Dear Friend:
"Ester looked across the Amazon and saw a smaller boat approaching hers . . ."
My heart beat faster as Fernando Bochio shared this story I never would’ve imagined included me. Ester is a missionary in the Amazon Jungle, more than 2,000 miles from our ministry office in São Paulo, where Fernando is pastor of Razão para Viver (RPV), the Portuguese-language version of Insight for Living. Ester travels the region, handing out medical supplies to the Ribeirinhos people who live there. She asked the family onboard the smaller boat, "What do you need?"
"We just want to see you," they answered. Confused, Ester listed supplies she had. "No," they said, "We just want to meet a Christian . . ."
Ester wondered how the Ribeirinhos, without churches and with little access to the outside world, had even heard of Christians. Their answer? Radio. They had tuned in to RPV . . . and many, including this family, had believed in Jesus!
Fernando now travels to the jungle to mentor new pastors and missionaries there, giving them our translated resources and training them to use my Searching the Scriptures Bible-study methods with enthusiastic new believers like these. They, in turn, are training others in their native tongues . . . in a region where up to 150 languages are spoken!
The breadth of that miracle is humbling. In January of 1958, I was a young Marine headed for Okinawa. Disappointed for being sent overseas, I wanted only to get back to my plans. But before I left, my brother had shoved a book into my hand: Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot. It’s the testimony of five missionaries killed by the Aucas, the South American tribe they were trying to reach. Some of their wives later led that tribe to Christ. That book later inspired me to enroll in seminary.
Sixty years later, God is proclaiming His Word in South America’s jungle through Insight for Living Ministries! And He’s not stopping there. The Lord has given us a strategic vision of making disciples in all 195 nations and all 6,875 languages.
Vision 195 isn’t about me or Fernando or our other partners. It’s about God’s Word and the people who haven’t heard the gospel or been taught to live by God’s truth. It’s about us obeying Jesus’ marching orders.
When you support Insight for Living Ministries, you’re delivering solid, biblical teaching to people you’ll never meet through languages you’ll never know in places you’ll never go . . . all the way to the ends of the earth. THAT’S Vision 195!
This month, when you give to Insight for Living Ministries, would you consider going above and beyond to help meet our monthly budget AND to fund RPV for a full year? An additional $285,000 would ensure Fernando’s team can continue making disciples throughout Brazil.
Won’t you join us today? The story God will write through YOU will make your heart race like nothing else!
With great anticipation,
Charles R. Swindoll