Assuming we have made it through the TSA lines, our Brazil Mission Team will be in the air on our way to Brazil by the time many of you read this post. The details; a three-hour flight from Newark to Miami, a six hour (groan) layover in Miami, and then an eight-hour overnight flight from Miami to Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Total distance traveled will be about 5,000 miles. Continue reading →

As in polite company, short-term missionaries are told not talk about politics. Five of us leave for Brazil next Thursday, and when we’re there I plan to be impolite. We’ll be talking politics with our Brazilian friends.

In fact, some of our short-term and long-term mission partners in different parts of the world ask that we not talk about the political situation in those places where they have been called to serve. Political opinions openly or indiscreetly expressed might jeopardize the work of the mission and bring threats to the life and wellbeing of indigenous partners. It’s a good idea to not talk politics. Wisdom and faithfulness calls for nothing less.

But we will be talking politics in Brazil. Continue reading →

Our daughter in Memphis sent a text message Monday night. What a surprise. “I just received a Facebook message from Mateus. Yes, that Mateus, ‘Chuta’ Mateus.” “Sou Mateus.” “I am Mateus,” he wrote. He wondered if we remember him.

Of course, we remember Mateus (pictured above on the left), and I have been messaging with him all week. In July, 2002, Mateus was one of the favela kids, hundreds of them, who streamed down the hill to Vacation Bible School at Igreja Presbiteriana where we were part of a mission team doing our best to help our Brazilian partners. But Mateus was not just one of the hundreds. He was one of those nine-year olds whose smile and mischievousness melts your heart and tries your patience. You meet them in North American Sunday School classes, North Philadelphia schools, Guatemalan villages, and, like Mateus, at the VBS of Igreja Presbiteriana no Jardim America, where every July hundreds of kids come down from Favela da Ventosa for a week of joy and love and hearing the stories of Jesus. Continue reading →

Just a year ago LPC was asked by Jess Cropsey, one of our mission partners in Burundi, if we might be willing to help supply some needed supplies for the teachers at the local school in Kibuye. Quickly all 20 teacher kits were fully subscribed and filled, and when John and Jess visited us in July we were able to present the mountain of teacher boxes to them – and the long journey began. The boxes were put in a ocean-going shipping container and waited as other supplies were added and the container was filled. It left the U.S. in December and sailed to Oman.The story continued as told by the Burundi team: Continue reading →

I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did. Yet I had not exactly spent the journey in thought. Nor in great emotion. “Emotional” is perhaps the last word we can apply to some of the most important events. It was more like when a man, after a long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.

C.S. Lewis
Surprised by Joy

My friend called early evening on this past Tuesday, late afternoon California time. He had just come from an amazing meeting at a Peet’s Coffee with some new friends who have been attending the church where he serves as pastor. I had known part of the story.

On the Second Sunday of Advent, just four days after the shootings in San Bernardino had raised anxiety across the Los Angeles basin, two Iranian men walked into the morning worship service at the church. The congregation is not large enough for visitors to slip in and out unnoticed. Being the congregation that it is, however, the visitors were welcomed and invited back. And they came back. Four of them the next week. Recently arrived from Iran, the four had been raised as Muslims, but were wondering about Christianity. Continue reading →