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Kairos graduates
This fall has been full of highlights for our family and the mission here in southern Brazil. In March, we held our seminary graduation. We celebrated our six graduates from our Pastoral Formation Program, as well as our first two Kairos Brazil graduates. While we would love to introduce you to all our graduates, we will highlight the stories of two of them: Joni and Flávio.
Joni & Flávio
Joni and his family have been a part of the church our family attends, where his skills as a teacher and preacher have been evident. He answered the call to pastoral ministry by enrolling in our seminary, where he has grown so much as a learner and practitioner of the Word of God. Now, as a graduate, he has accepted the call to be pastor of one of the oldest churches in our city. Please pray for him and his family, as this church is in need of revitalization and is in an older neighborhood that has issues with crime.
Flávio has come to us from a different group of Baptist churches in our state. He had heard about our program and its high quality, as he has been led to minister to some of the neediest people in our area. He pursued formal theological education to give more depth and skill to the passion he already had to reach the lost. He used to work as a mechanic in areas close to some of the poorest neighborhoods of our area, known in Portuguese as “favelas.” Often these communities are closed off to the rest of the world, as they are often havens for the drug trade. However, Flávio has been able to minister in some of these communities, as he has gained the trust of their leaders. Now, as a seminary graduate, he is looking for ways to train more of God’s people to reach these communities with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Through our seminary’s connection with Flávio, my colleague Lyndell and I have started to build a partnership with his network of churches. They have a sister seminary to ours in the metropolitan region of our city, and they are praying for ways to expand the reach of their theological education through missions to other parts of South America and by also reaching out to other denominations that do not offer formal theological training for their leaders. Please pray with us as we discern how God might use our mission to partner with their mission in further proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom here in South America!
This fall also marks the second half of the school year for Daniel, Monica, and Olivia. Daniel is nearly halfway through his bachelor’s program at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. Olivia is nearing the end of eighth grade, as she is preparing for high school. And Monica is nearly halfway done with high school. All students in tenth grade at her school spend the entire school year working on an intense, personal project. Monica chose to write a book entitled What Is Home? It’s a fictional story about a girl who all of a sudden has to move from her big city in Brazil to a small town in South Dakota as her parents pursue God’s calling. In the story, she recounts many ups and downs as a pandemic hits the world and her grandfather dies suddenly, not to mention how friends came and went. Perhaps we should say that her story is only somewhat fictional.
Reading her story, we thought of our journey these past six years and reflected on God’s promises and grace. We couldn’t thrive here without him, and we are so thankful how he continues to use you, our support team, to sustain us.
Thanks so much for your prayers and partnership.