Greetings dear ones. For the first time in a long time we will be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with family. There is so much to be thankful for! While we enjoy being in the US with family and friends here, we are missing our colleagues and friends in Brazil. We want to send them a prayer letter, and we thought you’d like to see it – but in English not Portuguese.

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Dear Pr. Ronald & Cecília, Pr. Marcelo, and our Brothers and Sisters at JAMI and Igreja Batista Reviver:

Grace and peace to you. We hope that you are doing well: we miss you all and our home in Belo Horizonte very much! This is our first prayer letter to you from the US. As your missionaries on temporary assignment here, we wanted to give you an update on our impressions and activities.

We are living in Bremerton, Washington, the city we grew up in. We wish you could see the snow-capped mountains towering over the water near our home. When the sun shines, we all agree, this is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Too bad that doesn’t happen very often!

One of the biggest changes for us has been adjusting to a new sense of belonging. We tell our students at JAMI that cross-cultural missionaries are at home nowhere and everywhere – at the same time! So in August we left home in Belo Horizonte and now we’re home here. What makes this time different is that in this town we have “left home to come home.” Every street and building is full of memories for us. Asa is going to high school where we went to school. We have family and friends here. Belonging is both a wonderful and new experience for us. Asa continues to enjoy his new home. His teachers say he is doing well in 9th grade and he continues to study his textbooks in Portuguese so that he’ll be able to start 9th grade (again) when we return to Belo in January.

ABWM women praying for Brazilian missionaries

A big part of our work during this US assignment time is visiting churches and participating in mission conferences. From the time we arrived in August until the end of November we have traveled to eight states and spoken to over 3,500 people in over 30 churches and conferences. The impression in Brazil that churches in the US have grown cold is not always true. We have met pastors and visited churches that are passionate about reaching out to their community and world with the good news of Jesus.

They are trying to reach unchurched people with revived worship styles (one church has a contemporary Saturday night service called “Breathe”), ministries (another church has a “Java with Jesus” outreach), and multi-ethnic congregations (Bruce spoke in a church with 27 different nationalities). They are sending short-term mission teams to New Orleans in the US, and to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And they are very interested in what God is doing in Brazil, at JAMI, and through the churches of the CBN.

Multi-cultural praise band in New Jersey

The story of how God is working through evangelical churches in Brazil and other parts of the “majority world” to raise up and send cross-cultural missionaries is news to almost everyone here. Many times after our presentations, church members come up to us and say how encouraged they are to know about this. One friend and faithful supporter sent this note to Ann: “Getting a glimpse of the work that you and Bruce are involved in gives me a renewed joy and sense of hope that the ‘World’ with all of its horror and upheaval, definitely has an undercurrent of God at work. However, your presentation gave me the sense that the undercurrent is moving toward becoming a tidal wave and then a tsunami. What a Great Hope we have! I praise God for how he continues to use your family to impact the world for Jesus Christ. It is an honor and pleasure to support you.”

Baptist campus ministries group at Alderson-Broaddus College in West Virginia

In about two months we will be back home in Brazil with you. We love hearing news of JAMI and Igreja Batista Reviver, so keep those emails coming. Asa got to talk to the youth group at Reviver by Skype last week, and that was a great encouragement. May God continue to bless and use you in His mission.

Blessings,

Bruce, Ann, and Asa
On assignment in the US until Jan. 08
Borquist4all@mindspring.com
3219 Halverson Rd.
Bremerton, WA 98310