If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. … And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3,13)

Dear Friends and Family:

A couple of weeks ago we took Davíria and Terezinha down to the rodoviária (bus terminal). Easter break had started, and they were on their way to a long-awaited one-week reunion with their families and church friends in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. On the drive into center city, they reflected on what the first six weeks of new missionary training meant to them. They shared that even in this short time they had grown in their faith, their understanding of God's purpose in our world, and their sense of call to cross-cultural ministry.

Now that everyone is back from the holiday, training for this latest batch of eight Brazilian Baptist missionaries is well underway here at the JAMI center. After completing the intensive month-long English course we designed and taught, they did a weeklong orientation to JAMI, the National Baptist Convention of Brazil, and the ministry and personnel policies that guide their appointment and service. The week before Easter they covered a topic called "Vida Missionária" ("The Missionary Life"), and now they are doing a unit on emotional well-being and the importance of pastoral care for missionaries.

These new missionaries aren't the only ones that are receiving intensive training and preparation: we are, too! Ann led a week of morning devotionals on the importance of giving and experiencing forgiveness, and Bruce led a series on the seeming foolishness of responding to God's call to be a missionary. We are grateful that God spoke to the group in these devotionals through, and sometimes in spite of, our fumbling attempts to communicate! Then we were asked to give the last presentation on "The Missionary Life" on the final Saturday before the Easter break. Again this was a stretch for us, but we were able to do the 2 1/2 hour program in Portuguese with the help of the Lord and a cooperative audience.

We'd like to share with you what we said about the missionary life in the hope that it will bless you, too. As we reflected on our own missionary experience, three verbs emerged as fundamental to mission: Amar (to Love), Ser (to Be), and Fazer (to Do), in this order.

Paul's first letter to new Christians in the Greek city of Corinth contains the well-known passage above on the supremacy of amar (to Love) in one's walk and ministry. God's love is a verb, because we experience and show it through actions. It doesn't matter how well we learn Portuguese (or, for these new missionaries, Arabic, Macanha, Spanish, Tetu, Tukano, etc.) if we don't act in God's love. It doesn't matter how well we speak God's word and demonstrate God's power to heal our hurting world if God's love isn't visible in our actions. If we give up everything we have to follow God and even die during missionary service it doesn't matter if others don't see God's love through us. Love shown in our relationship with God, our relationships with each other, and our care for ourselves is the center of the missionary life.

The second verb in the missionary life is ser (to Be). A missionary must first demonstrate that s/he is a person who can be trusted before anything lasting can be accomplished. In many cultures this takes about a year, but 4-5 years isn't unusual. A missionary does this through the repetitive tasks of daily life: learning to speak the heart language of their community, eating the local food, "hanging out" with their new friends. Our ministry (what we do) will only be as effective as who we are in our daily lives.

The third verb is fazer (to Do): the ministry we engage in and how we do it. We believe that a cross-cultural missionary's primary task is to expand and strengthen the Body of Christ where they serve, to help it become what God intends in that place and for those people. Without this attitude, a missionary can become (in the eyes of their host country) just a sales agent or a foreign technician. We think that our greatest contribution will be in the lives and abilities of the people we serve and work with.

Loving, Being, and Doing. These actions define the missionary life for us. But wait, there is still one more word we live by almost every day as we adjust to life and ministry here in Brazil. Flexibility. In our experience, we have discovered that we don't really know what our ministry is in a place until 2-3 years have passed—and then it changes again! We have come here with an idea and a plan, but we hold it loosely. Flexibility is the #1 missionary trait. We keep asking God what God wants us to do now – we try not to run ahead.

Please join us in praising God for:

• good teachers, supportive colleagues, and patience as all three of us learn to communicate effectively in Portuguese
• Asa's progress in adjusting to the start of a new school year
• the willing spirits and open hearts of the new missionaries in training here at JAMI

Please join us in praying for God's love and power for:

• Elena and her InterVarsity team from colleges across the US who are now ministering in Nagapattanam, India with those affected by the Christmas tidal wave. We were reminded of the risks in this ministry by the earthquake and tidal wave warning last Monday. The group evacuated inland, and we think returned to the coast now that the warning has been lifted. This was a faith-stretching experience for us, and we can only imagine how it stretched the team, not to mention the families throughout that region who daily face the threat of another disaster.
• God's love to be revealed in who we are and all that we do here in Brazil.

Blessings,

Ann, Bruce and Asa Borquist