As most of you know already, we’ve been in Portugal this week exploring mission opportunities for our future ministry plans. These strategy sessions along with nationalization processes have made the last three days tiring. We’ve been going from 8AM through 10 or 11PM every night since arriving which as I mentioned last week deflates any sense of a “vacation” mentality. This type of mission prep is challenging but having an opportunity to meet with national Christian leaders, listening to their stories and their needs, and strategizing about ways to plant, grow, and multiply healthy churches has been a wonderful experience. Below are 3 short observations from along the way:

• We didn’t know it, but we were on everyone’s meeting list. We came with the intention of meeting a handful of people for very pointed discussions. We’ve had a chance to do that... on top of meeting the other 100 people that weren’t on the list. In a small evangelical community word seems to travel quickly that we’re here, creating lots of extra meetings and more opportunities to meet people.
  
  

• The need is greater than we even imagined. The spiritual needs in Portugal are staggering and if we weren’t Christians they would be downright overwhelming. In Portugal, there are 44 counties with no New Testament, born-again, Christian church. None, nada, zip. There are cities/suburbs in and around Lisbon (the capital) with hundreds of thousands of residents with no church presence at all. Not even a prayer meeting or small group bible study. We discovered from Missâo 2015 that only .08% of the population is a non-Roman catholic/evangelical of any flavor. There is just a monstrous need.
  
  

• The fact that we are experienced missionaries with a few years under our belts makes us “chum” in the missionary water. Everyone want’s to talk to us and explain their needs. Everyone wants to request our help. We wish we could listen and we want to help but it’s just not possible to help everyone. I remember feeling that way about experienced missionary possibilities considering our (former) ministry field. Every time someone with experience and smarts walked in we put a letter of intent in their hands and talked their ears off before they left. The fact is, no mission field ever has enough workers (national or foreign), they’re all struggling.
  

This week guys from the Upstream Collective will be doing something similar to us. I’ll try to add some thoughts to theirs as the come in. If you want to follow along simply click the Upstream Ticket on the left. Here’s to the work, and the conversation.

Tags: Missionary Life, Missions