Our History
It all began with God. It always does. And we give Him the glory for it.
"We went to Brazil on a mission trip in 1979. If it had depended on Greg, we might never have come home. There burned in him a flame for Brazil that lasted until the day he died in 2017. I was not so ready. For two years, Greg prayed, and I resisted. At a World Mission Conference held in our church, Greg prayed that at least one person would surrender to missions. That person was me. We began preparing for the mission field that day.
In the meantime, Greg was praying about what he would do when he got to Brazil.
All the time, every day, he would pray about how to reach people for Christ when God opened the way.
When we got to Brazil, we couldn’t speak the language, and that was a problem. So we put off ministering for another year and concentrated on the language and customs of Brazil. Finally, the time came when Greg would begin to draw people around him to conquer the Kingdom one soul at a time. He did it through evangelism clinics as he worked his way through the churches in Rio.
Marcelo Oliveira, Marilia, and others came into our lives and began working alongside Greg just as he had dreamed all those years ago. There were volunteers that came down from the United States for a week-long campaign of evangelism, always encouraging the church members to be bold witnesses for Christ, and always with the team in tow, learning from him as he went along. Greg saw something special in every member of his team. He invested all he was and had in everyone."
One of the lives Greg and Sharon Deering touched was mine. They have, among other dear friends, mentored and inspired me to be and to make disciples for Christ, to equip them to become bold disciple makers, to enable them to go and plant churches through partnerships with sponsoring "mother" churches or individuals, to help them to grow through short-term mission trips and eventual construction teams building a chapel to the churches that had grown to need one.
Since 1988, our Church Plant Adoption Program partnering with North American "Mother" churches has planted more than 300 "daughter" churches in the entire country of Brazil, most of whom have planted their "granddaughter" churches and are now planting their "great granddaughter" churches.
We give God the glory for calling us and empowering us through His Spirit as we go and grow the kingdom, one soul at a time.
Sharon Deering Williford, Former IMB Missionary to Brazil
