My Testimony in Missions l PART 02

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MISSIONARY TESTIMONY
Writing the entire testimony in an email is quite difficult, but I want to share some details that show a little of this experience in missions. My desire is for your heart to be built on the Lord Jesus.

Well, God sent us to Bolivia, but the question we had was: who is going to pay our bills? Who will keep us on the mission field? We had no money, we didn't have a church to support us, we didn't have a business partner or a mission agency to support us in our missions work.

God told us to leave Paraguay and go to Bolivia, but he didn't send an angel with a suitcase full of money to pay the bills. I had the Word sending me, but I didn't have the money to go

Again we enter into prayer seeking guidance from the Lord Jesus. Mina and I sat at the table in our house wondering where the money would come from to go to Bolivia and we had no prospects.

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During that time of prayer when we cried out to the Lord Jesus for money to go to the mission field, the Spirit of God spoke to us about Santa Cruz de la Sierra. In 2004 we didn't have the ease of information we have today using Google, so we looked for some books we had at home to learn a little more about Santa Cruz de la Sierra.

We didn't have the size of the city, we looked for maps to find out the distance from the border region to the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and we couldn't find it either. Practically all the information we were looking for we did not have access to.

Even without having information about the city where we should live, guided by the Spirit of God, we maintained the confidence that the Word of the Lord was sending us and that God himself was acting for us.

We continued praying for money and the Spirit of God gave us another revelation: “The house where you are going to live is near the second ring.” I didn’t know what the “second ring” would be. At first I thought that the rings would be big roundabouts on highways, because in some regions of Brazil people call rings by the name of roundabouts.

Below I will include an aerial photo of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and you will notice that the city is in a circle. Each circle is a ring-shaped avenue. In the photo you can clearly see up to the fourth ring, but the city of Santa Cruz currently has up to the ninth ring.

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The Lord Jesus revealed to us that our house would be close to the second ring of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra and it was right next to the ring of Santa Cruz de la Sierra that we rented our first house when we arrived in Bolivia. But I’ll tell you more about this story of the house later.

My wife Mina and I continued to pray for money to go to Bolivia. God revealed wonderful things to us, our faith in God increased, but we had no money. I spoke with several pastors, missions secretariat leaders, mission agencies, pastors of churches involved in missions, but they all said no to financial help.

One day I went to a farm with a group of brothers to pray. I cried out to the Lord Jesus that day about our situation. I was really frustrated, saddened by everything that was happening, but I cried out to the Lord Jesus. We had the responsibility to go, we had the order to go, but we didn't have the money to carry out the order. In prayer I said to the Lord Jesus, “God, where is the money to go to the mission field?”

That day the Lord gave us the answer. He told us: "What about that car you have? What about your bed, refrigerator and stove? Sell everything you have and go where I sent you." Don't think it didn't cost me anything, because it didn't cost me anything. Don't think it was difficult to sell everything we had, because it really wasn't difficult. I just got up and started selling everything I had.

We sold everything I had at home and with the money we paid the bills we had and the rest we went to Bolivia. The money was enough to get us to the border region and, who knows, get our first immigration documents.

But at that time Mina started to feel unwell and when we did some tests the result was that she was pregnant. We didn't have money for me and her to go to the mission field, the situation got worse when a third person was about to arrive on the mission.

My parents were very worried and my mother-in-law was also very worried about us, but we still left Paraguay and went to the border region with Bolivia. We only had a few suitcases and Mina was two months pregnant.

THE FIRST DAYS IN THE BORDER REGION

When I arrived in Bolivia I realized that many things were different from what I had seen in Brazil and Paraguay. Culture shock is practically inevitable when you arrive in a place with different ethnicities, different people's faces, food, customs and everything that surrounds us, the shock is strong.

Even the flag flying on the masts bothered me, as I was very used to seeing the Brazilian or Paraguayan flag and not a red, yellow and green flag.

We had our first contacts with roadblocks because of the political problems in Bolivia and people closed the border very easily. That scared me a lot. They had a problem with the government, so they closed the border and no one passed from one side to the other.

Many times we were on the Brazilian side and when we wanted to go to Bolivia the bridge in the border region was closed. In other situations, we were in Bolivia and were unable to return to Brazil.

I thought this border blockage problem was due to politics and only during the election period, but soon the local brothers told me to get used to it, as it was something common in Bolivia. I was shocked

But we have started the house hunting process. We found houses that were unfit to live in and others in better conditions. The rent was very expensive. Then, one day we were walking through the streets not knowing where else to look for a house in that border region and I remembered that we didn't stop for a single moment to pray for the house. I told Mina that we should pray and ask the Lord not just for a house, but to provide some characteristics of the house we needed.

We stopped under a tree and began to pray. We prayed for a house that wouldn't face the sun because that region is very hot, that had trees, that had a good room and other details.

After praying to the Lord, we went back to look for the house, but this time we had presented our need to the Lord Jesus and details of the house we needed. It didn't take long and we soon found a house with all the characteristics that we had presented to the Lord Jesus.

I tell these details of God meeting our needs and it seems so simple, but God was showing our lives that HE was with us and that our victory would be and still is in prayer.

Well, today I'm going to stop here. Tomorrow I will write a little more.

God bless you

Peniel Nogueira Dourado

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