Hello,
we are Jack and Penny Oyler and we live in the city of Manacapuru, Brazil, in the
middle of the largest rainforest in the world. We arrived in Brazil on March 31st
1998. We are independent Baptist Missionaries. We have answered God's call to
help Him to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost and the lonely children
on the streets of Manaus and Manacapuru, Brazil. We know that it is His desire that none
should perish. Our work with the street children consists of taking loving
hands, smiling faces, good nourishing food, and clean used clothes to the
children of the streets. We love our kids, and they love us. We are a family,
and as God intended, we will do all we can to love, protect, and nourish our
children as they grow. We are members of
First
Baptist Church Raymond located in Raymond Ms. just south west of Jackson Ms. Our
second church home is Robinhood Baptist Church, located in Brandon, Ms. We
live by faith, and our Lord has taken good care of us and our ministry.
HOW HCS WAS BORN
Jack came to Brazil for the first time in 1989 with CMU to help build a small "Temple " in a poor barrio (slum) in
Porto Velho. God called him on his very first trip to work and minister to the
poor peoples of Brazil. He returned to the USA and told his wife
that God had called him, (and her, since she was his wife) to be
missionaries to Brazil. Penny did not take him serious, and
responded that she thought he had been in the hot sun to long. Jack
was not to be turned from the call, he prayed, and asked all who
would to pray also. As he waited for the Lord to convict and
call his wife, he continued to travel many times each year to
help build the badly needed churches in Brazil. In 1993 his
wife Penny finally admitted to Jack that she might want to go and
see what the trips were like. Jack was ecstatic, he had waited 4
years for God to convict Penny . Jack watched
and waited for Penny to be called and changed during the trip. On the third
day Penny stopped and sat atop a pile of rocks where she cried and surrendered
to the call as Jack had done 4 years earlier . They both now were of one heart,
united wanting to serve there Lord in any way He wanted them to. In the 10
years of service with CMU, the traveled over 100 times jointly to help build
mostly Southern Baptist Churches. But God was not finished with them
yet.
"As we answered God's call to help
Him to build churches and bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the poor
peoples of Brazil, we noticed many children and young people living on the
streets. Slowly, God started touching our hearts to reach out to these
children." As Jack and Penny traveled back and forth to Brazil, God
started grooming them for His ministry. Both Jack and Penny were recovering alcoholics and
drug addicts, and understood what it was like to be lost, lonely and
miserable. God had called them both to help other lost sheep find His son, the
Good Shepard, Jesus Christ.
God's
love through Jesus and His church, changed Jack and Penny from the very first.
They wanted to help others find this wonderful love. Penny worked hard and
with God's guiding hand, became a certified Master Level Christian
Alcohol & Drug Counselor. She eventually was promoted to the Adolescent,
& Young Adult Program Manager for Mississippi Baptist Chemical Dependency
Center, the largest in their state, and part of the Mississippi Baptist
Medical Center. In 1985 shortly after Jesus saved him, Jack started his
own home building business, along with a custom cabinet and trim shop.
His employees were mostly people in recovery, people who needed help. Often
you could find them all circled in the center of the shop, as Jack told of the
love of his Savior, and explained that He had a plan for their lives too. God
was indeed calling them into His service, not only would they eventually
travel to Brazil to live and minister, but right where they were , God was
touching people all around them, and many lives were saved.
Both
taught in the youth Sunday school department in their church, First
Baptist Raymond . Jack was a deacon and involved in prison ministry, at Parchman
Ms, and taught Sunday School at Oakley Training Center for 7 years. He
also lead a Bible study each Sunday afternoon at the Baptist Children's
Village, for the treatment center where Penny worked. Pastor Don Nerren,
Pastor Robinhood Baptist Church, and Chaplin for Trace Pointe, Baptist
Retirement Community, says that while Penny was head of the department and
Jack taught Bible study each Sunday, they had the highest percentage of
kids to recover and start a new life. Yes , God was blessing them both
as they obeyed His call on their lives. They understood that God was
preparing them to live and minister in Brazil. Jack told us, "We started
planning to move to Brazil, but all the time it seemed as if our ministry in
the states was growing, and we were becoming more involved with God's
kids. The hardest thing we every did was to stop our ministry at home,
leave our family and friends, pack all our things and travel to a foreign
country to start a new one all over again! "
Jack & Penny Start Building
Relationships with Street Kids
In
1997 Jack and Penny started going out at night after working with the
volunteer teams building churches in Brazil. They told us, "We did not know what we
could do to help these poor children, but we knew they were hungry, and we
could feed them." This was the beginning of what was to become, HCS-Hope
for the Children of the Street. For the rest of '97, when in Manaus,
they went to the streets each night, taking the love of Christ with them. They
talked and built relationships. They told the kids that they would soon move
there and would start to help them more. Jack and Penny knew that God was on their
side. They promised the street kids God cared about
them and had a better plan for their lives in Jesus Christ. They moved to
Brazil in March 1998, and helped CMU to build 11 churches.
While in
Manaus,
they continued to feed street kids at night. It soon became clear to them that
the kids needed them full time. In April of '99 HCS was formed as a
non-profit 501(c)(3) charity.
click
on the links to read
Penny's
Testimony Jack's Testimony