Dear friends,

It been a busy few months since our last link letter. We are doing well and have had some colder weather.

We recently had our CMS mission director for Latin America, Bishop Henry Scriven, visit us. It was really encouraging to have him with us for a few days during his visit of CMS mission partners in Brazil; Henry also got to meet with some of our leaders, hear their stories and how they came to be involved with us and how that has been for them. We also had Henry preach and he tied his sermon into the Thy Kingdom Come prayer initiative.

In June we received a team of 10 from Trinity Church Cheltenham, six of whom were students on the New Wine Discipleship Year programme ran at the church. As part of the course they are given experience of overseas mission. We had a busy programme lined up for them, including ministering at our church and delivering training, street evangelism and speaking at other groups and churches who we have gotten to know in the area.

We had an amazing time! It was great for the team who came and

for our church to interact and to learn from each other; we had some special times of bilingual worship, powerful times of prayer and waiting on the Holy Spirit and the outreach on the streets was amazing. For the guys who came, it was a real encouragement to be able to pray with people in such a spiritually open environment. Below is one of the team’s testimonies from their time in Florianópolis.

A testimony from street evangelism

“A lady came past and even though there was no translator, Sarah and Christianne (a Brazilian) started praying for her hips. They prayed twice. She reacted by putting her thumbs up and thanking them for the prayers. An explanation came when Jimmy joined them and was able to translate. It seemed that there was no cartilage present, which meant there was bone on bone contact

JIMMY AND KATIA ROCKS LINK LETTER NO.9 | AUGUST 2017CHURCHMISSIONSOCIETY.ORG/ROCKS

Name: Jimmy and Katia Rocks

Location: Florianopolis, Brazil

Our role: We are sharing Jesus with others, church planting and helping others to do the same.

Our call: We are called to share the good news of Jesus and his kingdom, to make committed followers of Jesus and plant new churches that will impact the local community positively. We feel called to this with words, through demonstrations of the Holy Spirit’s power and serving the local community.

Top: Katia translating Bishop Henry Scriven

Bottom: The team from Trinity Cheltenham

CHURCHMISSIONSOCIETY.ORG/ROCKS

with problems. A heat came and the pain then went. The bottom of her spine was ‘splintering’ and having received prayer for this, she was able to bend over, something that she had not been able to do before. She was able to lift her legs to test the hip and there was still heat. She had wanted to get to a church but had been unable to as she could not drive or walk the long distance required. She can now!”

It was great seeing the team grow in faith as they saw God work in and around them. One of the girls on the team, Brook, when describing her highlight of the trip related how a visit to Castelo Forte (one of the other churches where the team ministered) was a breakthrough moment for her. Her faith was immediately strengthened and she noted an expectancy for God to move which she hadn’t experienced before. Something changed in the way she was praying. The most valuable lesson she felt she had learned was that her view of prayer and worship had been transformed, now so real, and she has a great hunger for knowing God more. She is enjoying pushing out of her comfort zone and seeing the resulting fruitfulness.

If you have never been on an overseas mission trip, perhaps you should consider one. If you would

like to read more about what God did during the mission trip, there are various recorded testimonies from the trip on our family Facebook page in a post dated 13 July: http://www.facebook.com/rocksfamilybrazil

We are encouraged by how things at church are going; we continue to grow numerically, in depths of relationships and in discipleship. After the team from Cheltenham left, we launched three house groups – two in our neighbourhood (Ingleses) and one in Rio Vermelho, the next neighbourhood down. One meets in our home and the other two are led by members of our leadership team, Walter and his

wife Claudia, and Marcelo. It’s been great to see these guys grow in their leadership and the groups gel so well. There has been a very positive buzz about the groups and a greater sense of community has formed, people using their gifts and feeling more a part of the life of the church.

Since the beginning of the year, we have also been running once a month a worship and intercession service called “Buscai” (which translated means “a command to seek”). These have been great times of pursuing God’s presence, discerning his voice and direction corporately and interceding for our city and nation. Something we are praying for is a spiritual awakening; many people are open to receiving prayer here, but few want to take that further. We long to see more people come to Jesus and become committed followers of his.

As well as the itinerant stuff done whilst the team was here, I (Jimmy) have had some invites to speak at other places. It was a privilege to teach on healing at a gathering in someone’s garage, linked to an Assemblies of God church. It was an impactful night, with many healings witnessed including sciatic nerve pain and joints pain. After initially modelling how to pray for healing and teaching an empowering scriptural message on healing and that God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things, I encouraged those there to pray for the sick who were present. There were many testimonies afterwards of healing.

“Since the beginning of the year, we have also been running once a month a worship and intercession service called ‘Buscai’ (which translated means “a command to seek”). These have been great times of pursuing God’s presence, discerning his voice and direction corporately and interceding for our city and nation.”

Top left: Marcelo with Jimmy giving his testimony at a church on the south of the island. He was part of the team from the Vineyard ministering there

Top right: Katia leading a service

JIMMY AND KATIA ROCKS LINK LETTER NO.9 | AUGUST 2017

I also took a team, including a worship band from our church, to the south of the island to a youth event. It was an impactful night and a real highlight for me was seeing members from our church being used by God to effectively minster to others.

In July we went to the Brazilian Association of Vineyard Churches conference, which was geared towards church leaders in the south region. It was held in the city of Bauru in São Paulo state. We took six people from our church with us. As family we did the journey over two days as it’s a 900km drive and would be too much for the children to do it in one go. Driving through the states here gives you an appreciation of just how big Brazil is. On the way we stopped off at Katia’s uncle’s house – he is a pastor in the city of Ponta Grossa in the state of Paraná, which was about the halfway mark on our journey. I have to say that we have never felt so cold inside a house in all our lives! The temperature was in single figures and there was no heating. I now understand why Brazilian are so terrified of cold weather.

The conference was really beneficial. The speaker was Gary Best from the Canadian Vineyard Church and he was speaking on

the theme “Naturally Supernatural”; he’s authored a book with the same title. For many who were present, the teaching brought a calm confidence in God’s willingness to touch lives without hype and the importance of love being central to ministry that is both natural and overtly supernatural. Generally

speaking there’s a lot of hype and noise in the Brazilian church, particularly related to anything more supernatural.

As a family we got to have a few days away after the conference in the north of the state of Paraná, at a hotel with nice grounds, a swimming pool and farm animals. It was great to recharge our batteries.

Looking aheadWith a group from our church

we are exploring the needs in our neighbourhood and thinking and praying through how God is calling us to serve the poor and vulnerable in our community. We also wish to invest more in training leaders and hope to deliver a training course in the next year.

We are now over two years into our first term here in Brazil and we are thinking through when will be the best time for us to come back and visit supporting churches in the UK. Typically mission partners come back every three years. We think the best time for us to come back for a few months will be December 2018 until March 2019 as that will give the work here more time to consolidate and the team will be in a better position to run things without us for a few months.

Love,

Jimmy, Katia, Joanna & Davi

You can give online to Jimmy and Katia at: churchmissionsociety.org/rocks

Contact details: jimmyrocks1@gmail.com kkatia_700@hotmail.com

PLEASE PRAY...

Give praise for:

Visits from Henry and the team from Trinity Cheltenham and for all that happened over those few weeks.

How God has been working here in the church and in people’s lives.

Pray for:

God to awaken the hearts of lost people in the area.

Guidance and wisdom as we seek to better serve the Lord, reach our community, raise up committed disciples and leaders and administer the church here.

Good health, protection and God’s provision for us as a family.

Above: A selfie after church