Saturation Evangelism in Goianapolis, Brasil

I am currently participating in the most exciting, dynamic evangelism effort I have ever been a part of in my life. I have grown up my entire life evangelizing on the streets, in school, at work, and on mission trips, but I have never seen anything like this before. We are literally planting a church in one week. For real.
About 40 people are here evangelizing all seven days while a total of about 80 people are coming here for one day or more to evangelize. We are in a small country town named Goianapolis with a population of about 15,000. The city lies between the major cities of Goiania and Anapolis and, thus, the name. There is a small Presbyterian congregation already existing here with about 20 members. We came here to evangelize the city and help establish this church as a potent, permanent presence in the city.
Before ever arriving to Goianapolis tons of preparation was done for the one-week outreach. The local Presbyterian pastor, Pastor Aldo, and our pastors from Goiania all met with the mayor of Goianapolis many times in order to gain his permission and assistance in the city-wide outreach. The mayor, who is a Christian and who’s name is Mayor Jehovah (I thought Mexicans were extreme by naming their kids Jesus, but now I’m discovering that a common name Brazilians give their kids is Jehovah!) gave the pastors the key to the city. He allowed us to be based at the nicest public high school of the city; gave us permits to perform music, dances, skits, and preachings at the main plaza of the city; and openly evangelize in the city. I believe he allowed this because we were not only going to evangelize, but we were going to offer many social services to the people of the city free of charge.

Summary of Events

Here is how our week went.
On Monday we spent the whole day driving to the city, getting situated at the locations we were sleeping at, and preparing for all the activities that were going to take place throughout the week. All the men and boys were sleeping in the classrooms of the high school, while all the women and girls stayed at homes of people from the Presbyterian congregation. All of our equipment, materials, Bibles, food, etc., was based at the school. Half of our activities were going to be held at the school and half were going to be held in the downtown area of the city. We prepared everything for the Vacation Bible School that was going to start the next day and ate our first meal together. Then at 8 p.m. all the members of the local Presbyterian church showed up and we had a church service with our team and their members. We got to know each other, received some orientation about the week’s activities, and prayed together for the outreach. We went to sleep by 11 p.m. because every day we would have to wake up at 7 a.m. to begin the day early.
Throughout the outreach there were several ways that we reached out to the city.
On Tuesday, we had a special culinary class with a professional chef teaching exquisite recipes that were cooked and eaten on the spot. We had a class for parents on drug prevention, the reality of drug addiction, and drug rehabilitation.
On Thursday, we showed a Christian movie in the main public square and about ten people accepted Christ. Throughout the whole week we had table tennis classes twice, two soccer classes, and a soccer tournament. At the end of the tournament everyone won Bibles and chocolate. We also had a class on how to raise your children correctly and discipline them correctly. We had another class about how to grow your business from being a small business to a large business.g
On Friday and Saturday night we had live worship bands each night, 2 dance teams, evangelistic skits, and a 5 minute preaching with an altar call each night. This was all done at the central plaza of the city. On Saturday night it was especially packed because they were having a Feira (open market) at the plaza. While the groups performed I preached to people one-on-one at the market. One of the guys who had been saved earlier that week tagged along with me as I evangelized. He loved it. It was so cool cause he came to Christ, was given his first Bible, went to church, and learned how to preach the Gospel all in one week. His name is Ronaldo. Please pray for him for God to continue to guide and use him.
All morning, afternoon, and night of Saturday we had free medical care for the public. We tested their blood pressure, their triglycerides, and gave them consultations. We had two doctors on site from our church. It was really amazing.
Also, all Saturday afternoon we had a bazaar where we sold tons of donated items for anywhere between 50 cents to 5 reals. It was basically a one-day super thrift store. It was super intense and fruitful. Hundreds of people came and virtually everything was sold. During Saturday afternoon we also had a dentist from our church teach a class on proper dental care.
All of these served as ways to bless the community, show the love of God, build relationships and trust with the people, and directly preach the Gospel to the people as well. We never heard one negative comment during all of these activities. The community was extremely grateful and open to our love and the Gospel.
Also, I was really impressed that we had great turnouts to all of the above events described. When I first saw the schedule I thought to myself, “Who would want to attend a culinary class, table tennis lessons, or watch a Christian movie that they’ve never heard of?” Despite my doubts great numbers of people attended all of our activities. A couple of the classes only had about 10 people attend and one business class had no one attend, but most of the classes and activities had a larger attendance. Hundreds of people attend our activities, were touched by them, and gave their lives to Jesus through these events.

Door-to-Door Evangelism

However, the main forms of evangelism that we used to reach Goianapolis was daily door-to-door evangelism every morning and afternoon and a daily Vacation Bible School for kids ages 3 to 13 every afternoon. Both forms of evangelism were highly effective and great fruit came out of both of them.
At first, I was very intimidated by doing door-to-door evangelism in a small country town. I am an urbanite. I feel very comfortable evangelizing in an urban context, but I have never evangelized in a small town before. Also, door-to-door evangelism is one of the most difficult styles of evangelism and I have always thought that in the country people would hate for anyone to knock on their door to witness to them. This city is the tomato capital of Brazil.
So I thought that the residents here would be very suspicious and closed to outsiders knocking on their doors, especially since this city is strongly Catholic. However, I was proven wrong. This has been, perhaps, the easiest, most pleasant evangelism experience I have ever had in my life. I am not exaggerating. Nearly everyone we visited gladly opened their doors to us and invited us in to share the Gospel with them and almost all the people we shared the Gospel with ended up giving their lives to Jesus.
Someone might think that they accepted Jesus because they were already Catholic, yet nearly everyone I spoke to said that they had no idea where they would go to once they died and they believed that it was impossible for anyone to have assurance of salvation. The few people that did think that they were going to go to Heaven said that the reason they would go to Heaven was because they were good people who didn’t harm anybody. Thus, when we preached the Gospel to them many of them were hearing this Gospel for the first time. They had never heard of a Gospel of grace that is attained by faith, not by works, and promises eternal life to all who believe.
We were all given a really nice booklet that had beautiful images on each page with a scripture on each page. Each scripture and picture explained the Gospel in a very natural order. So every time we flipped the page we knew exactly what to say because there was a scripture already explaining the next part of the Gospel message. This made it very easy for everyone to share the Gospel even if they had never evangelized before. Furthermore, the beautiful pictures made it much easier for the people to pay attention to the message, especially since many of the people we spoke to were illiterate and the scriptures on each page made our message irrefutable because the people saw that what we were preaching was straight from the Word of God. Thus, by the end of our message most people received Jesus into their lives because they saw that we were preaching was straight from the Bible and because they wanted to have assurance of salvation.
Moreover, one thing we made clear to everyone we spoke to was that we were not here promoting any religion, we were not here to convert them to our denomination, and we were not here to bring them to our church. We were here only to share the Scriptures with them and tell them about the message of salvation that Jesus preached. Before making this statement many staunch Catholics hesitated in inviting us into their homes, but once we made it clear that we were here to talk about Jesus and the Bible and not our church they almost always invited us in.
In total, we knocked on the doors of about 570 homes, we were invited into and presented the Gospel in over 400 homes, and over 200 people prayed with us to commit their lives to Jesus! It was amazing!

Deliverance

Also, during the evangelism, several people were delivered from demons. I know of three deliverances that took place in our group and one with a friend’s group. The first day we went witnessing there was a man who said that he was seeing demons and hearing voices. Mamesio prayed for him and he immediately felt relieved. The second occurrence was when three young adults decided to give their lives to Christ. As they repeated the prayer to accept Jesus into their lives one of them started getting a strong headache, feeling dizzy, and nearly fainted, but he was able to sit on a concrete bench right next to him. I asked him what was going on and he told me. I told Mamesio once the prayer was finished and Mamesio cast the demon out of him, explained to him what had just happened to him, and told him what he needs to do in order to prevent a demon from entering his life again. Thirdly, Ronaldo was delivered from a demon of depression, which I explain later on in this entry.
Lastly, our friend Zu preached the Gospel to a 15-year-old girl and when the girl was praying to receive Jesus in her life she began to say, “I’m going to die! I feel like I’m going to die! Jesus save me!” At that moment she fainted and lost consciousness. Zu grabbed her before she fell, but Zu’s hand got smashed on the brick wall that was behind the girl. The girl eventually gained consciousness again and Zu was able to cast the demon out of her. Zu then asked her what was it that had caused the demon to come into her life and the girl said that she has just had two horrible fights with her mother and her grandfather and she was going to move out of the house. When Zu told us the story she showed us her bloody knuckles that had been smashed against the wall. That girl went to the culinary class that same night. Zu walked her back home once the class was over and when they arrived at the home the girl’s mother came out and gave Zu a big hug and thanked her for what she had done for her daughter.

Worship Services

Furthermore, every day whenever we would have a really great experience with a certain family or couple we would ask them if we could hold a worship service in their home that night. We would ask them to please invite their neighbors and friends to the meeting and we would show up at 8 p.m. for a one hour meeting where we would sing 3 or 4 songs of worship, preach a 20 minute message, and pray for everyone there. Literally everyone we asked always said yes to having the meeting in their home on the same night and when we would arrive at their home at 8 p.m. their house would always be full of people.
We had seven different services in seven different homes. I participated in three of those services. In the first two I led the worship and in the third one I led the whole service. Each service was amazing.
The first service was probably the largest. There were about 8 or 9 adults, 8 or 9 youth, and 2 toddlers. We brought about 6 people from our group, so we were all squeezed in to the house very tightly. Everyone here loves Vineyard songs such as This is the Air I Breathe, In the Secret, and Pour Out My Heart, so I simply played the Vineyard songs that I knew in English and they sang the song in Portuguese. I only knew the chorus of each song in Portuguese, so I would only join in for the chorus. Pr. Beny preached and everyone gave their lives to Jesus, except for one woman named Perpeta. She was a backslidden Christian who had been away from God for 5 years now and she said that she knew that if she gave her life to Christ she wouldn’t be able to follow Him because her husband always fights with her about going to church and following God. After talking with her for a while she asked us if we could have a worship service at her house the next night, so that her husband could be there because he never goes to church.
Also, there was a 15-year-old boy named Ronaldo who was so depressed that he hadn’t stopped crying for about 3 days. He refused to life up his head and during the entire service he stayed in the kitchen crying, not wanting to be a part of the service. He was depressed because his family had just moved to Goianapolis and his girlfriend from his past town broke up with him. Pr. Beny prayed for him and encouraged him, but he still wouldn’t lift up his head or stop crying. Then I talked to him, prayed with him, and ordered the demons to leave him. He got a little better, but still would not lift up his head. He said that he would like to have a Bible to read.
So the next night we had a service at Perpeta’s house, which had about 12 people in total. Most of them were the same people from the past service, but there were a few new faces, including Perpeta’s husband. I led worship in the cell group again and this time Josie, a woman who had come from Sao Paulo, preached.
The third meeting was with a family that my group had evangelized and I had brought to Christ. I asked them about having the worship service in their home, so I was asked by Pr. Beny to lead the whole meeting. So on Friday I was able to rally 3 people from our team to come with me. About 8 or 9 people showed up for the meeting and since the host couple and a few of the others had already accepted Christ I felt led to preach a deeper message about being a disciple of Christ. I led worship and then preached on the rich young ruler and how Christ demands everything from us if we want to be His disciple. It was a pretty radical message for a new group of people. However, again, I was amazed. All of them stood up and prayed together with me to commit to be Christ’s disciple. It was so beautiful. They all wanted Bibles, so the next day I came by again and gave them all Bibles.

Vacation Bible School

The other main way we reached out to the city was through a free Vacation Bible School for the children of the community from ages 3 to 13. Every afternoon from Tuesday until Friday we held a VBS for the kids of the community. So during the morning everyone in our whole team evangelized door-to-door, but during the afternoon nearly everyone became fully involved at the VBS while only two or three teams of evangelism would go out to witness. I would usually go out to evangelize in the afternoon, but on Wednesday I helped at the VBS because I had never been a part of a VBS in my life and I want to see what it was like. I assisted Aderico in teaching the class for 11-13 year olds. We had a blast.
On the first day more than 80 kids attended, but from Wednesday to Friday we consistently had over 180 children attend. Each day we would start the VBS by singing some fun kids worship songs. Then we had a missionary story about a boy named Samuelito that was told as a series each day. Then everyone would be divided according to their age to attend their class. They were all taught several Bible stories. After the story they would have a good snack, usually soda, a hot dog, and homemade chocolate cake. Then each group would take turns participating in fun activities such as arts and crafts, jumping on a trampoline, playing in the playground, etc. Also, we had unlimited cotton candy during playtime.
It was a lot of hard work to set up, run, and clean up every day and everyone put in time to help. In total, over 70 of the kids made decisions to give their lives to Christ. Moreover, every day during VBS the parents of the children were able to participate in the classes being offered while they waited for their kids. Thus, including the parents, we had well over 200 people attend our VBS every afternoon at the high school. We were definitely the most happenin’ place in town.

Rest and Fun

We all worked hard during this week, but we all rested and enjoyed ourselves too. Every day we went to bed around midnight and we had to wake up at 7 a.m., so we all got about 7 hours of sleep a night. Morning evangelism would be done from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Then from 11:30 to 1:00 we would eat lunch, which is the main meal of the day in Brazil, and then we would all take a SIESTA!!!!!!!!!!! …until 2 p.m.!!!!!!!! Every day I would say, “This is the life! Preach the Gospel, eat good food, and have a siesta, then preach the Gospel again, serve the community with some social work, and go to bed! What a life!”
Furthermore, we had an amazing chef named Iran who, along with his comrades Humberto and Sandro, would cook us 5 meals a day!!!!!!! I’m totally serious! So let me explain. Breakfast every morning was French bread with butter, cheese, and/or ham and coffee and/or hot chocolate. Lunch was huge and always different. It was the main meal of the day and would always be served exactly at noon. Around 4 p.m. you had your “snack” in the middle of the day. This was usually a hot dog and a piece of cake, or ham and cheese sandwiches, or cheese bread and salgadinhos (finger foods). Then we would have dinner, which was almost always just as big of a meal as lunch. This was always around 6 to 7 p.m. Also, form 5 to 7 p.m. was another break time every day. Lastly, we would have a “snack at night before going to bed around 10 or 11 p.m. This snack would consist of lots of hot chocolate with cookies, or bread with butter and/or cheese.
I made a comment that I don’t know how people in Brazil could eat so much and still remain thin and my cousin Andre gave me a great answer. He said that in Brazil they eat 5 times a day, but the portions that they eat are much smaller. In America we eat 2 or 3 times a day (he said two because in big cities a lot of people don’t eat breakfast anymore), but we eat much larger portions. It is proven that it is healthier for your metabolism to eat more often throughout the day in smaller portions. However, when Americans come to Brazil they are not able to contain themselves and they eat large portions for all five of the meals and always end up gaining weight in Brazil. Great answer.
Moreover, Wednesday night was the Copa America game of Brazil vs. Ecuador and on Sunday was the Copa America game Brazil vs. Paraguay, which they lost miserably. We watched both of the games since neither of the games interfered with the scheduled times of our outreach. Also, we played soccer after the days activities three times. And
Thus, even in the midst of such amazing outreach, dynamic activities, and hard work, we were still able to rest well and have lots of fun. It was absolutely amazing! I have never been a part of such a powerful, holistic, well-organized outreach. Thank you Igreja Presbiteriana Maranatha!