Nubia Mesquita | January 18, 2023

You know, I am just so grateful. A lot of, you know, my mom went to heaven. It's been almost four years now, and been thinking about her a lot today, you know, missing her. My mom and Alicia had the same birthday. And Ruth Paleo 2, January 11th.

That was my mom's birthday. Right. So great mamas in the house. Right? And just thinking about.

About my mom. We always had our birthdays a week apart, you know, so thinking about that and thinking about family. And honestly, I was just. I was telling the Lord in worship tonight. You know, all my family lives in Tennessee now, or my youngest sister lives in South Dakota.

There's a little trivia for you. So. But she's only been there a couple years. But my family's all in Tennessee, and, you know, it's my birthday, and I miss seeing everybody. And, you know, Tamsy and I, we have felt in many ways like missionaries in North Carolina.

None of our family's from here. None of us are from here. Her family is all in Alabama. My family was in Alabama. Over time, they migrated to Tennessee.

And so, you know, our kids have grown up away from family and grandparents and all of that. And was just, you know, thinking, we've got some of our missionaries here that I'm going to introduce in just a second that are going to be sharing. And I'm so excited about that, but was just thinking, you know, I'm grateful to get a chance to introduce one of our missionaries tonight because in many ways, we felt that way. And as I was praying, I was worshiping. I was like, you know, Lord, I'm just.

I really am thankful for the family of God. And, you know, Tamsy and I, you know, obviously I'm emotional thinking about family. And we're fasting, so, you know, everything is kind of just, you know, very fluid. And so, you know, like, you guys just have no idea. I mean, we've been here.

I was 24 when I moved here.

See, I told you I was 20. Tamsie and I were both 24 when we moved here. And we've been here for almost 19 years. Like, we've grown up here, we've raised our children here, and, man, this is our family in so many ways, you know. And honestly, like, for those of you that have been here a long, long time, you definitely feel like family.

But here's the beautiful thing. Those that we've only known for a little bit of time, you really feel like family, you know, And I thank God for the family of God. Why do I share that? Tonight? Maybe that's your story.

Maybe you're new. Maybe you've only been here a little while. Maybe you've been around and you don't really feel like family with anybody here yet. I just want to say, man, dip your toe in the water. There's some beautiful, beautiful people here.

So I selfishly get the microphone. So I get to tell you that tonight. Very thankful. But I'd be remiss. And it is.

I'm going to segue. Watch this very smooth segue. I'm going to segue Now.

One of the reasons that we are connected with Nubia and her ministry, Kids Place, who I'm going to introduce to you is because of some dear friends. And, man, you guys have no idea how precious Marcelo and Raquel Aquino are to Tamzy and I. A lot of you don't know our story. I did have Marcelo on my podcast earlier this year, and if you only listen to my podcast to hear Marcelo's story, then I encourage you to do that. I met Marcelo when I was 20, 20, 22, maybe, something like that.

And we've been friends ever since we met each other in Orange Beach, Alabama, where we both lived before we moved here. So we go way back. And Marcelo and Raquel, obviously from Brazil and Recife, and it's through relationship with them. Marcelo turns 50 next week. So you think, you think this is something.

He is elderly, right? So I'm grateful. That's right. Very, very grateful for my elderly brother in the Lord. But, yeah, he'll be.

He'll be 50. He'll be 50 next week. So y' all make sure you share the birthday love. Then Marcel and Raquel, they literally came, if you hear their story, as missionaries to the United States from their native Brazil, that is part of their story. And God has used them dynamically in mine and Tamsie's life and in the life of our church.

But it's through relationship with them and their home church that we got connected to Nubia. And Nubia serves a ministry that her family, her mom started years ago there in Recife. Recife, Brazil. It's in the northeast corner of Brazil. You'll get a chance to hear from her on this.

But by extension of relationship with Marcelo, Arquel and their church in Recife, we got a chance to make a connection with Nubia, and we've been privileged to be partnered. Our church has been partnered for about two years now. Is that right, Nubia? Something close to that. But relationally, our churches have been in relationship for quite a while.

And Nubia's daughter Haisa is here tonight. Who? I gotta brag on. Haisa. She's in her PhD program at the University of Georgia.

Chad Stillwell. So Bulldog. That's right. And so. So she's in Athens.

And, of course, Nubia came to see her family. But Nubia made the drive up to share a little bit about her ministry there in Hasifi and the partnership we have. Would you guys welcome Nubia as she comes tonight?

Thank you so much. I'm so grateful you're here. Such a blessing.

Shalom. Good evening. It's such a privilege for me to be here. I apologize for my English. I'm an English teacher, though.

But sometimes it's very difficult to preach or to talk in English. It's not the same thing as teaching English. And it's the second time I'm here. Who was here last year? Let me see.

Oh, yeah. Who's got my book last year? Who's read it? Some people have. And it's a privilege for me to be here and thank you personally for what a blessing this church has been in our ministry in Brazil.

Some of you may not have been there yet. I know some have, but definitely you all have been there as family, because this church has been helping us for over two years, a little bit now. And you have no idea how much of a family you are for us in Brazil. And it's a great connection, what Pastor Nathan was just saying. And I feel very honored to be here and.

And to tell you a little bit about our work and such a difficult year.

Who of you here have had a difficult year? Raise your hand just for me to have an idea. Trials, problems, things that you think, okay, that's my end. That's where I stop. That's where I think I'm alone and abandoned.

Who. Because the Lord put this word in my heart today. So I think I'm talking to some people here tonight, and I'm going to be a little bit daring in sharing with you the hard year that we had in Brazil, but at the same time, how much we learned how God is faithful and how he will never, ever abandon us. Even if we think it's so hard, it's so difficult. Oh, why did you choose me, God?

You know, there are so many more people, more qualified, more knowledgeable, more important, more politically related. And here I am, alone, doing this, you know, and you think, okay, I think you missed that. God. And no, he's talking to each one of us, right? So before I go to my presentation, or maybe I should start with my presentation.

Because it's all connected. And then I will go to what I actually have to talk to you about. So it's a little bit similar to the presentation we had last year, but for you that don't know us, we are in a missionary field, if you can call that called Kids Place in Portuguese, actually, Espacio da Crianza. But originally the name is Associacion para Histora San Duomi, which literally means association for the Restoration of Mankind. And as Pastor David Nathan said, it started as my dream.

My mom had this dream where she saw some of these street children, poor children, going through her and living out of her, like if she were a door as restored men. So she understood that God was calling her to go to Recife, her original town, and start a ministry with street children. And then everybody thought she was crazy because she was an attorney. She had been in Brasilia, the federal capital of Brazil, for 30 years. She had built a life there.

She had all a church family, like maybe Nathan had in Alabama, and then had to move away, abandoned everything, maybe, like Marcelo and Raquel did. And I was one of the people that came to her and said, you crazy? What are you doing? Because of a dream? And plus, she was sick when she started the mission.

She found out she had a problem on her liver and she was going to die. And that was when I went to Recife to help her, mostly because of her disease. And I would see my mom going to that place sick, and I don't know if, you know, people that have problems in the liver, they get sort of greenish, you know, swallow. And I would see my mom day after day going to that place. And I was one of the critical person that told her, you're going to die and you're not going to solve this problem.

And she said, no, if I die and the place closes down, then it was my dream. But if I die and it continues, then it was God's dream. I said that story last time I was here, but I like repeating it so we don't forget that God's dreams will never die. It doesn't matter how long. Some of us are like, Sarah, we're gonna wait 40 years.

Some of us, I don't know, five, 10. But if God gave you a dream, he's not gonna die. My mom's been dead for 30 years. The place has been open for 30 years. We never closed.

We might have had hard times. This year was a hard year. This year was a hard year. But we never closed. God is always with us.

And this is such a privilege. I don't know what you are doing for God. Maybe just a little thing.

But don't be discouraged. Don't be discouraged. He is always with you. Amen. So, kids, place, if you go to the next slides, please.

This is just a short presentation to tell you a little bit who we are, our projects, the flood that we had this year. And it's the hard part of the thing and our challenges for the future. 2023, right. Which is this year. So.

Okay, you can go. So we are an institution that provides food, education and protection for children that live in extreme poverty in the city of Recife. Recife is by the coast, the west side of the country, and east, south of the country. And it's this location and it's the capital, actually, of the state of Pernambuco. It's the city where Marcelo and Raquel are originally from.

78,000 people live in this kind of houses that you see there we call favelas in Portuguese. They are stilt houses built in by the river. We have a big river that crosses the city and about 40% of that population live in extreme poverty. And when I talk about poverty, I'm talking about less than a dollar a day. Sometimes you go into these shack houses and you have like eight people, 10 people living inside that kind of house.

These are our children. They come from this place. It's like a compulsory requirement for the children to participate. They have to be from this kind of area. Okay, next.

So this is our place. This is a miracle place. Everything you see there was God given. God gave us. We didn't pay one cent to build this house.

Everything was donated, like, orchestrated. Things were just happening. If you read my book, if you have my book, you read the story how we managed to build this place. And every time my faith is a little bit weak, I like to go to that place and stay there a little bit, you know, and see how much has God made for us. And it's so common that people will stop their cars and try to enroll their kids, thinking that it's a private school for rich kids, you know, and say, no, this is not a private school.

This is just for the poor kids. Okay, sorry, I thought it was a school, you know, but it's not a school. Okay? So we were founded, as I said, In 1991, and we have been there for 30 years. Over 3,000 children and their families have been blessed somehow because of our work.

And we have. Presently we have two projects. We reach the children, the youth, the families in the community. But since the pandemic, we had to reduce a little bit. So for two years during the pandemic, we were more focused on the children and the families, giving food baskets monthly.

But this year, thank God, we resumed the projects with the youth. And we are helping 45 teenagers aged 12 to 18 this year to go into the labor work. Labor. So we resumed this project.

So you can see 50 children from age 4 to 8. The name of the neighborhood is Coelhus, and 45 teenagers. As I said, we are going to help three groups of 15 children. And just yesterday, day before yesterday, I got a call from the social worker and she was telling me that we got a call from a company that want to hire all of our children. So we were very happy that we started.

And we already have the company that's going to hire these 15 first adolescents that we are training. So it's a good start, isn't it? It's a good start. So this year, I don't know if you heard about, we had a very bad flood in Recife. This tragedy of 2022, it was the biggest disaster of the 21st century in our city, Great Recife.

And we had just started the year, and this flood, this rain, very big rain for more than 24 hours. And the city was like that. And in our building, the roof was flooded. So what happened is that the drain was not sufficient for the water to go out. And the water entered the building and it damaged everything.

We lost all the computers, we lost the electric system. We lost material, wood, like cupboards and, you know, shelves and some of the walls. We would put their hands like this and the water would come out. And the electrician said we had to turn down because it was very dangerous for sharks. And everything was on the water.

We had to put buckets like that to collect the water. There's a little film for you to see a little bit of what happened. So I'm trying to show there inside. If you see this is all water. We had water coming from the ceiling.

Water, water, water, everything, everywhere. And I cried. I called Raquel, I think this day I was there and I was crying. And I said, raquel, I don't know what to do. We lost everything.

All the computers were damaged. We had six computers. Everything was damaged. And we had to turn off the electricity. We had to shut the water, shut everything, you know, electricity, everything, send the kids home.

And then for a month we couldn't work because we had to wait for the rain to stop. And because I don't know if, you know, in tropical weather, there is no winter, spring. It's not like here. It's either rain, rain, rain, rain, or hot, hot, hot, hot. Right.

We only have two seasons, so the rain season lasts six months. And so we had problems in the house for six months. And I didn't have the computers anymore. I had to wait, you know, try to do all the wood appliances. Again, I don't know, the cupboards, the, you know, the shelves, everything.

Furniture. Yeah. And no money. And plus the children to feed because the children that go to the institution, they depend on the food that we serve because two meals a day are served for these children. So if they are home, probably they don't have food.

So we have to get, you know, a way to help them with food, too. So it was very, very, very difficult. And I tried some connections and I said, okay, Lord, you know what? It's not my think this is your thing. I'm going to learn something out of here.

Because nothing happens to us at random. Just because maybe God left his throne a little bit and went for a walk and something happened to you. And then he goes, oh, myself, there's something I should do. No, no.

Everything cooperates for the best. Even that. Everything flooded. And I go, okay, Lord, something good is going to come out of here. And I'm gonna stick here because you planted me here.

There's a purpose. And then I get a call sharing with Pastor Nathan, am I allowed to say yes?

And this church, God bless this church.

Someone in this church don't even remember my name. And that missionary that was here, I dreamt with her, and I'm supposed to give this to her.

And they gave us a $10,000 check.

Bless this family. Bless this church.

You have been with us in our sorrow. You have provided a way for God to tell us we care.

And we rebuilt the place. I want you to see the photos.

Yeah, we are rebuilting. There, you see, we changed all the furniture. We had to do the pipes of the house. We built new computers. We had six.

Now we have 15.

We have 15 now we even have to put an extra table and some more chairs. And we helped the food parcels for the families. And we continued despite the pain, despite the sorrow, despite the loss, because God is, as Nathan just said, is an endless source. He's an endless source. Yeah.

So this is just a little bit of an accountability that I want to talk to this church about how much we received from the refuge and where we used the money, which was $13,500, and this is more or less the costs that we. So that you have an idea that the money that you offer is actually used at the ministry. For the ministry. I'm not a paid missionary, just that, you know, I'm an English teacher and thank God I'm able to support myself and, you know, my family with my English teaching. I'm a hundred percent volunteer, not only at my institution, but also at my church, which is as more or less as it works in Brazil.

Okay. So the year ahead, we have now 60 children enrolled. So we're going to try to go back to 100 children because that's our target before the pandemic. But we have to reduce now. We are going back little by little, but we already have 60 children enrolled and we are going to continue with the students for their labor market.

45 teenagers for this year. We already have them enrolled. And just to say they are all from very poor areas, extreme vulnerability situations. Okay. The families are in the extreme poverty line, as we say in Portuguese.

Okay. Okay. So this is how you can help. Most of you maybe know because of. You have my book.

So you can see it's the same thing we have on our website, A page that you can make a direct donation to the institution in case you feel moved. And I brought you this year a calendar as a gift. So you can take. It's over there, you can take for you and for someone that you know, that would be interested in getting to know. And the idea is that you read the story of the institution and there are many pictures of the activities that the children are going through.

So you have more or less an idea of our work. And in the end, you have the same kind of route there for helping us in Brazil. And I am very grateful for this church and the way this church has been so present. We, I feel like family already with you, this church, because you have been with us through our difficult times, but also in the good times. And in the book of Judge, I think Judge, right.

Just wrapping up here. Chapter three says Judge three. Now these are the nations which the Lord left in order to test Israel by them who had not previously experienced any of the wars in Canaan, only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war, at least those who had not experienced it previously. The remaining nations are the five lords of the Philistines, the Canaanites, this I don't know. I think Sidonians and the Hivitites who lived in Mount Lebanon from Mount baal Hermon, in the entrance of Hamath they were allowed to remain for the testing of Israel to determine whether Israel would listen and obey the commandments of the Lord.

So sometimes God will allow some trials in your life. Sometimes God will allow that. The Canaanites, oh, all these other people, these difficult people, strange people, strange situations remain. While you are doing the right thing. You are at the ministry, you are at the church.

You are doing what God told you to do. And yet the people are there, trials are there remaining. But the reason why that happens is because you need to be trained in the art of war.

You need to be trained in the art of war.

You know the problem we. I don't know if it's true here, but in Brazil it's very common. Now that we say it's a generation, we say, me, me, me in Portuguese. I don't know how I would say that. It's a very delicate, delicate generation.

He talked bad about me. Bye, bye, I'm leaving this church.

Don't like you anymore, Mimi mi. In Portuguese you say mi, mi, mi. What?

It didn't happen the way I wanted. Bye, bye, I'm leaving.

My daughter says, not my monkey, not my circus.

Bye, bye.

The church is a me, me, me. Church full of wants. Don't touch, don't squeeze. No difficult times, No problems. In Brazil, it's very common.

I don't know. I'm not talking about this church, okay? I'm talking about my church and my way of living. In Brazil, it's very, very common. If the preacher is going to preach about sin.

No, I don't like this church.

Moving. These people in my ministry, they don't do what I want to do. They don't do what I told, okay? Not doing anymore is their problem. Me, me, me.

But the me, me, me people have a very common problem. Any storm will just, I don't know the word wrap you like, take you out from the roots.

You know the difference between a tree that stands a storm and the one that blows away is the root. And you only go strong roots when you stand trial.

That's why the people of Israel had to remain with the hard ones to learn, to obey and to learn the practices of war. We can't fight anymore. The church is weak. We give up our battles, we give up our calls.

We give up our family.

Because the trials are difficult.

It's time of war.

It's time of war. It's not going to get better. That's the worst thing about it. Because we are going towards the end. We are going towards the end.

So it's going to get harder. And some of us are giving up now.

We shouldn't, first of all, because we know that he is faithful.

Amen. He's faithful. If he's called you, don't give up.

Stand still, go deeper, grow roots in him. Nothing, nothing can take your roots out. If you are rooted in him, your roots are established. You know who has called you? I know who has called me.

I fought like crazy this call. You might know that I already testimony about that. I fought. I said, not me, I'm going to go elsewhere. But he brought me and he established me and I'm in the process.

But what I feel is that my roots with the trials are getting stronger and stronger. And I really hope you to grow your roots in him. There's no perfect church, there's no perfect anything. There's no perfect ministry. I have many problems with my children, with the families, with the people that work.

But I just am learning to war. Amen. So I want you to stand up. If that message called to your heart was for you, I want you to stand up. Because I'm going to pray for those who are facing trials, for those who are about to give up, for those who think they are at this limit.

I'm going to say what God put in my heart to tell you and pray for you.

Lord, in the name of Jesus, I come to you putting all my brothers and sisters here in your presence.

Lord, I know that they have been going through difficult times, difficult situations in their lives, in their families, in their work, in their ministry. I don't know, Lord, where the trial is set. But one thing I know, you haven't lost control of anything. You, you are sitting in the throne and you are ruling the world. God, one thing I know, there is not one hair of my head that falls if you don't permit it.

So I know that all these brothers and sisters that are facing trials now, they are being guided and guarded by your hands and your wings. And I call you Jesus in your name. Please hold them, make them stronger. That their roots can go further down into you and they can see how faithful, how powerful, how full of mercy, how full of resources, how full of everything you are. And in the name of Jesus, I pray that everything that they need to continue, the encouragement, the motivation, the faith, the happiness may come through their lives and that they can prosper, that they can see you coming, going in front of them and helping them in everything they need.

Please, please, Lord, help them to feel protected, to feel guarded by you, that they don't feel abandoned. That they don't feel alone, but that they feel your presence, your power over each and every one of them. I pray in Jesus name, Amen. Amen. God bless you.

Thank you very much.