Global Outreach

By Mike Beeson

In early March, a group from Prestonwood, led by Johnson Ellis and his daughter, Landen Ellis, visited the Amazon to help serve the people of the region. Fourteen students from Prestonwood Christian Academy and ten adults worked throughout the Amazon region, serving the Lord and introducing Christ’s love to the people of the Amazon. One unusual makeup of the group were the eight men who were on the trip as chaperones. As Johnson Ellis said before our trip, “It was interesting to learn that so many men signed up for this mission. We knew that God had something big planned for this group.”
 
As the trip convened, the men of this group did whatever they could to help; after all, we were chaperones and there to assist the students in whatever capacity they needed to achieve their goals. What we did not know was that the Lord was working in the hearts of two of the men, both of whom are big-time outdoorsmen, whose love for fishing is quite evident. During the hours and hours on the boat, these two men, Lane Leissner and Chris Malinowski, decided to put together fishing tackle kits, and build several fish traps, to give to the local people during one our visits into the villages.
 
Day four of the trip came and it became evident that the Lord wanted us to work with the men of a particular village on that day. Chris, Lane, Bill Lindley, Mike Shell, Rick Briscoe, Tag Green and I put together the last fishing tackle kits and finished the fish traps. After lunch, Johnson Ellis and the local missionary rounded up the men under a primitive, thatch-roof hut, and with the help of the interpreters, we begin to share our love for Christ. Using the fish traps, Chris Malinowski and Bill Lindley explained how life was a lot like a fish trap; as humans, we are tempted to enter the “trap”, looking for the “bait” or sin. Christ’s love, on the other hand, is the only thing that can “open the trap” and set us free from the “bait” of life. Rick Briscoe followed up the discussion by sharing the Gospel, asking the 34 men in attendance, none of which were believers, if they wanted to escape the “trap” and open their hearts to Jesus Christ. On this day, ten Amazonian villagers joined the army of believers and dedicated their lives to Christ. Word of this miracle spread throughout the area, and we were asked by the head of the local village to share again with the men the next day with additional men from neighboring villages in attendance.
Four more men became brothers in Christ on this day.
 
On that first day sharing with these men, I will remember always looking over and catching the eye of Johnson Ellis, who was mixed in with the local villagers. Johnson has spent the better part of his life serving Christ in Brazil and the Amazon region. As our eyes caught one another’s, our expression was unforgettable and it was evident to both of us that Christ was with us under that thatch roof in the Amazon on that day. As a tears swelled up in his eyes, and then in mine, it is a moment of time that I will never forget.
 
God was not only there in the village on that day with the local men, women and children of the Amazon, He was also there with Johnson and I, and the other men, women and PCA students sharing His love with these people. I will forever cherish the experience of sharing God’s love with the people of the Amazon, and that look between Johnson and I on that beautiful day.

– March 2009

By Jay Parsons

Elmer Lessa grew up not just a preacher’s kid, but the preacher’s kid.

He’s the son of Eduardo Lessa, the man who turned down prized preaching roles in the early 1950s to become a missionary in a then-desolate, rural and sometimes-violent island town of Parintins along the Amazon River in Brazil.

Eduardo Lessa launched the church under a tree with eight people, and he had countless more enemies. One tried to poison his groceries. Others tried to burn down his home with him inside it. He survived all that before passing away in 1993 at age 73. More than 5,000 people attended his funeral.

So forgive Elmer Lessa if he was eager to do anything but preach under his father’s huge shadow. Yes, he loved Jesus, and hungrily told God he would serve anywhere – anywhere but the pulpit.

What’s he doing today? Yep, preaching from the pulpit, married to a woman, Elisangela, who said she never wanted to be a preacher’s wife.

But in following the call to preach, Pastor Elmer has extended the church’s reach in the community. He’s the rare preacher who’s most passionate for ministries outside the pulpit – social services, education and even entertainment.

His ministry provides the city’s best school, the loudest voice for pre-marital abstinence and a break-dancing team that has earned the church street cred. He’s a student of church growth who could write a book of his own, a contagious leader who has mastered the delicate balance of participating in the culture without watering down the message.

And the fruit has followed. He inherited his dad’s oversized vision and a spacious sanctuary the size of a high school gym. The church is now one of the city’s two biggest Protestant churches. The ministry now reaches about 1,000 people between the main facility and 21 mission posts within Parintins and nearby villages.

But any conversation with Pastor Elmer quickly steers away from internal church topics and into social impact.

At a free sports camp for youth in November, where 200 kids made decisions to accept Christ, the church was packed with youth alone – highlighted by a time of worship that began with a band of teenage break-dancers. The break-dancers wowed 50 Young Singles from Prestonwood, one of several groups Prestonwood sends to Brazil every year.

“Not every Baptist church has a break-dancing ministry,” the 39-year-old pastor jokes. “We had two guys who got saved. They were state champs [in break-dancing]. They asked to use the gym to practice. Then they wanted to teach classes. Forty kids came – 17 were deaf.”

If that seems insignificant, consider this: Twenty of those 40 kids later made decisions to follow Christ.

Pastor Elmer calls the break-dancers “rough kids” who have turned their lives around and extended the church’s reach in street evangelism.

The ministry also provides the city’s best school - so popular that people began lining up for enrollment two days before enrollment began, so strong that alumni fill the principal jobs at most of the city’s other schools. But it’s not like Christian schools in the United States, in that it serves primarily non-Christians.

“Ninety percent of the 1,200 students are not Christian, so it’s like a mission field,” Pastor Elmer says.

The church’s kids are leaders even in public schools, and because of Pastor Elmer’s connections, the church has been able to go inside public schools to talk about AIDS and pre-marital sex – huge issues in a city where children become sexually active before they reach their teens. Parintins has in recent times become plagued by social problems common in the United States – teen pregnancy and abortion, drug and alcohol abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases. The church is active on all fronts.

Wanna help? Pastor Elmer would love that, but likes to remind Americans that we can start on our own soil.

“Sometimes it’s easier to go abroad than it is to serve here,” said Pastor Elmer, a graduate of Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth. “But people have the same needs. I tell them to have the courage to do the same work at home.”

– March 2009