Author Archives: XM

Celebration Supper

Fabio and Geice are group people. When I picked them up to come over for pizza and baked potatoes we drove around and picked up other family and friends, and even a neighbour kid who was standing in his driveway and watching them get into our car. Like my mom says, “You can’t have a party

Springtime in Johannesburg

South Africa appears more violent than Brazil. I don’t know about this statistically but I observed a whole different level of property protection. The Bible School where we had the AVLN conference was surrounded by two fences, about half a meter apart. The outside fence is chain-link with razor-wire at the top. The inside fence

Bergen Family

Dad had chest pains last Sunday morning. The ambulance showed up in 5 minutes, and he spent much of the week in the hospital. Thankfully he is home again and doing well. Emma, Via, Anni, and Bella in church Sunday morning. My cousin sent me this candid photo. Powered by WPeMatico

Church Planting Lessons

Ghibeau is the editor of a peer-learning community of people who are launching Disciple Making Movements. They define a Disciple Making Movement as a group who are planting 100 new churches every 2-3 years, with groups starting groups down to at least 4 generations. http://www.accelerateteams.org/index.php/our-guidebook We met for lunch with Ghibeau while we were in

Overcoming Fear

Hi everybody, this is Ronã. I’m very excited to meet all of you next year. Yeah! That’s right, we are going to America in February! That’s awesome! Until then, I want to talk about one challenge I’m overcoming during this time—The fear of evangelism. Don’t misunderstand. It’s not that I am ashamed of Christ. It’s

AVLN Conference

The Mozambique and Angola churches have been asking Brazil for worship and learning resources. These countries all speak Portuguese. Milton and Elba were invited to be guest speakers at the African Vineyard Leadership Conference (AVLN) in Johannesburg with the hope that friendships and working relationships would form. Elba and Milton invited a few others, and

The Wilderness

  This week I had a vision. I was driving on that narrow, winding stretch of road through the canyons between Idaho and Montana. Mountain cliffs with dark outcropping of rock were on one side of the narrow, winding road, and a black abyss on the other side. I could see the way forward clearly,

Abundance Thinking

I often dream about our Brazil churches sending out overseas missionaries. I don’t see this happening real soon, but dreams turn to words, and words turn to reality. Scarcity Thinking suggests that if we used our limited resources on a faraway project like sending a missionary couple to Mozambique, this will take away from church planting

What sin would you like to do . . . ?

“I like this kind of Bible study. What religion are you again?” The guy beside me, who always admits that he killed someone, had a big smile on his face as he was looking at the Bible verses, and then at me. We were looking at John 3:16-18, and especially v.18a “The one who believes in him

Mozambique Connection

Deanna and I got home from our honeymoon. That same week we went to our pastors and told them we were ready to be sent out as missionaries. “Wait a year. You just got married. Enjoy life and learn how to live as a married couple.” We appreciated the council and we thoroughly enjoyed those twelve months. The