I have been involved with the Xingu Mission for well over a decade. As a senior pastor I feel compelled for our church to actively be involved in fulfilling the Great Commission, both locally and internationally. I have always felt that participation in that high call and privilege has to be more than simply giving financial support to overseas missionary ventures. I have always felt that every church benefits from giving its people opportunity for cross-cultural short-term mission experiences as well as cultivating an expectation that God likely will raise up men and women in our church whom we can send out to other countries as long-term missionaries. Over the years we have been involved in the Xingu Mission. We have been blessed with the opportunity to have dozens and dozens of our members participate on short-term mission teams in Brazil and have also been privileged to send out a number of families and singles who have served and are serving with the Xingu Mission in the Amazon basin. What I appreciate most about the Xingu Mission is that in addition to expressing God’s love through humanitarian efforts, they have always kept the primary call of the missionary in the forefront which is to plant indigenous churches, raise up and train indigenous leaders who carry on the call to spread the Gospel in their own country. I have seen few mission organizations that do a better job in recruiting, training and releasing pastors and leaders. The Xingu Mission has been a testimony of maintaining a non-controlling, non-paternalistic approach that has allowed them to be prolific in their church planting endeavors. Danny Meyer – Former Senior Pastor Vineyard Church of Delaware County

As a pastor of Vineyard Columbus, I have been leading short-term mission teams to the Amazon River Basin to work with the Xingu Mission for a dozen years. We travel by boat down small tributaries to rain forest villages where the normal mode of transportation is a dugout canoe, or we bounce along dirt roads to small communities in the jungle bush – and we quickly realize that reaching people with the good news of Jesus is not always about crossing ethnic or language barriers. Sometimes it’s also about how to physically reach them! Just as the incarnate Jesus came to earth to bridge the separation between us and God, the Xingu Mission goes to those who are remote by geography with the whole gospel – the good news of forgiveness and salvation, as well as practical help for the poor, clean water and healing. Alongside the missionaries of Xingu Mission, I’ve had the privilege of preaching the gospel in villages for the first time… and then returning year after year to see emerging churches, led by indigenous pastors and meeting in buildings built by the villagers themselves. Even more gratifying, as the churches become more established, they themselves are now taking the gospel to other villages to plant new churches – a church planting movement – allowing Xingu Mission missionaries to move to and initiate new works in unreached areas. As a result, the people living in the remote regions of the Amazon basin are no longer out-of-sight or out-of-mind – they are the recipients of the grace and goodness of God. My teams come back with changed paradigms and a new love for those whom Jesus loves. This is the sort of mission that I and my church want to support and work alongside. Craig Heselton – Former Executive Pastor Vineyard Columbus