This particular blog is going to be strictly informational. Because some people are wondering, “what are you guys doing in Brazil?” we wanted to tell you about what the “actual mission is”, so here ya go...
MJ and I have been married for over 22 years and we’ve been in the ministry since 97’. We served at Kenneth Hagin Ministries and RHEMA Bible Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma for 4 years. Then we were on the pastoral staff at a local church in the Atlanta area for almost 10 years. We served and helped grow that particular church from around 100 people on a Sunday morning to over 1200 people on Sunday morning in the first 6 years. We were the Associate Pastors over Outreach Ministry, Couple’s Ministry, Assimilation and even served as the Youth Pastors for 2 of the years we were there (whazzup Revolution?!). We thought we would work in a local church forever... we love the local church. But after we adopted 5 children from Brazil in the Spring of 08’ we began to see that God was shaping us for something different... the foreign mission field.
To see the whole story you’ll have to go back through the blog and read about it, but basically in the Summer of 09’ we were given property in the jungles/mountains of Campina Grande do Sul, Brazil. In the town of Terra Boa. It had formerly been a Children’s/Youth Camp and already had a handful of cabins, 3 primitive houses, a unfinished commercial kitchen and a covered pavilion that could seat around 200 people. After taking a trip from the U.S. to take a look at the property our brother-in-law and MJ’s sister (along with their 11 children and MJ’s Mom and Dad) decided to move to Brazil and start establishing a ministry while MJ and I continued ministering in the States. There was no evangelical church currently in the town of Terra Boa, only 1 Catholic church. Over the last 2 years they’ve been able to begin weekly discipleship meetings on the mountain as well as begin ministry in the schools (teaching English) in Terra Boa.
After a trip to Brazil, in the Fall of 2010’, MJ and I felt that it was time for us to move our family to Brazil too... it was God’s time. So, we started preparing and moved our family of 9 (we had to leave our 22 year old son in the U.S. because he’s in college and he's in the U.S. ARMY) to Brazil in September of last year.
The fact that there's no strong-disciple-making evangelical church here is definitely something that we feel needs to change. But for right now we really think that it would be better to assist someone who’s Brazilian to start a church rather than trying to plant a church (and pastor the people ourselves) because of the language barrier.
(We were actually given a facility to use, to start a church in, in Terra Boa and construction had even begun but that door has closed on that right now. We really think it was God’s will that the brakes were put on that for us and we’re still praying that another opportunity will arise as God’s will permits.)
As far as ministry goes, we’re currently holding discipleship meetings each week and have held youth camps over the last year.
It’s Summertime here in Brazil so we’ll continue the discipleship meetings and we’re also focusing our attention on providing Gospel centered children/youth camps on more consistent basis. We have a group of around 70 coming in 2 weeks and our last camp had 40 students.
One of the things that we’re aiming for (and hopefully will begin in April), and that's going to make our camps a little different, is that we’re going to be going into the orphanages and into the slums and bringing children out to the camp and allowing them to experience a Christian camp for free. We feel that this is a great way to get the Gospel to kids who might never be able to experience it otherwise. We’re also partnering with the local schools here in Terra Boa this year and offering the camp to them to use as an incentive for the students to maintain good attendance and good grades. When the kids are here, at the camp, they’ll experience the Gospel in addition to having a great time.
We have future plans for starting an orphan care program here on the property but we’re having to navigate through all the legal aspects of that before we can begin. You can go to our website www.HopeAndLifeBrazil.com and see all the ministries we currently have going on.
But ultimately the bottom line on why we’re in Brazil is this... “to glorify God while making disciples of Jesus Christ.”
That’s it. It’s pretty simple. Our methods may change, but our message and our focus will always be the same... “to glorify God while making disciples of Jesus Christ.” and since over 50% of the population of Brazil is under the age of 18, for us, it all starts with the children and the teenagers.
Hopefully this blog was informative. We’ll be back to our normal stuff next week. We just thought, that with some of the questions we’ve been getting, that we needed to give a clearer picture of what God has allowed us to begin doing here in Brazil: )
Passionately Following Jesus,
Jim, MJ and all the Dunn Kids
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