Well, We’re Back

Hello once again from Brazil. We returned to Rio four months ago and have been trying to re-adjust to being back here. In July 30, 2008 I posted a blog about how change is inevitable. Change is going to happen whether or not you want it to or whether or not you like it. Change is what has been happening every since we first arrived here in Brazil in July of 1995. So, I should be used to change.

While we were in the States we got the majority of our information about the upcoming changes within the Mission through emails, SKYPE conversations and sometimes a phone call or two. I am not unlike most people, I don’t much care for change because change means that something different is going to happen and that this something different may be not to my liking.

Well, in the months prior to our leaving to go on Stateside Assignment (previously called “furlough”) we were told that the mission was going to change to a thing called “Affinity Groups”. The people who make these decisions said that our area (which was at that time called “Eastern South America”) was going to be added to all of Latin America, from Mexico on down to the bottom tip of Chili, along with the Caribbean and that the new name would be called the “Americas Affinity”. One more change that we were being told about was that we were, as missionaries, going to have to concentrate on working with UPGs, UUPGs and the even rarer UUUPGs (i.e “Unreached People Groups”, “Unengaged Unreached People Groups” and “Unidentified Unengaged Unreached People Groups”). What that meant, we had no idea!

During our fourteen months in the States we earnestly prayed about what we should do. As we saw it, we had two options, (1) return to Brazil and see if we could find a place of continued service within the newly developed structure; (2) create a resume, resign from the Board and see if God would open doors for other types of service.

Now call me a fanatic, but I looked at option number two this way, IF I were to create a resume, then God would have to be REALLY CLEAR as to where this resume was to be sent and only then would it “go out”. I was explaining my philosophy about this to a friend of ours’ and she said, “so your ‘fleece’ is that if God wants you to leave the mission field, then He would have to tell you first that ‘this specific ministry’ is the one that He wanted you to work at and only then would you send out a resume.” I agreed! I may be an ignorant and naive Believer, but I believe that the God who clearly called my wife and I to the mission field is big enough to clearly call us to another type of ministry. All that being said, I did create a resume, but NO ONE has ever seen it because both my wife Sharon and I did not sense God’s direction to give the resume to anyone or have them send it out. So, on my computer the resume still sits.

Because we did not feel that God wanted us to leave the mission field, we returned to Brazil. Once we were here we were in kind of an, “OK God, now what?” reality. I began back to work to engage church leaders in the possibility of developing the Celebrate Recovery ministry in their churches. This ministry is still working and I have one pastor and maybe another that want the CR training. However, this is not working with UPGs, UUPGS or UUUPGs . . .

That is where we I must end for now. At the end of every cartoon show, “The Big World of Little Adam”, Wilber used to tell his little brother Adam, “That, Little Adam, is another story!”

Your fellow servant,

Jeff Renard - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil