Interior Evangelism

Imagine you want to take a survey of the counties nearest to where you live.  You're looking to see what churches have works in which cities.  Easy enough, right?  You whip out your tablet and hunt around on Google Maps.  Then you can do some checking for Facebook pages for churches in the cities and towns your researching.  Easy peasy!  You can even go to the old Yellow Pages website and hunt around.  Add in a general web search and you're all set.

Not so easy in Northeast Brazil!  Many places are just not on the map.  Big places, little towns with 200 - 300 houses full of people are not listed on most maps.  Google Maps often won't take you properly from Point A to Point B.  And once you head down a highway, it quickly goes from asphalt to dirt and rock with no signs telling you what's ahead and where that side road runs off to.  

If you stop to ask directions, you get a wide variety of answers about what's down the road.  Often people with no cars have never been further along.  Maybe it's rained and the road is washed out ahead.  Some little villages have two different names and neither is official.  So what do you do?

First you check paper maps, highway patrol websites, and yeah, Google Maps.  Then you start building your own maps with a good GPS and a great map program.  Then you head down a road and see where it goes!

Sometimes the road just sort of ends.  Sometimes it just turns into a rocky path.  But it's down this "spider web of dirt paths" that we have been traveling.  We stop at each group of houses big or small and ask the name of the place and what churches are around.  We ask about "believers," the word for Christians that are not Catholic. Sometimes we sit and chat, but mostly on these exploratory visits we try not to linger.

This weekend we headed towards an interior town called Lajes dos Negros.  It has around 9000 people and maybe 6 different types of churches.  Just before Lajes we stopped in village called Bicos with a small Catholic chapel and no other visible churches.  Someone had indicated there might be a Christian around who was hosting services under an awning.  Asking around we were at first lead to the wrong man!  Finally we made it to the right one only to find that the man was a Seventh Day Adven-tist - not a Bap-tist.  The man received us well and told us about trying to get people from a big city church to come in a help with monthly services (on Saturdays).  

Byron explained about some solar powered mp3 devices we were offering to interior folks.  The devices have sermons in Portuguese and all of the New Testament read out loud.  We are carefully lending them to individuals to use for their own spiritual growth where they cannot get in to a church regularly.  They can also call their friends and family to come and hear together and host a church service of their own with a good, Bible message by a well known pastor.  Mr. B, above, was a little hesitant but seemed interested.  He accepted one.  Later on future trips we'll check in with him again and see how it's going.  The devices hold 600 sermons, but if "used" up can be loaded with new messages.

Mr. D, below, lives in a very small community where there is no electricity.  Byron spoke to him about our work and travels and offered one of the solar messenger devices with a flashlight.  Mr. D was very happy and we hope he will call the other men to listen.  The little village is inhabited by men who work in the pineapple fields and other crops during the week and go home to a nearby small town on weekends.  Without energy they have little to do in the evenings.

Mr. D is not a believer.  We hope through the messages he might come to make a decision.  We plan to revisit each of these men in the weeks and months to come.

Pray with us as we travel the back roads on Northern Bahia and strive to witness of Christ along the way!