To sum up this experience in just a few words, is more of a challenge than what I had heard. You see, I could talk about salvations and how whole churches were rocked. But to me outreach was something else, something more personal, not about numbering salvation numbers off. It was the worst place I’d ever been, the corruption, the hopelessness. However it was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen, and God gave us the privilege of bringing hope to the broken, the less. And it was beautiful, it was challenging, it was extravagant! But most of all it was spirit lead and God again, and again, proved his eternal glory and his intimate love. It’s funny how you can go into a place thinking it’s you pouring out the love. When it felt like all I did was receive, throughout everything we had done. By refreshing the saints or picking up children who had never had hope.

This is where it all started for me, when it became a little more serious and a little less joke. So what is it about “Hope” that changes a face, that changes a place or a heart? What is it about “Hope” that attaches itself to faith and becomes attractive from the start? Hope that’s for a king ,for a bed-ridden or even the average man. That hope that impacts anyone no matter where they stand. So what’s different about hope, compared to love, life or success? Because today I look around and see that hope and hope itself brings light to the darkest mess. You see hope didn’t start when there was the death on a tree, hope started when Christ rose from the death, thus creating hope…for you and for me.

Hope is the breaking of chains, a comfort to pain, the renewal and gain to what once seemed lost. It comes out of nowhere bringing care to the uncared, and this hope does not and will not ever cost. You see… when Christ died, he died for us all, becoming a part of the fall, falling deeper than us all, pushing us up from underneath to arise to out call!

This.Is.Hope.

That no matter what we face. What were seen as, talked about or known, that Hope is an outpour of love, for the lost, the broken and disowned. It’s this “Hope” that is for anyone, no matter where they stand. Wether from the slums of Rio, the richest of kings or even the average man. It’s this “Hope” that changes a face, that changes a place and changes the heart. It’s this hope that attaches itself to faith and is attractive from the start. Those children became our lives in the slums, attaching themselves wherever and whenever they could. To be honest it wasn’t really us at all, it’s because the love of Jesus, experienced for the first time, is really really good. So for me this was my outreach, bringing hope to the people more so than the place. Because seeing that trash can of a home they lived in, only highlighted the value written across each and every face.

I can honestly say I am totally transformed, something like writing this I never would have done. But God cared for the people just as much as me, and glory be to him for what he did in Rio, Niteroi, the Mountain Churches and the slums.