A Survey Trip

Tomorrow I (Josh) will be leaving on my first big trip. I’m going with 3 of the other missionaries on a survey trip. We will be visiting two cities, Breves (bre-vease) and Portel, and scouting them out as a possible future base for the Xingu Mission. They are about halfway between Altamira and Belem, a large city on the coast, just south of the mouth of the Amazon. Between here and Belem are hundreds of small dots on the map. Each dot representing a small town, and for every dot there are probably 20 other small villages that are not on any map.

The mission leadership has a vision to evangelize the area from here to Belem. If you look on a good map of the region, rivers look like arteries, running every which direction. And on each river there are countless people living without the knowledge of Christ. They’ve identified these two cities as possibly good locations for a base, to then be able to reach beyond to the hundreds, if not thousands of small communities along the rivers. We will be evaluating the cities with a number of criteria to determine if they are a good fit. Some of the things we will be looking for.

Ø A good banking system. Some remote towns have no good way to access money.

Ø Internet. Almost a necessity to stay connected to the rest of the mission and to the many supporters and churches back home.

Ø Modern grocery stores. We’re not looking for Kroger’s here. But do they have decent-sized stores with a reasonable supply of goods?

Ø Healthy churches. If there are already churches that are reaching this area, we will look somewhere else.

It’s exciting to be a part of such a trip. Who knows how God will use this to lead the mission, and maybe even down the road, our family. We’ll be taking a mission boat, it’s about a 32-hour boat ride and we’ll be gone about 10 days. Please pray that God reveals His plan to us on this trip. Pray for Brin as she stays back with the kids. I look forward to sharing more when I return.