Deanne Denton recently took a missions trip to Brazil that took her “full circle” to the church where she spent a week as a summer missionary 35 years earlier.
Denton, previously part of a six-member collegiate team to Brazil in the summer of 1989, worked alongside Igreja Batista Barreiros (Barreiros Baptist Church) in Florianopolis during Beyond the Walls’ (a ministry that equips and enables groups to share the gospel overseas) 2024 trip. During the recent trip she was reunited with Elizandra, who learned about Christ through the collegiate team’s ministry at the same church more than three decades earlier.
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“To see Elizandra, who was eight at the time I first served in Florianopolis, stand during our final worship service this summer and share that God used our collegiate team years ago to draw her to the church and tell her about Jesus gave us all such encouragement,” she told the Baptist Message. “To know she is now married to Dario, one of Barreiros’s pastors who served alongside our team this year, further reminded us of what God can do.
“Dario will begin leading his church in ongoing ministry with one of the tribes of Guarani (indigenous people group) in the mountains surrounding Florianopolis. It’s a true full circle moment you rarely experience in ministry,” she noted.
Denton, the wife of David Denton, pastor with Highland Baptist Church, New Iberia, was among 33 members of a Louisiana Baptist-led missions team from Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Utah that saw 558 Brazilians make professions of faith, July 5–16.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Brian Blackwell and originally published by Baptist Message.
