Be Available and Willing

In January 2020 I had the pleasure of helping lead several other Americans on a trip to Brazil to provide free English courses for Brazilians. During our trip we met at a school Monday through Friday and spent some time prior to the trip in preparation, registering, and interviewing the students to determine their English levels.

Like any mission trip that most have been on, I was nervous ahead of time, especially with this being my first trip teaching English. What did I know about teaching others English?! But God used each of us and replaced the uneasiness with a sense of fulfillment and reward. Just being available and willing is all He expected.

As each day went on, we grew closer to our students as we experienced their joy in learning English. It was quite an experience! We met before and after each of the classes with the students to sing American songs in English and for them to get to know us, their teachers.

On the last day of the group meetings with all of the students, Pastor Ron shared that the most important reason we made the journey was to share the love of Christ. Many accepted Christ on the last day, which made everything worth it.

I had visited Brazil a couple months before our January trip to work on logistics such as finding a school, hotel, transportation, etc. During the school visit, the Principal led our tour with JP (our Brazilian leader/translator/friend) to introduce us to students and to see the school. I took a photo or two with some of the students, sitting next to a girl named Fabryna in one. Well, Fabryna ended up as one of my students during our trip and is one of those who accepted Christ! God had it all planned out!

That’s how God works! Isn't it great when all we do is make ourselves available and God does the rest? When we make ourselves available and willing to do what He has called us to do, we see God working through us and all around us. This may be going on a mission trip or something closer to home.

If you'd like to join our next Brazil mission team or find out more about other mission opportunities, please contact the Global Impact Ministry at Crossroads Church.

Let Your Light Shine!

We recently sent a group of people from Crossroads Church to the country of Brazil to be part of an English teaching team. As you can imagine, when I first approached folks about being a part of the team their first response was, “I cannot teach English!” The goods news, I reassured them, is that we are not teaching them English as much as we are really helping them to practice their English. For this reason, we have aptly named the school Practically Speaking English. 

As we prepared to go and teach English and share the good news of Jesus, many of the people on the team asked about how we were going to share the Gospel. To help them understand, I shared one of my favorite passages where Jesus explains about sharing our faith. 

We read in Matthew 5:16, In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. (NLT)

This verse explains so well what happens when we go anywhere in the world to teach English. The truth is that when we come to a community and invite them to be part of the school, our main objective is not to convince them to follow Jesus. Our main objective is to give them the best conversational English school we can. We really do want to be a blessing to these people. When we let our light shine in front of them, we point them to Jesus. By keeping our word, we open a door to share the Gospel when the students begin to ask why we would come. We share Christ with them as the one who motivates us to love people the way that God loves them, and, as His followers, to be blessing to others. This makes them want to know more. After spending hours teaching and become friends, we get to share our stories of coming to Christ, and we see the Holy Spirit begin to change people’s lives. 

We got a chance to see life-change happen in a young Brazilian lady named Fabryna. Fabryna came looking to learn English but gained a relationship with Jesus and friends from the church to help her grow in her new faith. The amazing thing is that we had 218 Brazilians come and be a part of the school, and 187 of them indicated that they had prayed to receive Christ during the week. We had 40 students join us at church on Sunday for worship for the very first time, and Fabryna received her very first Bible. Praise God as we see the words of Jesus coming true right before our eyes! 

Maybe you have been praying for God to show you some next steps to take on your spiritual journey, and right now He is encouraging you to begin to think about being a part of our Global mission. I want to encourage you to not just let that thought pass, but really begin praying about being part of a mission team. If you want to know more about Crossroads mission trips, click HERE.

Let us all let our lights shine this week, and we will be amazed at what God will do!