Reaching Rio with the Good News

In October 2024, Sergio Danon, our missionary in Brazil - along with a large team of local volunteers - ran a six day ‘In the Cities’ outreach in Rio de Janeiro. The city is home to 32,000 Jewish people, making it Brazil’s second largest Jewish community, the majority of whom are in great need of the gospel, as Sergio reports.

‘How can someone who is Jewish follow Jesus?’

I was handing out gospel leaflets in Ipanema, when a Jewish woman, Illana, stopped next to me on a bike. I offered her a leaflet, but she declined. She already received one the day before and had questions about it.

‘Is it Jewish? Is it Christian? What is it?’ she asked, opening the door for me to share the gospel. When I told Illana that I am both Jewish and a believer in Jesus, she was astonished. She told me she attends the local ultra-Orthodox synagogue, but not every week. Her son recently returned from living in Israel and she was pleased to have her grandchildren nearby now.

As we spoke about our lives, Ilana kept coming back to the same question: ‘How can someone who’s Jewish follow Jesus?’ I explained that many years ago  I had a friend in the army who followed Jesus. I became envious of the peace my friend possessed and, in a quest to find that peace for myself, I ended up reading the Bible and, ultimately, meeting Jesus.

Illana told me that she had never read the Bible for herself and barely knows anything of the Scriptures. I shared about how surprised I was when I found out Jewish people wrote the Bible and that it wasn’t antisemitic, as I had been led to believe my whole life. As I read God’s Word, I discovered that Jesus isn’t the enemy of the Jewish people, but their promised Messiah.

I could see that Illana was fascinated by what I was telling her. She gladly shared her contact details so we can continue talking about Jesus after the outreach.

Give thanks for this encounter with Ilana. Please pray that her curiosity about Jesus will result in her salvation, as Sergio follows up with her.

Helping Hadassah meet Jesus

On the last day of the outreach, the team was in a group, singing Jewish and Christian songs on the streets. Through the outreach, we found this a good way of attracting Jewish people so we could tell them about Jesus.

One Jewish woman who stopped was Hadassah. She was curious about the team and had questions about the gospel leaflet we were distributing, with Hebrew writing on the front asking, ‘Who is good?’. I initially introduced myself as a Jewish man, raised going to synagogue where I had my Bar Mitzvah. She was glad to know all this.

I then mentioned the fact that, aged twenty, a friend challenged me to read the complete Bible, both Old and New Testament. It was then that I came to realise that it was a Jewish book and eventually believed in Jesus, the Messiah it promises. Hadassah was astonished. She immediately wanted to end the conversation and leave, but when I asked questions about her background, she stayed. She told me she was a doctor who knows very little about the Bible.

We spoke about the gospel leaflet, which explains how no one is good other than God. As we spoke, she became friendlier and started opening up, clearly enjoying the conversation. She mentioned that a famous rabbi here in Rio recently said that the only way to have peace in the Middle East and in the world is through the establishment of a single world religion. I explained that the only way to true peace was through the Messiah.

I asked Hadassah whether she had heard about specific Bible passages, such as Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, but she hadn’t. I told her I would be happy to study Bible passages with her. She was excited by this offer, so we exchanged details.

As the conversation ended, I found out that Hadassah knows one of my cousins, also a doctor, who works in the same field as her. This connection helped and we now have a lot to talk about and study, as she is so keen to learn about what God’s Word truly says.

Please pray for Hadassah’s salvation as she begins studying the Bible with Sergio.  Also please pray for Sergio as he follows up other new Jewish contacts made on the outreach and tells them more about Jesus.