From An Apprentice to Communication Director: Melissa's Journey on Pais Brazil
As a missions organization, the Pais Movement provides opportunities for young adults to deepen their knowledge of Scripture, to be discipled, and to disciple others. Melissa, a Brazilian missionary from São Paulo, is one of those people. Almost 8 years ago, she decided to join the Pais Movement in order to advance the Kingdom of God.
After serving a year abroad with Pais UK, Melissa returned to Brazil to serve in her home nation, where she became a team leader. Because Melissa was really good at sharing about the Pais Movement with others, she was challenged to develop new skills in the areas of communication and marketing, which led to her becoming the communication director for Pais Brazil in 2018, a position she holds to this day.
True discipleship made more sense to Melissa after she joined the Pais Movement. While serving, she had numerous opportunities to reach teenagers in schools by modeling Biblical principles and serving as a mentor.
“Understanding how Jesus made disciples opened my mind a lot. Jesus took his disciples with Him everywhere he went. The disciples were always walking, seeing, and learning from Jesus as He did things. And that’s what discipleship is about: experiences that lead to education. With the Pais Movement, I had the opportunity to live that out and put it into practice as I was being discipled by Pais Brazil and discipling students at the same time.”
Currently, the Pais Brazil teams are working hard to reach students through a project called ”Schools for Peace,” using the Pais Movement evangelism tool Because You’re Loved to teach them about generosity, love and service. So far through this project, Melissa and the Pais Brazil team have served in 52 schools, representing all of the middle and high schools in Osasco, São Paulo, Brazil!
Melissa describes Pais as an organization that transforms the lives of young people in schools:
“We do that through our apprentices. They are trained to be role models to those students and build relationships with them, being true life mentors. The Pais missionaries can then invite the young people who are learning forward to experience evangelism, Bible study, and discipleship in a way that trains them to replicate these things with other teenagers. With that, we live out the Pais tagline: missionaries making missionaries.”
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