SHARING HOPE, ENCOURAGEMENT AND LOVE
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Bilingual Coming Soon
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IN TRUTH, WE ARE ABOUT TWO THINGS
1. our ministry
In The Harvest Missions
Missões Para Colher
Our name in English
Our name in Portuguese
2. Our Book
and all the above is really about just one thing
***sharing the hope we have in jesus***
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the ministry
My life in ministry began quite some time back -- all the way back in 1981 to be exact. That is the year that I:
1. left my life of bars, nightclubs, dance halls, professional music and the wild life.
2. gave my life to Christ.
3. answered God's call on my life to ministry.
4. participated in my first evangelistic mission in London, England.
How I got from #1 - to #4 - to today - is the story of my own journey to hope that is still being written each day by our Lord.
If you would like to read it, just click this button --
IN THE HARVEST MISSIONS / MISSÕES PARA COLHER --
Our organization (even with an English name because the founder, me, is from Texas) is actually located in Brazil where I live. We follow traditional Baptist theology and are members of a local Baptist church, but our organization is not officially affiliated with any association of Baptist churches or Baptist missionary sending agencies, and the missionary teams we organize are not restricted to just Baptists. I have had wonderful team members who were Methodist, Presbyterian, Non-denominational...and others. We are completely autonomous. The only board we answer to has only three members: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
We organize and conduct short-term (about 2 weeks), evangelistic missions here in Brazil and other countries. It all begins with an invitation from a church (or churches), for us to join them in a week of personal evangelism. We then begin organizing the mission effort on two levels. The first level of training is sharing with the hosting church, or churches, how to prepare for the mission. The second level is training the visiting team.
CHURCH TRAINING: To avoid the usual scenario of all the work (or 90% of it) falling on a busy pastor's shoulders, or on the shoulders of the same "faithful few" who normally do all the work, in order to participate in a mission with us, the church is required to make a commitment to form several different committees. Each of these committees has specific duties such as: organizing the church to pray for the mission, generating a list of evangelistic visits by appointment, promotion, meal preparations, transportation, and host homes for the visiting team members. Each of these committees is required to complete various stages of their preparations at given intervals. The result will be a well-prepared church, organized and ready to work when the team arrives for the beginning of the mission.
TEAM TRAINING: First of all, a team of dedicated, Christian Brazilian volunteers (but volunteers from any country are welcome) is assembled. Each team member is required to take care of all their own expenses related to participating in the mission, and... very important... needs to be an active, participating member of a local church. If the person is not already known personally at In The Harvest Missions, they will need to provide a one-time letter of recommendation from their church, commending them for the mission and promising to pray for them. Each team member is trained how to share their faith in Christ, one-on-one, in a personal, but simple and very effective way: through the sharing of their own, personal testimony. In other words, how they came to trust in the Lord Jesus, ask Him for forgiveness of their sins, and invite Him into their lives as their personal Savior. No special training, no memorization of a "script," no memorization of various passages in the Bible is required. Each team member will write out a short version of their own testimony, which will be printed on the front of a tri-folded sheet of paper called (in Brazil) a "foleto." Even your own testimony doesn't need to be memorized, because you will simply read it at the beginning of each visit appointment. Your personal testimony is a very powerful evangelistic tool. With it, you don't need to be a preacher, theologian, Sunday School teacher, or any other kind of leader. Why? Because no one in the entire world knows better than you, what Jesus and the love of God has accomplished in your life. You are the world expert. On the other side of your testimony are 12 very simple questions that lead a person to a point of decision about Christ in their life. I have seen thousands and thousands of people give their lives to Christ through the use of this simple, simple tool. Most people who become team members win more people to Jesus in the 7 days of the mission than they have won in their entire lives. And -- most who go are never the same again and want to know when the next mission will be.
The Book
I really enjoy telling the story behind the book. It makes me smile when I think of how I have never been a book author before, and had never planned on being one. I smile because God's plans are so much bigger than our own, aren't they? Such was the case with my book, as well. Sometimes I think we must make God smile, too, when He looks at the tiny size of some of our own plans and dreams. I can well imagine the same scenario when God told Noah to build the ark, and Noah was probably thinking, "Nice! A good boat will be useful for me and the boys." And then there's that Fatherly grin as God thinks -- wait for it....wait for it....and then He says to Noah, "Here's the blueprint...."
The reason this book exists is this: I believe there is a serious need for hope and encouragement in our world. I also believe there is a God in heaven serious about giving that hope. 48,344 deaths by suicide in the U.S. and 1.4 million attempts (2019) is proof of the first sentence. The death of Jesus on the cross is proof of the second. Through a year-long, daily journey that will make stops in every one of its 66 books, I have tried to create a connection between the one who needs that hope, and the One who unfailingly provides that hope through the greatest "self-help" book ever written – we call it the Holy Bible. It is truly God's love-letter to man. As a person reads through these devotionals, we will wrestle with real life together. When hurt is real, you won’t find me painting a flowery picture that minimizes that hurt. But — neither will we shy away from the fact that God offers us real hope and real encouragement right in the middle of it all, and you will discover in these devotionals that the Bible is drenched with hope and love and encouragement if you will just reach for it. You can reach for it from Genesis to Revelation. There is at least one devotional from every book in the Bible. Hope and encouragement and love is there, and it is real, even in the middle of a broken heart and broken dreams. It is there, and it is real, even in the middle of desperation and fear. It is there, and it is real, even when you believe that all hope is gone. I can assure you of this truth because I have lived through every single one of those things in my own life.
The beginning of A Journey to Hope With a Determined God didn't start out as a book at all. It started out as a simple promise I made to friends on the internet. From time to time I would share a scripture and a devotional thought with them, and it seemed that my friends not only enjoyed it, but some actually needed what God gave me to write. That led to a commitment I made to my friends to post a scripture with a devotional every day for a year. Because of interruptions along the way, it took a little longer than a year, but I finally completed the writing of 365 devotionals.
After I had been posting the devotionals for a few months, some of my friends encouraged me to organize them into a book. Up to that point, I had never even thought of doing that. I did at least started trying to organize them just a bit and save them into files... just in case. After they were all finished, they just sort of "laid there" in those files for several years as we became really busy organizing several mission efforts, plus trying to build our business that will eventually provide the finances needed to conduct our missions. All the while, from time to time, a friend here and there would ask, "You gonna do that book?" Finally, when God impressed me that He, too, wanted the book done, I figured it might be a good idea to do the book. Eight years after I wrote that first devotional, the book finally became a reality.
You know what I found out? Writing a book isn't easy. Neither is getting one published when you don't know what you are doing. I knew the first step would be going back over each one, updating a few, and proofreading all of them. After I did that, I organized them into several categories so I could distribute them evenly throughout the book, and put the seasonal devotionals in the right places. Then I started trying to learn how to approach publishers. No success. I then saw something about self-publishing and decided to try that since there seemed to be no other choice. Choosing a self-publisher wasn't easy either. Lots of bad reviews on just about all of them. Finally, one seemed to stand out from the rest, and proved to be a very good choice: MindStir Media. They are wonderful people who are kind and generous... and very patient. After what seemed like endless revision sheets, and about five more complete proofreadings (finding more typos each time), finally I had something that I was not embarrassed to put in the Lord's hands. Now it belongs to Him, and to whoever would like to join me in a journey to hope with a determined God.
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A Few Online Purchase Locations
Amazon.com -- Barnes & Noble -- Powell's Books -- Better World Books -- Books A Million -- Adlibris (Sweden, Finland) -- Blackwell's Books (UK) -- Gardners Books (UK) -- Dymocks (Australia) -- Booktopia (Australia) -- Waterstones (Ireland)
***When my book becomes available in physical bookstore locations, I will add the locations here.
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Kelly's story...
My Own Journey To Hope
....with a determined God. In fact -- a very determined God.
I love so much sharing how much God loves me, and how Jesus came in to my life that I have to be careful. I want to tell everything a person might be interested in knowing, but stop short of being verbose and boring. I hope I hit the mark here.
I would also like to make it known at the beginning of my journey story, that I was raised by two of the finest people God ever put on this earth -- my maternal grandparents, Bert and Elsie Adkins. None of the bad or sad things that happened in my life was in any way their fault. I also have some of the best life-long friends in the world - neither was anything their fault. All that fault lies right here with yours truly, who, until he was 28 years old, had a famously hard head and a very self-centered heart. I was not mean-spirited, dishonest or evil-minded, everyone seemed to enjoy my company. Kelly was known for always being good for a party, especially during my college years. But I was very proud and self-centered. I was also very talented musically. I knew it, and I worked hard at it.
At the age of 16 I made one of the worst decisions of my life. Not, by any means the only bad decision, but one of the worst. I began playing music, professionally, in a band. Every member of the band was a personal friend and way more talented that I was musically. To this day, all my friends I grew up with would be willing to testify as to how very good our group was. The reason it was a bad decision wasn't the company, or the music. The reason it was a bad decision was where we played the music: Enormous dance halls, night clubs, even what we call beer joints. We became so good that we played with many nationally famous country music artists. The devil was very smart. He knew exactly how to massage my pride (professional and personal) and keep my eyes a long way from the Lord. My night life was also extremely corrosive for my marriage which happened when I was just 19 years old. 3 years was all it took for my professional night life to destroy my marriage -- and I believe that one of God's most sad disappointments with me (certainly not the only one) was when he saw the destruction of my marriage not make any difference at all in the fleshly, prideful nightlife I chose to keep.
I was in and out of one cheap and meaningless relationship after another until I was 28 years old. I was tired, very brokenhearted, and wondering if there was anyone in the world who could love me and care for me for who I really was....deep down inside... instead of just wanting to be with me because I was in a great band and around famous entertainers. One time, after I got my heart handed back to me in pieces for about the millionth time, I decided to try going to church. Not to find Jesus. Just to try to hide from the hurt. I remembered from my days as just a boy when my grandparents would take me to church, that there was always nice people there.
It was at church, First Baptist Madisonville, Texas, that God let me meet Dr. Millard Bennett: the man who would become my first pastor, and the man who God used to show me that men in church were not a bunch of sissy cowards. The first time I shook his hand after a service, I thought he was going to break my knuckles. It was during one of Dr. Bennett's sermons that God knew I was finally ready -- for Him to try to talk to me. I can't remember the sermon, but I for sure remember the verse of scripture God used to finally slip through a crack in my hard and blinded heart. It was Hebrews 13:5 -- "Your conduct must be free from the love of money, and you must be content with what you have, for He has said, “I will never leave you and I will never abandon you.”
I was not free from the love of money. I made good money, but it was never enough, and I wasn't content with anything I had -- especially in the area of a really meaningful, deep relationship with someone. Then it seemed like God came and sat right beside me during the last half of the verse -- for He has said, "I will never leave you and I will never abandon you." It was like God Himself was tapping me on the shoulder and saying, "You know those people you thought were your night life friends... but now in the middle of your hurt, they don't want to be anywhere near you? ....Well, I want to be your real friend. I will never leave you, I will never abandon you, no matter what -- and I have waited 28 years to tell you that." I went home, knelt beside my bed, poured my heart out to God and promised Him that if He would forgive my sins and let Jesus be my Savior, He would have a servant for as long as He chose to leave me here on this earth.
God changed me forever that night. No, I didn't become perfect (far from it), but, my life would never be the same again, and I became a child of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, with a place in heaven reserved for me when I leave this life. Later that year (1981) I would participate in my first evangelistic crusade in London, England, which you can read about on the "Mission Work" page. Two years later I married again, and enrolled in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where I earned my Master of Divinity degree. That was also where I would participate for several years in a row in missions to Brazil. As you might suspect from where I live today (Maringá, Brazil), God stole my heart for missions in Brazil during that time and never gave it back.
However, to show how God never gives up on a person -- not even me -- and to show how our lives when we have Jesus are always a journey to hope, and never despair, I need to back up a bit... to the time just after I graduated from Southwestern. After graduation I moved to England, and for the next 5 years pastored the very church in Hayes where, as a new Christian, I was a team member in that very first mission ever in 1981. I was there for 3 years, and then in another church in Brackley, England for 2 years, which was planted, actually, by men in the United States Air Force. When the bases started closing, we moved back to Texas.
Back in my home state of Texas, I pastored a church in Trinity, planted a new church there as well (Burning Hope Baptist Church) and then started my journey back to missions in Brazil through an evangelistic crusade organization. As a crusade coordinator there, in two different years I led teams of about 50 people on missions to Curitiba, Brazil and Asunción, Paraguay. Then devastation struck as I was preparing to move permanently to Brazil. A second divorce, this time as a Christian, and I learned that sometimes things happen, no matter how much you don't want them to happen. I lost my family. I was devastated. I lived with my sister for two years and cried my heart out, literally, every single day of those two years. But -- God would not leave me that way -- and he proved to me that He never stopped loving me, even in the middle of a horrible sadness. How did He do it? By showing me that the simple fact of me being alive proved His love for me and that He was not through using me. He still had something for me to do. If not, He would simply take me home to heaven. Realizing that showed me that God had a plan for me past the sadness. With the help of a few friends, In The Harvest Missions was formed and we never looked back.
Soon after that, I organized a mission trip to Santos, then the next year to Sáo Vicente, then the next year to Itapeva. Then God blessed me with a fine Christian lady who really loves me, and became my wife. Her name is Cláudia. Then I moved to Brazil. Not long after, we organized a mission in Sáo Jose dos Pinhais, then Curitiba, then Paranavaí, then Sáo Vicente again, then Peru, then Argentina. You can see pictures and read about them on our "Mission Work" page. During all those missions I saw God bless again, and again, and again, and many people asked Jesus into their hearts. Africa is scheduled to be next. And in the middle of all those missions God let me write a book that, hopefully, will inspire people and lead them to Jesus long after I have taken up residence in my new digs waiting for me in heaven.
What God has let me see through it all is this: if we will just trust Him, and if we will give all our hopes and dreams to Him, He can turn them into something that we could have never even imagined.
*****And -- He has shown me that a journey to hope is a journey well worth taking.*****
