CHURCH PLANTING IN AMAZONIA

The first Church of God camp meeting in Brazil was held by German believers at Nova Esperanza in 1929. By 1931 the Church of God in Brazil became officially registered. David Meier, a German American, and his family felt called to missionary service among the German immigrants in Brazil and arrived there in 1935. During World War II the German immigrants in Brazil maintained a low profile. When peace came, however, they renewed their efforts to evangelize, primarily among their own ethnic group.

Heinrich Weissburger began a Bible training school in Rio das Antas, and soon a printing press was purchased and a magazine named Missionsbote was being published. By 1955 there were twelve congregations in Brazil, eleven outreach missions, and ten meeting houses.

At the beginning of the 1960s, German immigration into Brazil remained high, including people from the Church of God. The (US) Missionary Board knew almost nothing of what was taking place among the German believers in the Church of God in Brazil.In 1970, Maurice and Dondeena Caldwell were transferred from Mexico to Brazil. Construction of a Bible school began in Guarituba, and in 1972 the Caldwells were requested to assume the leadership of Instituto Biblico Boa Terra. Since Maurice Caldwell had been the editor of La Trompeta, the Spanish Gospel Trumpet, he was asked to be editor of Trombeta in Portuguese. These two contributions helped to unify the Church of God in Brazil and to point towards its outreach beyond the German community.

Farther to the north, in Amazonia, the Missionary Board cooperated with the church in establishing at Itaituba a bridgehead for a growing work in the Amazon basin. In 1972 the Missionary Board sent William and Betty Mottinger to work at Itaituba following language study, and the church in Brazil sent missionaries from among the first graduates of the Instituto Biblico Boa Terra to Amazonia. In 1974, Tom and Jean McCracken were ready in São Paulo to inspire the Church of God to launch an urbanization program to reach out into several districts of that metropolis of eleven million people.

With the introduction of project funds in 2005, Brazil saw an increasing involvement by the North American church in supporting international projects. In January 2005, a married couple, Antonio and Lilian, were attending Boa Terra Norte in Itaituba, Brazil. As a part of their seminary training, they were required to complete an internship that would take them out of the classroom and put them into the church. They did so in the city of Sinop, where some Church of God families dreamed of planting a church. With project funding to support their training, Antonio and Lilian helped make this dream a reality.

It is an exciting time in Brazil! But also a time of need. There is a big desire to have a church presence in all the states of northern Brazil. The goal of this project was to help do just that!