13 days to go…

In less than two weeks, we will once again host a short-term mission team from Kirk of Hills Church.  This year Jordan & Emily James are leading a team of 8 folks to spend approximately seven days of ministry and fun with us and our Brazilian friends.

We know we are ready for the team to arrive because we just ran out of peanut-butter!

But in all seriousness, we are extremely excited about the team coming down.  One of the interesting aspects of this group is that they are all younger than Liliam and I.  Brazil as a whole is a very young country and a large part of our core target audience are below the age of 30.  We are excited to see the relationships that will be forged that only followers of Christ can truly experience!

This is the perfect time for a mission team to visit.  July is a major holiday month for Brazilians.  Schools and universities on break for the month and many Brazilians will take their vacation during this time.  Simply put, the availability for our Brazilian friends to co-participate drastically improves during the month of July.

And co-participation is what these short-term missions teams from the US are all about.  Our passion is that Brazilians would gain a vision and passion for seeing God’s Glory reach all peoples.

The team will arrive here in Brazil on Sunday July 13th.  Monday and Tuesday we will be ministering here in Bragança Paulista with two local church plants.  Wednesday we will travel to Boreceia along to coast of São Paulo to aid Pastor Paulo César and his work among the Guarani Indians.  From there, the team will return to São Paulo on Saturday July 19th for their return flight.  During these seven days, it is our goal to include as many Brazilians as possible.

Would you pray for us during these seven days.
Pray specifically for:

• Safe travel for the team with no delays or missed connections.
• For the energy level to remain high for all team members, both American and Brazilians.
• That the Lord would work through us and we would see people come to know Jesus as their Savior.
• That through these experiences, we would all gain a greater passion to see the Lord made known, both in our home cultures and even to the ends of the earth.

Once again, Liliam and I are humbled by the support each of you provides us.  We could not do what we are doing with out you.

On Two Separate Areas…
2008 marked 100 years of Japanese immigration to Brazil.  There have been major celebrations all over Brazil and both countries have even minted special coins to commemorate the occasion.   From a missions perspective, it is fascinating to see these two different cultures celebrate together.  How great would it be if the next 100 years would be marked by a reverse immigration of missionaries from Brazil going to Japan!

I have been working on a website project these past few weeks.  A Timeline of Christian Missions.  It is still a work in process, but feel free to take a look.

For His Glory,
Jason & Liliam Gardner

Lately, I’ve been listening to quite a few sermons by John Piper.  I’ve always loved Piper.  He seems to be one of the most ‘complete’ ministers that I know.  He is a preacher, theologian, writer, evangelist, historian, & mobilizer for world missions.  I know very few pastors who can preach and teach with such authority on such a broad and complex basis.

This past week, I listened to talk he gave in 2000 at the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors on the English Missionary John G Patton (1826-1908).  Patton was a missionary to the South Islands know as the New Hebrides.

Here is probably his most famous quote:

Amongst many who sought to deter me, was one dear old Christian gentleman, whose crowning argument always was, “The Cannibals! You will be eaten by Cannibals!” At last I replied, “Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.”

Here are few more facts about this amazing man:

• He was a successful Urban Evangelist in his own country, but chose to leave his home for the jungles of the South Pacific.
• On the way to the Islands, he led the captain of his ship to Christ.
• His wife died from a tropical fever within one month of his arrival to the New Hebrides.  His infant son died a week later.  He dug both their graves by hand.
• Patton himself was stricken 14 times with the same tropical fever that killed wife and child.
• After 4 years on the island of Tanna, under almost constant threat from cannibals, Patton returned to England.  His stories and teaching about these hard four years helped mobilze thousands for the cause of World Missions
• After four years in England, Patton returned to the New Hedrides.  This time to the island of Aniwa.  Before he stepped foot on land, he claimed the island for Christ.
• With in a few years time, the entire island had turned to Christ.

I have included below a short audio clip of Piper’s sermon.  This part talks specifically about John Patton’s mobilization efforts.  The basic essence of the clip is this: the local church has never suffered because she chose to follow the Great Commission.  It amazes me how many people view missions as competition to the local church resources.

In fact, just a few months ago, Liliam and I visited a small church to hear a friend preach.  After the service we were talking with a fe members of the church.  They asked what we did and we told them that our passion was to Mobilize the Brazilian Church for Missions.  To that, one of the men made the commit that he does not understand how an church could even think about missions when Brazil still has so many needs.

I wish I had this clip to respond with:

 

 John Piper [5:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

For those of you who are interested, here is the link to the text and download of this sermon.

Over on the left hand side of the website, you should notice a item titled: Jason’s Shared Items.  In case you are wondering, my shared items are a some of post from my RSS feed that I found the most interesting.  My RSS feeds are fairly diverse.  Ranging from Christianblogs, coffee, Drupal, web design, and of course Brazil.

Hopefully, you will find one or two interesting.  You can also see them all listen on one page here.  And if you have an RSS feed, let me know what some of your favorites are.

God Bless

Jason

Here are a few photos from the Perspectivas no Movemento Cristão Mundial intensive that we held a few weeks ago in Atibaia.
For those of you not familiar with Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, you can visit the website for more details. To call it a “missions” course, I think, minimizes not only the impact of this course, but its very nature as well. This course is about God. It is about His plan, His ways, and His Son Jesus Christ. What it is not about is becoming a missionary, going overseas, or neglecting local ministry.
Perspectives is literally being offered all the world. If you ever get a chance to take the course, do it! It will change the way you look at the world, at the church, and God.

He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
I will also make You a light of the nations
So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Isaiah 49:6 (note, this is God speaking to His Son Jesus)

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

A few months back, I was one of the lucky individuals to receive an invitation to the private Beta test of Evernote. For those of you who have not heard of Evernote and easy web clipping program. I do a lot of web surfing, , simply put, it is a fantasticresearching, and googling. Evernote has been a great help to organizing and being able to retrieve information from literally hundreds of websites. Evernote has both Mac and PC clients as well as a web bookmark that allows me to save a website by simply clicking on a bookmark in the toolbar of my Firefox browser.
The open invite for the Beta will only be available until 9pm PST, so get it while you can.

Lately, I’ve been working on translations or talks and bible studies as well as developing my own set of testimonies and illustrations. All of which are being prepared in Portuguese. The process has been slow and very frustrating. Obviously, my native tongue, heart language, the way a I think, is all in English. Sometimes, many times, the phrases, points, fancy illustrations, etc… just don’t work in Portuguese. Or they lose some of their crispness that they had in English.

This of course is not to say the Portuguese language and the way Brazilians speak it, is lacking in anyway. Rather, I am lacking in almost every way in my ability to teach and preach. This is all par for the course and while frustrating, I am learning so much about communication that goes beyond simple the works we use. I am forced to ask myself, “is this worth saying?” “Does it really add to the message?” and “Is this worth the time and effort to translate?” More often than not, the answer is no.

Anyone who has heard me teach or speak probably knows that I often use 10 words when 1 would have done just fine. So this process of streamlining, cutting, removing, and selecting, I hope, is making me a better communicator.

With that said, I recently read and article by Joe Thorn, Pastor of Redeemer Fellowship outside of Chicago. His article, entitled “Before you preach,” lists the 5 major questions that he asks of himself and his message throughout the sermon preparation process. HE asks the questions in order to. “bring a sense of sobriety and urgency” to his preaching.

His five main questions are:

1. Does this message exalt the gospel of Jesus Christ?
2. Will people know what to do after hearing the message?
3. Am I saying anything that will distract from the point I am trying to make?
4. Do I, at any point, make much of myself in this sermon?
5. Would I like this to be the last sermon I ever preach?

(He goes in to greater detail on each point, so I highly encourage you to read the entire article.)

I have found that asking these questions that my selection process for what to say, what to translate, what to expend energy developing, is much more focused and straightforward. They help me stay focused on the message that Jesus Christ has a mission, a mission to Redeem the Nations. It’s not about me, it’s not about my ideas or even what I can and cannot say in the Portuguese language. It’s about Christ. Or as Mark Driscoll likes to say, “It’s all about Jesus, it’s only about Jesus, it’s always about Jesus.”

Jason

Well, it’s official… American Politics is a total joke.  From TVGuide:

Clinton, Obama and McCain Wrestle for WWE Fans Vote

The rasslin’ ring is the latest stump stop. Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, along with GOP presidential hopeful John McCain, will bring their campaigns to WWE Monday Night Raw tonight (8 pm/ET, USA).

Each candidate will address the audience in a taped message. For Clinton and Obama, the hope is that tonight’s appearance could lead to a body slam in tomorrow’s Pennsylvania primary.

Somewhere in Oak Ridge Cemetery and Mt Vernon, a couple of bodies just did somersaults.

In honor of our girls turning 2 & 6 this week, I thought I would post this list from a recent Desiring God blog post.  The post, entitled 10 Ways to Help Kids Love Missions, reminded me the importance of connecting Gabi & Isa to the work we are doing here.  Often we forget that our kids did not have a choice to go to the mission field.  They are, however, an integral part of what we are trying to instill in our Brazilian friends.  A common “fear” for people considering the mission field is the concern of raising their family in a strange far off land.  I beleive that the beter we can integrate family and our ministry of Mobilizing Brazilians, then the better our example to others.

I wnat to highlight number 7 on this list very quickly.  The authors state:

7. Affirm and nurture qualities in your children which could serve them on the mission field. As your children grow in knowledge and skill, encourage them to think about how they could use their gifts in missions work. Then, if God says, “go,” release them to go!

This is probably the hardest one on the list, even for me.  My little girls are far from leaving the nest, but the idea that they may one day choose the mission field scares me even now.  Recently, Gabi has become fascinated with her Rand McNally Children’s Atlas.  Published in 1989 and not the most accurate, she is noentheless facitnated with the pictures and descriptions of far off places (her favorite being Sweeden).

Here is the list.

10 Ways to Help Kids Love Missions

There are things we can do to help our kids love the nations and the cause of Christ, even though a heart and calling for the Great Commission is ultimately something only God can grant. Here are a few ideas from Ryan and Anna, who are currently preparing to serve in Asia with their two young daughters.

1. Pray for missionaries as a family. We keep a stack of prayer cards on the dinner table and rotate through them during mealtime prayers.

2. Read missionary biographies to your children. The stories of Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, William Carey, Gladys Aylward, and other missionary pioneers are captivating ways to orient a child’s heart on the most important things in life.

3. Draw the whole family into supporting missionaries financially. Teach your kids from a young age that being a good steward of their money involves channeling resources toward the the cause of Christ in missions. Older kids can donate some of their lawn mowing and babysitting money. Younger children can earn money doing chores around the house which can be set aside for missionaries.

4. Find your child a missionary kid pen pal. Many children of missionaries around the world would be delighted to get mail from a child their age in their parent’s culture. Your child (and the whole family) will learn valuable insights about living abroad through the eyes of a child. Additionally, when the missionaries visit your church, your child will already have a relationship with the MK and will be able to include them more easily.

5. Entertain missionaries in your home. Inviting missionaries over will be as much of a blessing to your family as to the missionaries. Host them for dinner or for a whole furlough. Build or buy your house with this in mind.

6. Take risks as a family. There are ways to live life which help children grasp the reality that discomfort and suffering are normal and rewarding parts of the Christian experience. Volunteer at a rescue mission; house a single mother; move to the inner-city.

7. Affirm and nurture qualities in your children which could serve them on the mission field. As your children grow in knowledge and skill, encourage them to think about how they could use their gifts in missions work. Then, if God says, “go,” release them to go!

8. Teach your children to be world Christians. Don’t expose them to only the American perspective on news and realities around the world. Go out of your way to make them more aware than the average American Christian about geography, world history, and the plights and perspectives of people across the globe.

9. Read missionary prayer letters to your children. Ask them questions about the content and look up facts about the missionaries’ location on the Internet.

10. Use missions fact books and resources such as Operation World, the Global Prayer Digest, the Joshua Project, and Voice of the Martyrs (VOM). Kids of Courage is the youth-oriented arm of VOM and offers activity books, spotlights on the persecuted world, and more.

Most of all, pray every day that your kids will develop hearts that mirror God’s compassion for the nations and love for his glory in them!

We would love to give you information about our family and ministry for you to use with your children.  Drop us a line and please be in pray for us.

Be Blessed

Jason

In about 45 minutes, April 1st will be upon us.  In otherwords, for the next 24+ hours, we can’t believe anything we read on the internet.  (Wait how is that different that every other day.)   Anyway, some websites have already started the pranking.  Over the past day, it seems like 25% of my RSS feed has been April Fools pranks.  Here is a run down of a few:

• Google Australia announced a new search feature called Gday whereby you can now search the future.  I wonder what’s for lunch tomorrow?
• Digg.com has been sold to FoxNews.com. (gotta be a geek to get that one)
• The UK website of YouTube rickrolled its Featured Videos list.

and my favorite so far

• The Australian tech website itwire reports that apple are releasing a pc version of mac os x in the Q3 of 2008 the article ended with the sentence “Despite the best efforts of iTWire, neither Steve Jobs nor Fake Steve Jobs could be contacted for further comment.” revelling the article to be just a prank.

If your in the mood for a little pranking yourself, Wired has a pretty funny article on the top ten geek pranks. (via Between Two Worlds)

Wikipedia always does a good job of cataloging some of the more popular Aprils Fools Pranks. Here is their list for April 1, 2008.

*Update*  Well, I woke up this morning and the inner webs have gone crazy with April Fools jokes.  Here are a few more for you:

• Stuff White People Like announces they have been bought by Target.
• Gizmodo has been taken over by Mr. T.
• Techcrunch has posted on Google’s New Wake Up Kit.  You can know add wake up evens on your Google Calendar.
• Google seems to have nothing better to do with their $450 stock price than come uo with April Fools Jokes.  Now they have announced Virgle. A partnership with Virgin to start the first settlement on Mars and they are holding a YouTube contest to pick the settlers.  If this means we can stick the most annoying YouTubers into a rocket and fire it into space… I say go for it! Video here.

*Update 2* This one is my favorite.  Think Christian posted and article describing the ongoing process to elect an Evangelical Pope or “ePope.”  The link to where you can vote goes straight to the Wikipedia April Fools Page.  The last line is a classic:

Rob Bell was not invited to attend.

Be Blessed, Safe Pranking, and remember, don’t believe anything you read today….and maybe tomorrow too.

jason

Look out Brazilian bad guys!  The local Bragança Paulista Municipal Guard are now armed with brand new Segway x2 police editions!  What does that mean for the local criminal element?  Well, if you are a crook who frequents the Lake in the center of town and don’t have any for of transportation that moves faster than 12mph and you are not smart enough to run up one of the super steep hills that the Segways cannot climb AND you commit your crime in broad daylight when the lake area is the busiest, you just might be in trouble.

Here is a slideshow of the local police and their $6000 Segway x2’s in action!

On a more serious note, these things are ridiculously expensive and not very practical for Bragança.  The base unit cost around $6000 US, and that is without any upgrades or extras. Furthermore, almost anything electronic or computerized costs double in Brazil.  Our city could have easily paid over 20k for these two Segways.  Considering that our local schools are a joke, the roads need work, and just the overall poverty of this country, I can’t help but wonder what they were thinking.  This city is seriously hilly.  Most of the streets are steep enough to warrant 1st gear.  That means that these two Segways have a patrol areal that consists of one half 4km diamater lake.

All this said, I sooo want to take one for a ride!