Survey Trip to South Florida: Day 1

We wanted to use our Thanksgiving break to take a survey trip here in South Florida. There’s a huge Brazilian community that lives in the Miami/Boca Raton area and we hope to be able to work with them after I graduate from Harding University.

We arrived in South Florida yesterday (Saturday, Nov 17). And today (Sunday) we attended church in the morning and had a meeting in the afternoon.

We attended church with our brothers and sisters at the Broadview Church of Christ in North Lauderdale. They have a nice bilingual congregation (Hispanics and Anglos). We had Bible study with our Latino brethren and then the whole church got together for a combined bilingual worship service. It was a very nice experience. After service, they invited us to stay and eat lunch with them.

In the afternoon we met with brothers Michael Osmann and Morris Legg, elders of the Hialeah Church of Christ in Hialeah. We had a good conversation and got to tell them more about us and our mission plans for the region. They were very excited and positive about what we had to say.

1st two photos: Broadview CoC
Last photo: meeting with Hialeah CoC elders

Living World Religions

 

This fall semester Maikon has been taking a class called Living World Religions with Dr. Monte Cox. This class is a study of world religions and aims at allowing students to understand followers of these faiths as well as providing ways on how to relate Christianity.

This weekend, our class took a field trip to Dallas (TX), where we visited seven different religious temples (Hindu, Theravada Buddhist, Muslim Mosque, Sikh, Jewish Synagogue, Bahai, and SGI Buddhist). It was a very humbling and enlightening experience. These are all people who, ignorantly, are trying their best to come to what they understand to be God. We have all been warmly welcomed into all places and we can’t help but love these people who are so desperately in need of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

At the end of each day we got together for a devotional and prayer. Several scriptures have been brought into the discussions we had, but, two of them spoke to me in a more meaningful way: Acts 17 (Paul in Athens) and Jesus’ words in John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

We ended our trip this morning, by attending worship service with our brothers and sisters in Christ at the Marsalis Avenue Church of Christ.

Four of the temples we saw this weekend: Hindu, Theravada Buddhist, Muslim Mosque, and Sikh.