Mission and Ministry work in Latin America & the Caribbean
The history of the last five centuries of the Lutheran church throughout the world were documented in a special edition of Logia magazine (Vol. 29, 4). Now these articles are also available in Spanish thanks to the LAC VDMA Project.
One of the goals of planting Lutheran churches in developing countries is for the mission congregation to become self-sustaining. That means supporting a full-time pastor and providing and maintaining a worship space with utilities and other necessities. Since church plants, by nature, begin small, it can be a real challenge for them to cover all expenses, especially in the beginning.
Over the past two days, La Santa Trinidad became the seventh volume of the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics series to be electronically distributed to Pastors and seminary students in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region.
LCMS Mission Area Facilitator and missionary Pastor Herb Burch, Pastor Roldan Rios, and Communications Specialist Justin Logston recently had the opportunity to visit Cristo el Salvador (Christ the Savior) Lutheran School in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. The trio met with Pastor Byron Paz for a tour of the school, which has been offering quality, Christ-based education to the city of Puerto Barrios and the surrounding communities since 2002.
For several years, church services in Orange Walk were held in the home of Roldan Rojas. Now, what was once an abandoned woodshed has become our newest church for a growing congregation in the north of Belize. Situated on a 1.5-acre lot, the church has room for expansion, and soon, there are hopes of adding running water, plumbing, and a bathroom to the church property.
After months of planning and preparing, English as a Second Language classes started the weekend of January 28-29 at El Buen Pastor Lutheran Church in Valley of Peace, Belize. The classes commence with Alliance Missionary Pastor Benjamin Flores leading a 10–15-minute devotion, then Missionary Jordan Logston teaching the two-hour long class.
Concordia the Reformer Seminary welcomed distance-learning Formación Pastoral Hispano (FPH) students and pastoral mentors from several Latin American countries to a week-long symposium in January. The FPH program is similar to the SMP program at our LCMS seminaries in the United States. This program consists of sixteen courses with the students taking four courses a year, with pastoral mentors assigned to them. The focus of the FPH program is on the pastoral acts.
Today the VDMA Project distributed its 44th eBook, Making Christian Counseling More Christ Centered (Haciendo Más Cristocéntrica La Consejería Cristiana) by Dr. Rick Marrs, professor at Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis.
In mid-January, a team from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis escaped the deep freeze of the mid-west for a week of mission education in the Dominican Republic, the hub of LCMS mission work in the Latin America and Caribbean region. The adventurous group included eight seminarians, a deaconess student, five spouses of students, and team leader, Tori Egger, the wife of Concordia Seminary President Thomas Egger. This trip offered students and spouses the chance to learn about the Synod’s work in Latin America, experience a taste of missionary life, interact with seminarians and faculty at Concordia the Reformer seminary, and share the Gospel with the Dominican people. They were not disappointed.
The VDMA project is pleased to announce the first edition of a new daily devotion booklet in Spanish: La Palabra Del Señor Permanece Para Siempre, which means The Word of the Lord Endures Forever. The quarterly publication began in January 2023.
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