I was born and grew up in Brazil where my parents, Dan and Gerri Johnson, have been faithfully serving as missionaries since 1974. I was saved when I was twelve and was already heavily involved in the ministry as a teenager. In 1998 I went to Bible college to prepare for the ministry and while there the Lord called me to go back to the people of Brazil as a missionary. Maribel was born in El Paso, Texas but grew up in Mexico until she was nine at which point her family moved from Mexico to Denver, CO. When she was 15 she was invited to attend a Baptist church by a friend. She started going and shortly thereafter was the first one in her family to accept Jesus Christ as her Savior! Praise the Lord since then her two younger brothers and her parents have also accepted Christ and today are all faithfully serving Christ in their local churches (her father went to be with the Lord in January of 2023). At 18 years of age, Maribel went to Bible college where we met. Maribel and I were married on August 2nd, 2003 after I graduated from college. Maribel graduated in 2004 and in 2005 we started preparing to return to Brazil. We moved to Brazil with our two children, Abigail and Daniel in April of 2008. Our first two years were spent in the largest city in Brazil - São Paulo. My wife went to language school and I helped for a year in a new church plant together with another missionary and then oversaw that work while that missionary was in the States. I also taught in a Bible institute that was started while I was there. Today that work is still doing well under the leadership of a national pastor. After those two years, the Lord took me six hours west to work in the city of Londrina together with a national pastor. There we were able to help establish the main church, start a congregation in a neighboring city as well as help start another Bible institute. We taught in this institute until the first students graduated in 2015. From that graduating class a national leader was left in the congregation and we moved eight hours northeast to the city of Taubaté to start New Life Baptist Church. When we moved to Taubaté we did not know a single soul. We stepped out by faith and have seen the Lord do amazing things in the Paraiba Valley. We held the inauguration service of New Life Baptist Church on September 19th, 2015 with one hundred seventeen people present and five decisions for Christ! Throughout our first month, we had over one hundred fifty first-time visitors walk through the doors of NLBC and forty-six professions of faith! Now, after five and a half years, we have outgrown our space and relocated twice, have a full-time Bible institute with an average of fifteen to twenty students per semester, have two graduates serving on the field, have around eight other members who are called and are preparing for the ministry, support eleven missionary families, have assisted in a church plant in the neighboring city of Pinda, are praying about and making preparations to start a congregation in Caçapava, another neighboring city. To God be the glory for the things He has done! We are raising money to be able to purchase our own property in a fund-raising project called the Nehemiah Project. Our goal is for this work to become completely autonomous, indigenous, self-supporting, and self-replicating; and then focus our energies toward new church plants. The Nehemiah Project is a huge step in this direction. Though the Lord has blessed us we are under-supported and in need of raising some more support to allow us to continue focusing on the ministry in Brazil. Would you pray about allowing us to present our ministry to your church as well as about partnering with us for the glory of God and for the furtherance of the Gospel unto the uttermost parts of the earth?
