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The Mission Society of Norcross, Georgia and The Methodist Church in Brazil (through IMFORM School of Missions – Director, Rev. Regison Marcos Coutinho) recently completed the second annual Orientation Training event for Missionaries from Brazil, United States, Mexico, and Cuba. There were 29 North Americans, 14 Brazilians, two Cubans, and one Mexican attending this training event. Our Lord blessed greatly as stronger bonds were created between Christians of different nationalities.

It was certainly an intense two weeks, filled with varied experiences, new relationships, and lots of content. Close friendships were formed not only between the participants from the USA, but also between them and the Brazilian, Cuban, Mexican, and Portuguese participants. There is no doubt after this experience that the new missionary appointees are much better equipped to serve the Lord faithfully and effectively cross-culturally. They have the tools to thrive in new places and to share the timeless truths of the Gospel in ways that will make sense and can be received by their hosts.

Our desire in conducting this training event in Teresopolis – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was two-fold. Our first goal was to give our missionaries from the United States a truly cross-cultural environment in which to train, and to create a sense of appreciation for the efforts of the Brazilian Methodist Church to send missionaries overseas.

Our second goal was to partner with the Methodist Church of Brazil in helping equip them to build a missionary-sending agency that will send out missionaries all over the world and effectively train Brazilian missionaries in topics such as cross-cultural adjustment, discipleship and evangelism, world religions, small group ministry, marriage and family issues in mission, single’s issues in mission, mission team dynamics, church planting, medical issues, and financial support-raising. The training conducted at IMFORM July 13-27, 2008, was another step in that direction. We were very encouraged by the success of this event as we see The Methodist Church and IMFORM School of Missions developing a stronger program each year for the sending out of missionaries. The passion for overseas mission in the Brazilian Methodist Church is continually growing stronger and The Mission Society hopes to partner with the Brazilian Methodist Church many more years in the future in order to strengthen this growing passion for God’s mission to the world.