Change Your World - An Update from Brazil

Investigative Retreat 2012 - by Demps and Kristy Dempsey      This is always one of my favorite weekends of the year as we get away from the busyness of the city with the American and Brazilian college students and take a couple of days to encourage them to personally investigate the life of Christ. We always use some form of media (movies or music) to build our sessions and discussion groups around, and it's always an important step for many of the students in their personal spiritual journey.      This year in following our theme of, "Change Your World", we talked about our personal search to change our world both personally and globally and how that search needs to include the consideration of God as the source of our purpose and meaning. Next, in considering God, our challenge to the students was to consider the historical Jesus as one who declared himself to be God. There are many biased views of the person of Jesus among college students in Brazil because of such a variety of religious influences and we sought to address these "cultural" views of Jesus and encouraged honest, sincere investigation of the historical Jesus.      One of the Brazilian students in my discussion group at the end of the retreat said, "I was baptized Buddhist by my parents but never knew it until later after they had abandoned buddhism. After that my parents always encouraged me to find my own path spiritually but I was turned off by what I considered fanatical religion that I saw in my neighbors. After this weekend, I realize that I have never really investigated for myself and I think that I need to consider the person of Jesus".This made me smile because that's the whole point of this weekend, for students to leave placing many of their biases aside and investigating who Jesus was and his relevance in their lives today. Prayer Request: Pray for many new Brazilian students to continue investigating the life of Christ even as the American students leave the first week of July. Pray for God to open students' hearts to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior