Mechanics, English, and Two Awesome Opportunities

Technical English came to a close last week. This was the class I was teaching (along with Jeyson when I needed help with specific mechanics knowledge) to the incoming mechanic missionaries and quite a few from the community. It was a great group and an awesome opportunity to share our faith.
It was a very casual classroom setting, as you can see from the pictures. In these pictures they were working in groups on translating part of an article for airplane mechanics.

One of my favorite parts of teaching was having the young man on the right in this picture (Jonatas) as part of the class. He is a new missionary that just arrived in Brazil from Venezuela to be trained by our mission to return back to Venezuela in a few years. Why? A few years ago all foreigners in Venezuela were kicked out of the country by the government (Hugo Chavez), causing an active and very needed missionary flight program to be shut down because all of the pilots and mechanics were foreigners. Their plane and all of the ministries that depended on the flights were stopped suddenly. So, recently, many local Venezuelan pastors and ministries have rallied together to get it started....which means getting Venezuelan pilots and mechanics trained. The first one to start is Jonatas and he came to us in Brazil to do it since there wasn't a good training place available in Venezuela. We were so excited to have the privilege to have a tiny part in getting this ministry in Venezuela off the ground again literally, but teaching Jonatas this course that he is required to have.

Jonatas and Andres (left, who just arrived from Colombia and is gong to be serving in Brazil with Asas) did a great job translating, considering they had to go from English to Portuguese - neither of which languages do they speak fluently!

The other awesome opportunity was getting to pray and share a verse with the class each day before beginning. Since it was English class, each day I shared a verse in English and we translated it together into Portuguese. The classes were held at Asas de Socorro, so I had the freedom to be as open about the Gospel as I wanted to be (which of course I was!). One of the neatest things happened on a day that my co-teacher Grace was teaching class. She came into the class in a huge rush and frazzled from a crazy day. She began class right away without praying or a verse. Then, one of the students in the back who is not a believer raised his hand. "Aren't you going to begin with a verse and prayer?" he asked, "That has been my favorite part!" Of course Grace backtracked and began the class again with Him as the start. It is so exciting to see how God is working! Although the English requirement for the mechanics class is over, they will spend the next year+ learning at Asas and, Lord willing, will have many opportunities to hear the Gospel through the other missionaries who are teaching.