Dear all,
I asked some friends of ours to send this letter to someone that they think could be interested in helping us in our reality here in Brazil.
We are looking for partners to help us in what we are living in here these days, I’ll try to be succinct, telling our history, reality and challenge.
Who we are:
My family are: Me (Rogerio), Estela, Nicole and Artur. I’m a computer engineer and have worked in the last 20 years. Estela, my wife, is a physiotherapist that works at home translating materials, counselling leaders from another churches, and in our church and in our NGO as volunteer. Nicole, our daughter that is 14, is an amateur ballet dancer. Artur, our son that is 11, use to practice skateboard. Our family is totally involved in the mission God has called us in the Kingdom.
Our church: We have been pastored a youth church in the suburb of Sao Paulo, that started as an urban mission and nowadays is a church with a frequency of 60-80 people per Sunday, with happy celebrations on the mornings and missional gatherings on afternoons , some Bible Studies and some street evangelisms. This July we are celebrating the 9th year of this endeavour from God. We are around 90% of teenagers+youths+young adults, and in majority delivered from drugs. Despite is in a poor area (around 40 minutes from home), nowadays, more than 50% of the people in the church is finishing or finished the college, and is developing their professional life. Everybody can see that our strong point is the discipleship using 3DM Lifeshapes in all ages.
Our NGO: Before having the church, we already had some social actions in the neighborhood. Since 19 years ago, me and Estela were just valentines, we started doing some initiatives. Now, the social actions are our flagship. Weekly we are giving milk to the families and are having workshops and classes of: Math, Portuguese, Drawing, Crochet, Customization Clothes, English, Spanish, Guitar, Bass, Drums, Bijou, Skateboarding, Ballet, and Circus Arts. We (me and Artur) teach Skateboarding, and Nicole teaches Ballet on Sundays after lunch. We have sometimes more volunteers to teach and work in the workshops, and we have people in the neighbourhood interested, but we don’t have coordinators to organize and drive the works. We have a van, that we bought, but we stopped temporally the deliver of food to the homeless and drug addicts in the streets at night for absence security with few people to work in this. In a near future we will restart with more help of volunteers in each part of the work. Sometimes we are seeing the attendance diminish, because we need people working on retention, divulgation and follow-up.
Our Initial Network: For our [the church] strong discipleship and missional applicability, we have been invited for some churches to travel and help them to develop their calling. Some churches are attending 3DM firsts Learning Communities, other churches are in the previous relation coming to us (me and Estela) searching for counselling and directions. Both churches in our region as in other states are inviting us for meetings to teach about discipleship and mission, and also missional communities that is a fresh concept in Brazil. I’m speaking about around 10 churches near and almost one new invitation per week.
Our Challenges:
1) In the Church: We discern that we are in a point that for the church grow more in size and in discipleship effectiveness, we will need pasturing and administrative structure. And to organize this things we (me and Estela) need to dedicate time, energy and presence. But the church is a poor area of the suburb, don’t have financial capacity to maintain us.
2) In the NGO: We need to organize better the NGO to work efficiently with volunteers and interested people. And even to write projects to receive funds from companies and from government. But, according to Brazilian laws the directors and founders of a NGO cannot be remunerated from the funds received to projects.
3) In the Initial Network: We have the expertise of discipleship and the experience with missional initiatives, we have open doors and are receiving invitations. But speak about offerings from churches in Brazil is a hug paradigm. Ask to reimburse costs is OK, but a regular help to maintain a consistent follow-up is almost impossible.
Our Need:
We understand that I cannot dedicate my time in the business instead of work (with my wife) full-time in ministry, facing the challenges above. We need (ministries or people) who could maintain our Family on Mission in the next steps God is calling us to develop in the suburb of Sao Paulo.
We need:
a) To have support for the next year (at least one or two years ahead)
b) A punctual help from July to December of this year. We don’t want only supporters or sponsors, we want partners who will sign underneath this work with us, being collaborators for the fruits generated to the Glory of God in our activities. Who will help us to have the financial resources, and that will cover us of prayers, and until who will come (or send someone) when would be possible to work, even for some days, with us and our team.
If you are a pastor, leader or director of a church: Pray with us and, please, introduce our project to yours ministerial directory. Maybe God will put our project in their heart to the forecast of the next year.
If you are an individual, and you can support us, be in touch please. We don’t need a lot of resources to set up. Sometimes we heard about people asking support to come to other nations as Brazil. Missionaries are always important. But sometimes could be more efficient to help the people who are already there and will prepare the places for the outside missionaries to come and develop and the dreams that God gave to them.
Independently of contribute or not, everyone are welcome here to pass some days and know more about what we are doing here.
We are praying to God speak to you about us.
Thanks in advance. Blessings!
Rogério Olímpio
If you would like to make a financial contribution to the Olimpio family, CLICK HERE.
