The three construction teams sent out with the Brazil mission trip didn’t rack up as many spiritual decisions as did the other mission teams, but wait 10 or 50 years.
The three construction teams sent out with the Brazil mission trip didn’t rack up as many spiritual decisions as did the other mission teams, but wait 10 or 50 years.
“This building helped us make people more comfortable, and come back, with everyone welcome,” said Milton Sincero, pastor of a church built three years ago by a Brazil mission team. “I am very very extremely happy that the Americans built this building for us.”
The church has nearly doubled in the last three years, and members are being discipled so they can tell the people they know about Jesus, the pastor added.
Because of the influx of middle-class families, the church now is able to provide a rice-and-beans sack of groceries once a month, as one of many community outreaches.
In a lower-income part of Belo, Pastor Allison Mendouca had no plans to have what Brazilians refer to as a “temple.” The pastor’s heart was geared toward the children in the neighborhood where he lived.
“When you live near you can see the need,” Mendouca said. But a children’s Sunday School in a home grew to include a Bible sudy for adults, and then the congregation named Esperanza – Hope – was given a ramshackle house that had a deep back yard.
With the assistance of their mother church, Esperanza was offered a construction team this year. The pastor said “yes” aloud, but if Americans were coming to his church, what he really wanted was a VBS team, he said to himself. God heard.
Rita Huffman wanted to be with her husband David, a construction volunteer, on the Brazil mission trip. So when she got to the church, she asked the pastor if she could lead a VBS, and the pastor quickly worked it out.
“We are very very happy you here,” Mendouca said in English. “We ask God bless you.”
Three Louisiana churches provided the funding to build the churches: Alto Baptist of Rayville, Fairview Baptist of Coushatta, and a Sunday School class at First Baptist Lafayette.