The Best Job

Posted on 12May CATEGORIES: AJ & Barbara Hensley [Brazil], General, Letters, Missionary Wives Tags:Tags: AJ Hensley, Alpha and Omega Home, Barbara Hensley, missionary wife, mother, mothers day, orphanage0

The Hensleys have served the Lord in Brazil, South America since 1996. They have worked with orphanages, started mission points, established churches, and are presently conducting a seminary to train Brazilian pastors.

May 12, 2024

Dear friends and family,

In one month, we will be looking back to the month of June when we stepped off the plane in Brazil to begin the journey of a lifetime. I will be the first one to admit that I was the reluctant part of this couple. We started our service for Christ in the town of Garça and are serving out of Caraguatatuba now. There have been 28 years and they have been the most fulfilling years of my life. We started helping Odali and Kathy Barros with an orphanage and I fit in there because all my young life I always had more children around me than was normal. So, working in the orphanage made me just at home.

I think I can say I have received more Happy Mother’s Day greetings on this Mother’s Day than the normal mother. Not only from the orphanage children, but from each church where we have served. The children adopted us as mother and dad.

I have continued for these years to gather children like a piped piper. Not only caring for them like a mother but nurturing them in the Lord which has more lasting effect.

I want to thank my blood children for being willing to share me with these children around the world. I have often heard AJ say that if he were choosing people to be missionaries, he would not have chosen him. I am here to confess that I would not have chosen me either. But He has been able to use us in spite of ourselves.

As this is the month of Mother’s Day, I can say that being a mother has been my best job and I am glad that He chose me for this job, not only for my children, but for all my Brazilian children.

Here are some pictures from our time in Brazil with some of the Brazilian children.

Thank each of you all for trusting us to do the job God called us to do.

In His service,
Barbara Hensley (Missionary Wife of AJ Hensley)