Danger on Rio's streets doesn't deter him from Gospel witness

It weighs on his heart: One day, he will go out to share the Gospel and not come back.

IMB missionary Eric Reese serves on one of the most dangerous mission fields in South America -- the gang-controlled favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

"I wrote a letter to my wife," Reese says. "I said, 'Honey, if I don't return, be strong. Let the girls know Dad's going to miss them. That God's got a plan for their lives, too.'"

Reese's passion is taking the Gospel to drug dealers, gang members and prostitutes.

"I want to love and show those people that they're not a forgotten people group," he says. "They're not an unimportant people to Christ. Everybody has the same value at the foot of the cross."

Reese and his wife Ramona have served in Brazil since 1999 and have raised their daughters Gloria, 13, and Alicia, 9, in Rio's megacity milieu. The Reeses are from Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga.

Ramona works with women in the favelas and other low-income women in Rio. In the past few years, God has shifted her outreach to include middle-class wives and mothers she meets at the gym and at her daughters' school and ballet practices. To read more, click here.

To read other stories from Rio, click here and here.