What Am I Doing Here? No Way! Really?

This past March, Mary Jane and I went back to Brazil on a mission trip with a friend and his church's youth group (you can go back into the archived blogs to read about the trip). It was amazing. We were really impacted deeply by the things we were able to be involved in while we were there. Wherever we ministered we had interpreters that would translate for us. One of the people who translated for Mary Jane and I was Victor. Victor is a man in his 30's who loves God and loves to serve. One day as we were traveling from one ministry site to the next MJ and I started to share with Victor our adoption story and our heart for orphans. He listened very intently and you could tell that he was inspired by what God had laid on our hearts. Well, the next day when we met Victor for our next ministry event, he said, "that he had something to tell us." He began to tell us about a dream that he had. He said, "he had a dream that this man, named Daniel, who was a pastor in Canada had a camp with 86 acres on it. He told us that it use to be a camp for ministering to the local village children but this pastor moved back to Canada. He then told us that in his dream that Daniel gave the camp to us." I immediately thought this guy was either crazy or maybe he ate pizza the night before and that would explain the dream. But it was a crazy statement either way! We finished with our trip and then headed back home to the States and really didn't think much more about it. Then I get an email from this guy named Daniel who just so happens to be a pastor in Canada. And I start thinking, "is this for real or what?" In his email he gave me his phone number so I called him. He told me to tell him our story and what our vision for orphans was so I did. At the end of the conversation (I'm abbreviating this for the sake of time) he began to tell me about how he had this camp in the mountains of Brazil that had 3 houses on 86 acres. It also had a dining area that would seat around 200 and cabins that would sleep 70 children. He told me about the camps that he would hold for the poor children in the surrounding villages. But then he felt led to move back to Canada and start pastoring a church and that this camp wasn't being used. At this point I could feel it coming but I just listened... and then he said it. He said, "If you will use this property for the Glory of God and to reach the children of Brazil I would like to give it to you." I didn't know whether to poop my pants, start crying, do a Holy Ghost dance or what! I told him that it sounded great and that we would like to pursue it. So over the next several months we started to go over the legal aspects of the transfer of the property and July 1, 2009 the property was signed over to us! We've been paying a caretaker to stay on the property and take care of it (hence the name caretaker, lol!) and to watch over it so that nobody steals stuff. Also, as we began to speak to our family about it they started to tell us that they were feeling like God wanted them to be involved as well. Now we didn't know if this would mean that we would all move to Brazil (about 53 people total), support others to live in Brazil or what... we just knew that God wanted us to do something. Our vision right now is to start an orphanage, along with a feeding program that would reach into the surrounding villages. Also, we would like to have a place where people from all over the world could come and stay while they were adopting from Brazil. You see, the only place that you can adopt in the whole country of Brazil is the state of Parana... and that just so happens to be where this property is. When someone adopts from Brazil they have to stay in the country for 46 days and this can be very expensive (in addition to all the other adoption expenses) and we want to offer a place to stay that could be very inexpensive to adoptive parents. Those are just a few of the things that we're thinking at this point.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are so serious about this that they sold their landscape business that they've had for 15 or so years. It's a huge thing that God is orchestrating in our family. We still don't know exactly what it means for us so we're just walking this thing out.

Sunday afternoon we boarded a plane and have flown to Curitiba, Brazil to look at the property and try and get a sense of what we need to do next. So that is where we are and why we're here. So please pray for us. We want to here from God this week. And we know we will. We're leaving our hotel to go see the property in 30 minutes so I'll post again tonight and tell you what we saw.

Love Ya,

Jim