We are beginning to give away our furniture and have started packing and choosing the items we would like to take with us to Goiania, Brazil. It is all getting real now. In January , during a short visit to Goiania, we were struck by the huge number of people many children who were living on the streets of the city centre, using and dealing drugs in broad daylight. When confronted with such brokenness, Jesus tells his disciples to pray for more workers to help in the harvest.
We find this fascinating; Jesus did not see the crowds as a pest but saw them as a harvest in waiting. This is how we feel about the people we saw in Goiania. They are precious to God and we have a heart to see many of them set free from addiction and given new dignity by the good news of Jesus. In partnership with a local church, we hope to set up a food bank and to form and train a team to work on the streets, looking for ways to share the gospel of Jesus, as well as providing food, clothes and dignity through haircuts and other small treatments.
As a beautician, Debora wants to teach girls how to work as beauticians, which may give them an alternative to drug dealing or prostitution. We are passionate to see people coming to faith in Jesus and this is our primary focus. All other activities will flow out of this primary passion and hope.
In saying yes to this challenge, we will return to the country we both grew up in. The place is familiar, we speak the language, and we will be near family and friends, but we do not feel we are going home. We have changed. We are less Brazilian than when we first arrived in England… we are a hybrid version of our former selves. So we are aware that we will have many challenges in adapting to the Brazilian way of living.
Many people have asked us why we are going. They are puzzled as to why we would want to leave England to live in an increasingly violent and economically broken nation.
