Fortaleza

Ywam Fortaleza TCN

base directorSteve Burkhalter
countryBrazil
joined in1999
ministriesCommunity Development, Training, Evangelism, Mercy Ministries
languagesEnglish, Portuguese
schoolsDTS, SOTB, IBC
websitehttp://www.ywamfortaleza.org/

Ywam Fortaleza - Training Center for The Nations,  was founded by Tony & Christina Lima. Pastor Tony Lima joined YWAM in Recife in 1987 and served for two years on the MV Anastasis where he met his wife. After this he returned to Brazil and was supported by three more missionary couples (Nei and Claudia Roriz, Cézar and Isabel Carvalho and Robson and Valéria Scofield) to start the work in the city of Fortaleza.

We started to pray for a place where we could establish a YWAM Base. One day during a time of intercession someone felt very strongly that God was speaking through the Gospel of Mark 12:42. This is the text that speaks about the poor widow. Just over a month later there was an opportunity to buy a place. The owner was a widow aking for R$ 45.000,00 and obviously we had no money. However we felt that God was guiding us to buy the place. Offering started to arive from various places and people in Ceara and God raised R$ 35.000,00. This money was offed to this owner and she acceped. This was how it all began.

In 1998 we wanted to motivate the Church in its responsibility to proclaim the Gospel. Therefore we organised Operation Window Fortaleza, an evangelistic project that involved more 300 local evangelical Churches, and resulted in more than 44,000 conversions. We also worked to have a true christian influence in our society by involving people in missions using their own profession in projects such as Mercy Days.

Our vision here in Ceara is to make Fortaleza a bridge to reach the nations through the Training Centre for the Nations,  a conjunction of training and sending messionaries to different places in Brazil and in the World. We will not only motivate brazilians for missionary work among the nations but receive and train foreigners for missionary work within and out side of our country.