An understanding that surpasses our own

Hello Family and Friends,

We hope this update finds you filled with the grace, love, and peace that can only be found in Christ Jesus. Your prayers are cherished and something we have found to be an incredible source of strength during this journey. Thank you again and again for lifting us up in prayer. Like Kelli talked about in our last posting God has reshaped our hearts in many ways, however it has not been easy. In preparation for this trip we believed we would have an intense, service-packed two months ahead of us and we were very excited about this. We came wanting to give %100 of ourselves in any way we could in hopes of loving, representing, and making Christ known to people of all ages in Brazil. From the very beginning our trip looked a lot different than we anticipated but we continued to trust that the Lord was in control and was doing a work in us whether we realized it or not. From the get go our trip “pace” was very slow. We understood that as a full-time missionary family, or any family for that matter, they would have a variety of responsibilities that must be taken care of. We were ready to work with and around this families schedule to be seeking, chasing after, and of course serving the Lord with intensity and perseverance. Our hearts came to Brazil pounding to give everything we had to Jesus, whether it looked like playing with children, scrubbing floors, helping with construction, cooking for others, cleaning, holding babies at the orphanage, singing, dancing, sharing our life-stories, ministering to others, or just spending time loving other people all in the name of the Lord. Whatever it was and whatever service to Jesus looked like, we were ready, with willing hearts. The few times we were at the orphanage was incredible, here we were confident in our purpose and we knew the Lord was working through us to bring joy and laughter to parentless children. We were honored to be used by Jesus in this way, as we believe that orphans have a special place in God’s heart. Spending time with these beautiful children was something neither of us will ever forget. Our 3 day trip to the countryside, where Challenge Ministries focuses their efforts, was an amazing trip as well. Three members of a Christian theater group journeyed with us and performed magic tricks, circus acts, and little skits in every village we visited. They shared Christ’s message of hope in creative ways through all there different performances. It was neat seeing the way that this theater group evangelizes, and it really opened our eyes to an interesting faucet of what living life for Christ looks like. We learned the meaning of taking your gifts, talents, and desires and giving them to the Lord in service because he can and will use everything you give for his glory. Service to God is marked by a life surrendered to him in complete obedience. It is marked by a life that gives everything to the Lord. God gives us certain gifts and talents and things we enjoy doing so that we can use those for his name’s sake. It was encouraging being with this group and coming to the realization that whether we are singing, dancing, acting, doing magic tricks, playing sports, cooking, or working full-time if it is done for the Lord, it is service to the Lord. However, this trip to the country side was also a challenge as we sat back and watched everything going on and questioned what we should be doing to serve and love. We questioned if much would have changed if we weren’t there. This was not a comfortable thing to be feeling but we pushed on, eyes fixed on Jesus, trusting he must be using us somehow.
As our time in Brazil progressed we continued questioning what our purpose was in that the majority of our days there were not marked with service. Our few trips to the orphanage were something we clung to and when we were there our hearts thrived on giving, loving, being with, serving, and sharing Jesus. We came to the Lord in prayer about our purpose in Brazil and we continued to wrestle with the Lord asking him why service was hiding from its seekers. We sought the council of others as well, and the common response was “why don’t you talk to Marconi about this and your desire to be doing more work.” We took the advice after seeing we had no missionary endeavors planned on the calendar for the next two weeks. The many days that passed void of activity or service in conjunction with the lack of planned events ahead concerned us greatly. We had come to serve and we felt like we were not doing that. We asked Marconi, if we could spend maybe a week or longer serving at the orphanage, knowing full well we had deep purpose when serving at this facility. The answer was a brief “maybe” and no further steps were taking to see if this was a possibility. Even though we were finding ourselves not doing much the Lord was moving in our hearts and continuing to grow in us a desire to serve as an act of love and love as an act of service. We also asked if it would be possible to spend a few weeks in Carnauba, the city we built the church in last summer. We thought it would be neat to see and spend time with the people we ministered to a year ago, and serve them again in any way we could. We were told they did not feel comfortable with us being there without them so we moved on hoping some other opportunities for us to serve would arise.
Growing discontent in lack of service was a tuff situation to be in and after many attempts at communicating our hearts desire to serve and not getting anywhere we were honestly very frustrated. We continued to pray about this and what the Lord was teaching us. He was teaching us SO much, he was reshaping our hearts and growing in us a desire to have lives marked with service. Not just a couple months in Brazil but entire lives trade marked with this quality. God was also revealing to us the importance of Love, as simple as it is, we were really rocked with the truth that love must cover all that we do because God is love and this is his 1st and greatest commandment. We came knowing full-well that a challenge that would be there was the language barrier. We were ready to work around this and to our best to learn as much Portuguese as we could. We were very thankful that the missionary family spoke English as well. They were excited to teach us there language and we were excited to learn as much as we could in the time we were there. This was something that was very comical in our attempts to hold conversations with those who knew absolutely no English. We were so happy to be learning Portuguese because we believed it would be more powerful to speak directly to others than through one of the family members translating. However, during this learning process it was very difficult to never be able to understand what was going on. We found it especially hard to never understand a church sermon or Bible study. We were told that weren’t going to be translated for or have things translated to us because in the mist of this we would learn the language. Of course this was a goal of ours but was not our 1st priority. Our first priority was to serve the Lord with this missionary family. We found life and growth in daily reading our bibles and praying together. We also trust that the Lord’s spirit was teaching us many things, however we are confident in the importance of community, mentorship, being taught and “spiritual fed” by those who are our spiritual elders. This was an issue considering sermons were in Portuguese. To us these sermons were nothing but noises. Marconi told us he wanted to do a bible study with us in English and this more than great news to us, it was something we were starving for. About 3 weeks into our stay we did our 1st meeting and we greatly appreciated the community and being taught. This was honestly the only time we knew what was going on and besides this bible study our communication was reduced to saying hi, asking someone’s name, and how there were doing. We wanted to share our hearts, our stories, and the message of Jesus even if it required the family to translate. We never knew what we were doing moment to moment because all conversations were in Portuguese. We followed mere signals as to what to do and where to go all the time. One time Marconi asked us if we rather do our 2nd bible study or a Portuguese lesson and after Kelli quite boldly said that she would rather learn about God, we still did a Portuguese lesson instead and never did do the 2nd bible study. We started to feel like Portuguese was a bigger goal than what we came to do which was to serve, share, and love. Like we said before we do feel like there is so much power in being able to share with people directly instead of through a translator but throughout the learning period we didn’t want to shift focus from what was most important: God. As we felt communication was a problem even with the family that spoke English and of course a difficulty with others we began to feel unnecessarily trapped in a language barrier as weren’t getting much help. We felt like Portuguese took the front seat instead of serving, sharing, and hearing about God. This forced silence and inability to share our hearts was a burying feeling. After praying about this and the way we were feeling we thought it best to just talk with Marconi and clear things up. We tried to communicate with him that, of course we wanted to learn, but more than anything we wanted to serve and we felt trapped when we weren’t ever able to share our hearts through them, our translators as we did last summer. Nothing seemed to change from this point forward. We felt disrespected and like we weren’t important enough to ever be told what was going on, rather we were to just follow signals. Everywhere we went we just sat in silence as conversations progressed and nobody took time to fill us in. We felt useless and we were questioning our purpose again.
In conjunction with the lack of opportunities to serve, spiritual not being fed into, an inability to effectively communicate with even the English speaking family we were staying with, feeling that Portuguese became a bigger goal than Jesus, and feeling trapped in a language barrier we began to desperately call on the Lord as to what we were supposed to do. We felt like talking with Marconi and explaining things would be the best option but every attempt at sharing our heart previously failed and the conversations ended up concluding on some random topic having nothing to do with what we came to talk about. We felt like there was some kind of underlying tension with Marconi as well, as numerous bus-rides or walks home were in complete silence. This was such an uncomfortable feeling to be in the middle of, so we found it necessary to ask him what was going on. We asked if we had done anything to offend him or anybody and we asked why we felt this tension. The answer we received was “you guys have doing nothing wrong and if you had we would come to you right away, don’t worry about anything.” This was great to hear that nothing had been done wrong but after this conversation the tension was still there, we found ourselves again feeling trapped and stuck. Communicating to Marconi was such a challenge, we felt disrespected, always in the mist of tension for reasons unknown to us, and our hearts were losing steam. It was burying and the lack of healthy communication with those we were staying with, in conjunction with this strange tension all while being in a foreign country started to get to us. Our hearts were losing steam and we prayed God would show us what we were supposed to do. We came before the Lord with hearts surrendered and desperate, willing to do whatever he called us to do, whether we were to stay or go. Sure enough the Lord answered our prayers. He spoke it clearly to us that our work there was done, he taught us what he needed and wanted to, and it was time for us to take our changed lives and reshaped hearts to serve him elsewhere.
We are thankful the Lord understands and sees all things and is always at work even in the mist of our not being able to understand his plan. God’s hand was clearly at work and an opportunity for 2 females to serve on Summer Staff at a Christian Young Life camp in the U.S. for the month of July came our way. Wow, we were blown away by this opportunity, and we knew that God was moving and hearing our prayers. We are thankful that the Lord is always in control and we are trusting that he knew all along that our mission trip was going to look a lot different than we expected. We know he called us to Brazil and he knew how hard it was going to be, and the way Jesus refined us into women who understand the importance of love in all circumstances whether it is easy or seemingly impossible, is something we will forever embrace. Love cannot exist apart from God because he created it and it encompasses everything he is. In the mist of not being able to serve as much as we had hoped God spoke to our hearts the importance of taking love and combining it with service as a lifestyle and not 2 qualities that characterize just a 2 month mission trip. God sent us through the fire to be refined for the last month during our time in Brazil and now he has called us out, and redirected our trip our mission trip back to the United States. We are back in Colorado and continuing the second month of our mission trip, hopefully at Young Life’s Southwind camp in Ocklawaha Florida as full time servants! Young Life is a ministry that seeks to meet kids wherever they are in life, build lasting relationships with them and introduce them to Jesus. Throughout the school year weekly gathers titled “club” are hosted in kid’s houses throughout the entire United States. Young Life leaders venture into middle schools, high schools, and colleges in an attempt to meet others and invite them to these weekly gathers. A typical “club” is a couple hours filled with skits, games, singing, and a message about Jesus at the end. Both of us have been involved in Young Life throughout high school and now in college. This is a solid ministry that has summer camps all over the United States as well as abroad. Young Life leaders build relationships with the kids that come to “club” throughout the school year and then invite the students to come to camp. Camp is a weeklong and jam-packed with fun activities that include things from water sports, to climbing walls, ropes courses, swimming, watching skits, singing, dancing, playing sports, and hanging out with other kids from all over the U.S. Throughout the week talks are giving on who Jesus is, what he did for us on the cross, how he loves us, and how he desires to be our salvation and embark on a relationship with us. Many people are needed to run these activity-packed camps and Summer Staff is the title of those who volunteer to help run the camp. We are thrilled at the opportunity and ready to take are reshaped hearts to serve with eyes still fixed on Jesus in a place that is desperate for volunteers. We are currently in the application process and ask for prayers that we could finish promptly and be accepted into this month long program.
We will continue to update our blog as we have not come back from our mission trip yet but are just being redirected as to where we will be serving for the remainder of it. Thank you again for your support, prayers and love for us. We are discovering that God works outside of our plans and we are learning to be flexible with change and sensitive to his guiding spirit. He is good, faithful, and incredibly mysterious, and always purposeful. If you desire to hear more we are more than willing to share our experiences further in depth. We love you all!
All for His glory,
Jessi and Kelli – TEAM KJ