Art and Cyndi Rae - Missionaries to Brazil (2011 - Present)

Todd Rutkowski, Mar 19, 2022, 4:07 PM
Todd Rutkowski National Catalyst of Vineyard Emerge
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In 2020, after Covid hit the world, the Rae's started to do their pastoring of Pastors via online. What was impossible before Covid became a life line for so many isolated, bi-vocational pastors. Art started meeting with 25 pastors monthly on an individual basis and he also met with them another time per month in 6 different groups back in June 2020 and those groups are still going today.

Osiel ( OH – zee-l) is a bi-vocational pastor from FARO VINEYARD Christian Community - Sao Bento do Sul, Brazil, and is one of the pastors the Rae's have been mentoring. This is his story of how God is moving:

From the beginning of our church, we talked about how we could be more relevant in the city in the area of caring for the less favoured, and people at risk.

We prayed about it, and at the same time we took actions with basic baskets, bazaar with collection and sale of clothes, where the resources were used to buy food, clothes and Christmas baskets for needy families.

When we began individual mentoring with Art, and also discipleship with him along with four other Vineyard pastors, the question he always asked me was: "What God is telling you through the word, and what is He is doing in your city that you can cooperate with?" It moved me for a while, and I started to be more attentive to the signs.

Soon I noticed that there were a number of Venezuelan immigrant families in our small city. These folk needed jobs to take care of their families.

We started to help them with getting the necessary documents in order to work (the public sector in general is slow with this). We passed this job on to our secretary, Keli, who at the same time developed a passion to help them. She made contact with the UN and the Federal Police, in addition to the City Hall, and we joined forces.

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In addition to documents, we began to see the need for homes to rent,  employment, school and also the integration into our church family. We started inviting them to lunch at the church on the day of the Supper Service, which turned into a Spanish service. I asked God for a Christian leader among them, and God sent us Raphael and Mary, who were part of the families served by us and were already believers.

At this point, more people got involved and we started receiving donations of food baskets and meat, which they had not eaten for more than a year in Venezuela. For our part, we started to bring the other family members who stayed back in Venezuela as the father went looking for jobs. We even paid airfare from Manaus to Curitiba.

I then asked Art to help me find vineyard material in Spanish (oh, look at this...a Brazilian, asking a Canadian for material in Spanish...!) and the beautiful surprise was that Art connected with Andy Park, who had a relationship with Vineyards of Chile!

In the last Spanish service, we had more than 70 Venezuelan immigrants, and Rafael preached about the values of the Vineyard (with the material sent by Art/Andy).

Our goal for 2022 is to create small groups led by Raphael, so that the gospel reaches all families. Today we serve about twenty immigrant families.

The community has grown a lot during this season and is increasingly involved with these causes. There was a general awakening to the service in the Kingdom, and everyone wants to participate.

God is good.

- Osiel, Rachel, Rebeca, Samuel and Esther

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