Launching in 6 days

Pastor John is making final preparations for an August 20th departure for São Paulo, Brazil. The calendar is close to being finalized with some adjustments being made after arrival. This part of the mission trip is always exciting as I wait for God to open doors and to allow for divine engagements. There is a unique blessing about not knowing what is going to happen every single moment. And honestly, to have that kind of expectation that every moment will be scripted is pretty unrealistic. Nevertheless, we plan and pray for the best.

My schedule looks like this, and is subject to change:

My first order of business will be entrusting our JEMS short-termer, Holly Yamagata, to her place of ministry in the relatively remote interior city of Pompéia in the state of São Paulo. We will fly out of LAX together on Monday, August 20th, arriving on Tuesday, August 21 at 8am. From there, we will be picked up by Free Methodist Conference Superintendent, Pastor Daniel Abe and taken to the Barra Funda bus station to catch a bus to our destination city, arriving at 10pm. After a short hour of orientation with the local pastoral staff, I will travel to the city of Marília at 11:00pm. These first two days will be pretty long.

Please remember to pray for Holly as she begins her four-month ministry in Pompéia and later in the city of São Paulo.

Photos of Holly's training and preparation:

The remainder of my ministry will involve meeting with churches and leaders who received JEMS teams in July. I will receive reports of challenges and blessings. One such example took place in the city of Assaí where JEMS served for the first time this year. The church is a newly planted ministry in a Japanese farming colony in southern Brazil. Their VBS programs in past years have netted an attendance of about seven or eight children. This year with the news that a team was coming from the US, fifty-two children attended with twelve children praying to receive Christ! What a blessing!