Submitted by philip on
By Brian Blackwell, Message Staff Writer
MONTES CLAROS, Brazil – A record number of decisions made for Christ in the 30th year of an annual mission trip to Brazil saw the group of 115 do more with less.
“Only one other time when we had had almost 200 go on the trip did we see right at 5,000 saved,” said Wayne Jenkins, evangelism and church growth director for the Louisiana Baptist Convention. “This year our theme was do more with less. God did more with less this time.”
The majority of the work for one of the largest Louisiana Baptist-led partnership evangelism efforts took place in Montes Claros, a city of 450,000 people in the state of Minas Gerias. While there, the team participated in street evangelism, Vacation Bible Schools, drama, medical, dental and eye clinics, cooking demonstration classes, sports clinics, deaf work and construction of three chapels.
By the end of the group’s 11-day missions experience, 5,024 people accepted Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. That’s more than the 4,500 who accepted Christ during last year’s trip to the country, with 150 going on the trip.
The majority of those ministering in Brazil were from Louisiana, though a handful came from states including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
Among those participating in the trip was Lisa Breaux and her husband, Leonard. A member of First Baptist Lafayette, Breaux served on the cooking team.
In the past, the team has cooked for women at a halfway house, staff at the hotel where they stay and professionals who come to a church as a mean of outreach. For the second consecutive year, the team cooked in the home of the mayor of Montes Claros and his guests. Breaux said cooking at his home last year opened doors for an evangelism team to gain access to prisons, which until now had been denied.
The hotel staff allowed the team use of its kitchen to cook the Louisiana foods that included beignets, bread pudding and chicken and sausage gumbo. What seemed to be a perfect set-up actually turned into a near-disaster – with a happy ending.
Breaux’s team finished cooking the gumbo on a Thursday afternoon and the hotel offered for its night shift staff to place the food in the refrigerator to allow the dish to cool overnight in order to achieve the highest possible flavor. The next day, the team prepared rice for the gumbo along with bread pudding and transported those dishes along with the gumbo to the mayor’s home.
However, upon tasting the gumbo while it was heating on the hotel stove, the team discovered the dish had spoiled.
Without time to cook another pot of gumbo, the team was devastated and prayed for a miracle. The mayor’s public relations secretary ordered pizza.
Instead, the evening turned into a blessing, Breaux said. The guests were captivated by the hurt of the cooking team due to the gumbo spoiling and that grabbed the guests’ attention, she added.
Breaux said she believes God allowed the gumbo to spoil so the guests would see how heart-broken and humble the cooking team’s attitude was there.
“Because we were broken, we couldn’t help but cry,” Breaux said. “And because we cried, sincere tears, coming from sincere hearts, all language barriers were broken, all pretenses were shattered, and they realized how much we deeply wanted to serve them and to share with them the love of God. God used our tears to melt their hearts and make them open to His message.”
For his part, John Galey saw 85 people accept Christ while he was a member of a two-person evangelism team. Most of Galey’s time on the team was home-to-home visits.
Galey, who is pastor of Poydras Baptist Church near New Orleans, said people he encountered were very spiritually receptive.
“It was very spiritually rewarding too to go to a place internationally who not only needed to hear the gospel but had a people hungering for it and hanging on to every word you have to say,” Galey said.
Before he left his hotel to begin his day in the field, Galey picked up a gospel tract in the English language to distribute. Though he assumed most people would not speak English, he took the tract with him.
“Next thing I know I come to a house for a visit that a little kid is so excited that an American who speaks English is there,” Galey said. “He is learning English. Finally I gave he and his mom a tract in both the Portuguese and English language and you would have thought he received gold. He was so excited he was going to take the English tracts to school and his teacher likely will use the tract in his English classes.”
For Martha Jenkins, knowing the group was prayed for before they sat foot on Brazilian soil was comforting. She said the churches there prayed that 5,000 would come to know Christ while the Louisiana team was there on the mission trip.
“To know they prayed for 5,000 and we had 5,024 shows you the power of prayer and the commitment that people here have to what God calls them to,” said Jenkins, a member of Philadelphia Baptist in Deville.
A member of the drama team for the past 20 years, Jenkins said her group of five performers and two leaders saw more than 700 people accept Christ. They performed a drama that set to music in such locations as schools, prisons, rehab centers, parks, plazas, festivals and the slums.
“The most awesome part of each year is the fact that we present the gospel through an interpreter and people understand the message in a different language,” she said. “Each year we are able to see people flock to the invitation.”
Looking back on the trips Jenkins has led every year to Brazil since 10 participated in the first trip to the country in 1984, he never would have imagined that thousands upon thousands would accept Christ and 56 chapels would be constructed.
“It’s one of those things where God has provided every year,” Jenkins said. “We have had over 1000 different people go on this trip since we began going who were exposed to international missions and our Southern Baptist missionaries.
“Our desire is when people come back home, they not only have a life-changing experience but they also become advocates of Southern Baptist missions and the Cooperative Program,” he continued. “The resident missionaries and cooperative giving is the backbone of our mission work. Volunteers assist, but cannot replace, what our missionaries on the field do.”