Brazil

Missionary Training Center

The Liberty Corner Presbyterian Church has been in relationship with Paul and Linda Fahnestock through our support of the CTM (Missionary Training Center in Natal). Our gift provides scholarships to CTM students and helps with the operation and program costs of the center. We relate to this ministry through The Outreach Foundation.

The sertão region in northeast Brazil is the most densely populated semi-arid region in the world, a region that is both physically and spiritually impoverished. Paul and Linda Fahnestock, PCUSA mission co-workers, have worked closely with the Outreach Foundation and the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPIB) on the Sertão Project, initiated in January 1999. The project adheres to the theological principles of the holistic church, addressing the spiritual and physical needs of the communities.

Paul teaches Bible and Evangelism courses at the Centro de Treinamento Missionario (CTM, Missionary Training Center) in the coastal city of Natal. Students in this four-year program spend the first year in classes, and then do field work under the supervision of a pastor or missionary in the sertão. At the end of four years, they are commissioned as missionaries and move into the sertão to evangelize and plant churches. The first class of 13 students graduated in December 2000. By the end of 2003, five new churches had been planted, and six new areas were targeted for future evangelism and church planting.

In December 2003 Paul wrote, “These past three years have been a time of understanding and entering more deeply into the Brazilian culture, especially the culture of northeast Brazil. As a result, I believe I have been accepted more as a colleague by the Brazilian pastors and missionaries with whom I work, and, also, I believe I’m more effective in relating as a teacher and pastor to students at the CTM and to the people in the congregations where I have opportunity to teach, preach, and do ministry.”

Linda teaches an English class that is open to CTM students and the public, but her primary mission work is to coordinate visits with U.S. churches who partner with churches in the sertão. In their May 2003 letter they wrote, “In addition to hosting nine PCUSA travel/study teams to northeast Brazil this year, Linda has helped initiate an adult literacy program in the Presbytery of the Northeast. It is really astonishing the number of adults that do not know how to read or write in Brazil. In Brazil, the overall illiteracy rate among adults 15 years or older is 13.3 percent. The statistics are much worse in the nine states of northeast Brazil where the economic and educational infrastructure is the weakest. Here the illiteracy rate is 26.6 percent. The program aims to establish an adult literacy course in every IPIB church in the presbytery.”

Paul and Linda visited Liberty Corner in April 2001.

To learn more about the Fahnestocks and their ministry see the PC(USA) website.

More about Brazil:

Total area: 3,265,100 sq. mi. (slightly smaller than the U.S.)

Population: 174,468,575

Languages: Portuguese (official), Spanish, English, French

GDP per capita: $6,500

Literacy: 83.3% (male 83.3%; female 83.2%)

Religion: Roman Catholic

Life expectancy: 63.24 years

(Statistics from the PCUSA 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study)

More information is available at the UNDP website.