Young Adventist Missionaries Will Spend a Year in the Amazon
The celebration with the One Year in Mission logo was part of the graduation ceremony at Northwest Mission Institute near Manaus, Brazil. [Photo: Ronivon Santos, South American Division News]
In Brazil, 36 participants in ‘One Year in Mission’ finished their training and are now deployed.
Adesire to be relevant to other people and participate in practical outreach prompted Luana Collen, 22, to leave her social work studies at a Brazilian university to spend a year in mission.
“In 2018, when I was 19 years old, I participated in an outreach project close to my home [in southern Brazil] for the first time,” Collen said. “Now I have decided to leave my region and live this experience in the Amazon.”
Sérgio Alan Caxeta (left), Adventist Church president in Brazil’s northwestern region, holding one of the certificates of completion with a young graduate during the ceremony at the Northwest Mission Institute. [Photo: Robert Souza, South American Division News]
The initial training program usually takes nine weeks, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this time it lasted only five weeks. Training is intensive and started early with cleaning the training facilities, helping in the kitchen, and taking Bible classes, among other activities, educational psychologist Eunice Bertoso, who is also a volunteer and coordinator for the first stage of the project, explained.
Bertoso shared that being a missionary in the Amazon rainforest was a lifelong dream for her, from the time she used to hear mission stories as a child at church. As soon as she and her husband retired, they decided to volunteer in the region.
The spiritual message at graduation was led by Anderson Carneiro, youth leader and coordinator of One Year in Mission for the northwest region of Brazil. [Photo: Robert Souza, South American Division News]
Training of the OYiM missionaries took place at the Northwest Mission Institute (NMI), located close to the Amazon city of Manaus. The facilities, surrounded by nature, foster fellowship with God and provide volunteers with the first chance to reach out to residents in the area and experience some of the challenges of being a missionary.
Ronivon Santos, a pastor and NMI director, explained that the facilities also welcome other groups of missionaries. “The Amazon is a region where the need for missionaries is great, so we coordinate several concurrent long-term and short-term mission projects,” he said.
The intensive training that young volunteers get as soon as they arrive seeks to prepare them to continue serving in a specific community in the Brazilian states of Amazonas, Acre, Roraima, and Rondônia, leaders said.
In the first stage of the One Year in Mission program, young volunteers were trained at the Northwest Mission Institute near Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. [Photo: Jonatas Correa, South American Division News]
Mission School
“I have no words to describe the joy of receiving this diploma,” Elane Cavalcante, 18, said. She will serve at the Canumã community in Amazonas. “Perhaps this is one of the most important graduations in my life,” she added, visibly moved.
Several regional church leaders attended the graduation ceremony, including the president of the Adventist Church in northwestern Brazil, Sérgio Alan Caxeta. “Our region includes inhospitable, still unreached places,” Caxeta said. “These young volunteers are now part of an army of evangelists.”
Facilities of the Northwest Mission Institute in Puraquequara, near Manaus. [Photo: Ivo Mazzo, South American Division News]
The original version of this story was posted on the Portuguese-language South American Division news site.