Sharing the Gospel in Brazil: A mission of love

Photos by Joni B. Hannigan

AMAZONAS, Brazil (FBW)–The sounds of roosters crowing, boat engines idling and pigs grunting couldn’t drown out the sound of the Gospel in a small family village high on a hill overlooking the Rio Negro in Brazil.

Holding onto his cool while sweat poured from every crease in his body, T. Allison Scott manipulated a small colorful cube, telling the story of Jesus while peering around at 16 intense faces of all ages.

Translating his words carefully, while at the same time using the inflections in her voice and her body movements to reflect his, Susana Sargent calmly swatted at flies while sharing the Gospel in the sing-song Latin-based Portuguese language.

It was a scene repeated hundreds of times Sept. 1–9 in dozens of villages throughout Amazonas, a Brazilian state where three rivers come together in what is commonly referred to as the Amazon River. The region boasts a tropical rainforest spanning over 4,000 miles of isolated and undeveloped country inhabited by the “river people” and by indigenous tribes.

More than 11,000 tributaries feed the Amazon River, which stretches 3,900 miles across Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Brazil. The river ranges from one to six miles across at low stage and up to 300 miles across during the rainy season. The river is home to 1,500 documented species of fish and unique creatures like piranhas and pink bottle-nosed dolphins.

By the week’s end, a team of 15 Floridians–which included pastors, a director of missions and church leaders – recorded nearly 650 professions of faith in Christ and heard hundreds of individuals express interest in deepening their faith through reading the Bible and committing to starting churches.

The Florida team was one of 22 teams which has worked in the “unrestricted” areas of the Amazon Basin in the past nine months with Amazon Vision Ministries, an evangelical missions ministry founded in part by Gary Crawford, pastor of Westside Baptist Church in Gainesville.

AVM is also supported by the Florida Baptist Convention and is partnered with the International Mission Board. In addition to trips focused primarily on evangelism, AVM also takes medical and dental teams into the region.

Team members in September spent nine days on board the Marco Polo, a ship originally designed to host fishing trips. The multi-deck, self-sustained boat houses eight air-conditioned two-bunk guest cabins each equipped with a fully operational bathroom and shower. Meals are prepared and served on board three times a day for teams which use smaller johnboats to reach villages and access points along the river. On the first day, team members slept while the large boat moved upriver about five hours into the isolated areas of the region.

Each morning, the Florida team was led by Eddie McClelland, president of Florida Baptist Financial Services, for prayer and devotions.

“Start with your relationship to God first,” McClelland exhorted team members, urging them to pray and read the Bible. “The Word will not return void. It’s vitally important we share the message.”

With Scott and Sargent, McClelland left the Marco Polo on a johnboat Sept. 2 to travel to a village about 30 minutes away where an entire family appeared hard at work.

A large extended family inhabited three roughly built structures on stilts. Adorning the walls were sparkling tin pots, in stark contrast to items in a thatched hut several feet away where the family’s mother and grandmother pounded a native root into cakes she fried on a massive round of steel hammered into a hollow rock foundation with a lively fire underneath.

Photos by Joni B. Hannigan

Body sweat mixed with the plant’s dank fibers on each of the family members who lined up and crowded in closely to hear and watch Scott present the Gospel using an EvangeCube.

A young mother nursed her baby, oblivious to Western tradition.

After most of the family members prayed to receive Christ, McClelland handed the father of the family a Bible in Portuguese.

“Abrigado [thank you],” the shirtless man told McClellan.

“You’re welcome,” a beaming McClellan told the man in Portuguese, patting his arm.

The next day McClelland grabbed a container of olive oil on the way to pray for a woman he had heard was ill and could not swallow.

At a remote site nearly 45 minutes from the Marco Polo by johnboat, the mother of an extended family of 14 children and 19 grandchildren appeared to have a tumor lodged in her throat.

After anointing the woman with oil, praying for her, and telling her family to take her to the hospital in Manaus, Scott and McClelland led another room full of family members who had been gathered to hear the Gospel, in a prayer of commitment.

“Come always back again, please,” one of the bronzed women told McClelland.

Derek George, on the board of AVM, said there are nearly 33,000 villages along the Amazon River where people have never heard an evangelical witness about Jesus Christ.

And in some villages, empty church buildings are a reminder of past attempts at Christianity by various groups whose interests or resources have lagged – or whose works-based theology has deterred individuals from growing and developing each generation outside a strict hierarchical structure.

George said the AVM approach is to work through the local Baptist associations and churches to establish follow-up, training and discipleship.

In each of the villages where the Florida team made contacts and prayed with and for individuals, statistical, biographical and geographical information was collected and passed along to local Brazilian Baptists.

The AVM staff also worked with a Global Positioning System (GPS) device to track the course of the Marco Polo and the smaller boats in order to be able to tag the villages already visited for follow-up and to plan for future trips.

Photos by Joni B. Hannigan

Worship on Sunday morning was at the Brazilian Baptist Church in Novo Airao – a small isolated river town of about 13,000 – where it was determined a crusade would be planned for Wednesday evening, the last night the team would be on the Rio Negro.

“Do you think you can get 50 people to come?” McClelland asked the church’s pastor.

“Yes,” the pastor nodded gravely.

“How about 1,000? Could we find a place for 1,000?” McClelland pushed.

“We will pray,” the pastor said.

And prayed they did. While commandeering a loudspeaker running up and down the street atop one of the few motorized taxi cabs in the small town; while knocking on doors in the blazing hot sun every afternoon to share Jesus and invite residents to the crusade; while kneeling on the floor of a nearby abandoned Presbyterian church building taken over by a new, young Baptist preacher.

For three days, groups of men gathered together, grabbing each other’s shoulders to pray and exchanging very little money to make arrangements with the locals.

At the town’s lone cinema, Scott worked out the details to show the Jesus film on the theatre’s big screen. Only a handful showed up the first night. By the second night, the crowded theater had to shut its doors after over 100 adults and children packed the space inside, while outside team members shared the Gospel with at least 60 more who prayed to receive Christ while waiting for a second screening.

Meanwhile, every morning and afternoon – and on some evenings, the team visited villages in small groups and ministered in impromptu worship services announced only hours before they would begin.

Stopping the Marco Polo in front of one village where an elderly man lie suffering from the ravages of malaria, team members prayed for his health.

Swarming to meet the team, who, as usual, had requested permission from the “president” of the village to visit, children and adults alike rushed to the river to bathe and prepare for an evening worship service.

Settling in a small one-room wooden school house where a single naked light bulb hung suspended from the ceiling, the American team joined with the Brazilian team of translators and evangelists to sing and share testimonies.

“I’m not a pastor, I’m just a man who loves Jesus Christ,” Jeff Scott, Allison Scott’s adult son told the villagers. “I know for certain that no man has an excuse not to understand God. I hope if you don’t know Jesus Christ you will come to know Him tonight.”

Struggling to sing “Shout to the Lord” in Portuguese, Darell Millsap, pastor of First Baptist Church Islamorada, smiled sadly in sharing his testimony of how drugs and alcohol thrust him into a dark pit in which he finally reached bottom.

“Are you really there?” he said he remembered asking God. “Will you come and show me and give me life?

“He came into my life, He changed my life,” Millsap said. “God loves me. God loves you.”

Sharing about an addiction to drugs and alcohol when he was young, Tim Phillips, pastor of First Baptist Church of Big Coppitt in Key West, told the story of the prodigal son and how when he was in prison God called him to preach the Gospel.

Telling God “no” at first, Phillips said he finally believed God’s forgiveness was big enough to cover his sin.

“The Father looks for you; He waits for you,” Phillips said. “Come home tonight; He wants you.”

On the final night of the trip, team members wrapped up final details for the crusade. A visiting Christian band donated its services. A high platform was placed in the middle of the street between a public park and the Presbyterian building. Jumbo speakers flashed “Jesus” with neon lights.

Locals moved a streetlight from in front of the mayor’s house to the platform and wired it into a electrical box nearby. As the tempo picked up, volunteers shouldered the benches from inside the building and dropped them into place on the street. Over 700 people crowded in to hear the Good News.

The crusade was on.

Nearly a dozen evangelical Brazilian pastors lined the platform after the crowd rocked to inspirational Christian music and watched performers from a nearby children’s ministry.

The Florida team stood in the street at the front of the platform and prayed for the Brazilians to reach and teach their people. The team presented each local pastor with a Bible. Dressed in a bright orange shirt, Randy Huckabee, pastor of First Baptist Church in Okeechobee, took the microphone.

“We have been up and down the river ... and God has drawn us back to Novo Airao,” he told the crowd.

Acknowledging it was Brazil’s Independence Day, Huckabee reminded listeners freedom comes with a cost.

“It is great to be a free country, but it’s not enough. You must be free from the inside out.”

Citing verses in Mark and in Romans, Huckabee stressed freedom is not wrapped up in the law, but in Jesus Christ.

Moving toward the platform in answer to the altar call, one young man was quickly surrounded by encouraging friends. Wiping his eyes, he looked up and smiled when a member of the team handed him a Bible.

After feeding the large crowd afterwards, some team members jumped on motorcycle taxis to head back to the boat. Some walked and reflected on the week’s harvest.

Moving downriver on the Marco Polo, Eliseo Silva, an elderly Brazilian pastor who has been ministering to the river people for over 30 years, said remembering the words of Apostle Paul, he agrees he has fought the good fight and guarded his faith–but that the fight’s not over yet.

“I didn’t finish the race yet,” Silva said through a translator. Though he worked previously with Americans, he said he hasn’t seen passion for the river people in years.

“...Nobody is reaching the people in the little houses on the river. It is too hard and too expensive,” he said. “This boat’s mission is to reach the population and I thank the Lord because somebody from far away had the vision we should have had a long time ago now. Their biggest dream is three boats on the Amazon one on each big river…I just want to thank the Lord for these Americans–for the Lord has opened a new door for us here.”

For information about AVM, go to www.AmazonVisionMinistries.com, or call Derek George at (800) 908-0302 or (352) 745-2704.