested in receiving these updates and praying with us please send this link. They will get an introductory letter about us and the mission when they sign up. 

Financial Support – Our family is taken currently taken care of thanks to your generosity.  There are always needs here in the churches and if you would like to contribute additional resources please use the link below!

Hey Friends and Family!

Merry Christmas!

I hope that this season of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany is a restful and worshipful season for you. 

In this newsletter we have a some skim updates and I share a few thoughts on incarnation and spiritual formation. 

Last newsletter we asked that you pray for physical health, ministry funding, language learning, relationship building, and friends for our kids. 

Please know that God is answering all of these prayers! More on that below. 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

Much Love,

Derek, Amanda, Selah, Amaris, Josiah, and Adalee

• We celebrated Thanksgiving with the other Vineyard Missionaries here in Macapa. It was really great to have a mixture of old favorite foods along with new fare from Brazil! 
• This was also our first time traveling intra-country as a family. We flew into a new city and then had to drive several hours to reach our destination. It was a good learning experience!
• We have been watching the World Cup – both at our house and in public with other people. Watching Brazil’s team live with new friends is a very fun experience! The Brazilians are very passionate about their futebol!
• Malls are still much more of a thing here than in the state and they go all out for Christmas. This was a live marching band in the mall!
• Our dog Snickers is growing and healthy. He has been a delightful addition to our family and our kids have especially enjoyed having him around. He has been good for our hearts!
• Our physical health feels like it is settling into a normal equilibrium after the initial struggles of adjusting to a new environment. Thank you for praying!
• Our ministry funding gap has been closed for the time being! Thank you all for your generosity!
• We have found an excellent language instructor and our entire family is taking lessons. Our new friends frequently compliment us on our language usage and comprehension! 
• Our kids have made new friends here in the neighborhood. They frequently get together to play. This has been wonderful and this is an answer to prayer!. 
• We are getting to know more neighbors as well. This weekend we are hosting a cookie decorating party and have a lot of people from the neighborhood coming over!
• We are settling in and preparing for new Christmas traditions here in Brazil. However, we did make space to bring down our Christmas Tree decorations. That is such an important tradition for us and it was worth the effort! Our tree is up and decorated. 
• We feel very well loved and taken care of by you all – Thank You!

As many of you know, I am currently working on my Master’s degree in Christian Spiritual Formation and Leadership. It has been one of the most formative and life-giving things that I have ever done. As you can imagine, we do spend some time learning about various spiritual practices that can be facilitate deeper intimacy with Jesus and our character formation. In my studies one that that has become  apparent to me in the modern spiritual formation movement is that it tends to neglect some of the outward-focused, ministerial disciplines as a means of discipleship. 

You can learn all about prayer, scripture reading, meditation, fasting, silence, solitude, confession, and  reconciliation. All of these are very important disciplines but they are all also inwardly focused. Far less time and attention is given to those external disciplines that also open us up to receive God’s love and be formed into Christlikeness. 

One of my favorite discipleship books of all time is called The Art of Neighboring. The thing that I love about it is that it gives a very practical guide for how to truly “move into the neighborhood” as a representative of The Word through basic acts of connection, generosity, and goodness. 

The first step is simple in premise, and only requires some intentionality on our part. Make a map of the 8 or so closet houses to you (like on the cover) and just get to know these neighbors names. My experience is that if you live in a modern suburb that you likely would not be able to completely fill this map out on your first try. Because, well, it’s hard to get to know people and everyone is busy. And there is no shame in that, however, it does not have to stay that way for you. 

The first practical step in incarnating our neighborhood with the love and goodness of Jesus begins with getting to know the names of those who live closest to us. And then, begin to pray for them. It won’t be long before God shows you some very particle ways to show His goodness in their life. He wants to answer those prayers, because He deeply loves you neighbors. 

This is the first step that Amanda and I are taking here in our new neighborhood. Using this map to learn the names of those closest to us and beginning to pray for them. 

This spiritual formation practice will facilitate you becoming more open to the receiving and giving of God’s love through participating with Him in his own love for your neighbors. 

To that end: This weekend we are hosting a neighborhood Christmas cookie decorating party. We have invited the neighborhood over and we are excited for the new connections we are going to make! Please be in prayer for us and we endeavor to be good neighbors to our new friends!

Prayer Support – I have been working hard on laying the foundation necessary to recruit a robust prayer support network. We need it! The success of our church planting here is very much dependent upon the faithful and fervent prayer of God’s people. I have launched a family website/spiritual formation blog and setup our mailing list access. If you know someone that might be interested in receiving these updates and praying with us please send this link. They will get an introductory letter about us and the mission when they sign up. 

Financial Support – Our family is taken care of thanks to your generosity. Additionally our short-term ministry funding needs gap appears to have been met as well Thank you!  There are always needs here in the churches and if you would like to contribute additional resources please use the link below!