Our Global Workers and Local Partners
South Africa
Felix, Cecelia & Hannah Chiriseri
With an unemployment rate of about 35%, poverty is quite pronounced in South Africa. Felix and Cecelia are working with community leaders and local pastors to help them address their community issues, especially poverty. Through a Community Health Evangelism approach, they are training and empowering residents with skills to lift themselves out of poverty. Many whom they work with have never experienced the joy of working and producing. However, the moment they realize they can, their dependency mentality chains fall off, hence the emphasis on development rather than relief.
To learn more:
Dominican Republic
Adrian & Sharon Thomas
Oversee Everyday Ministries Canada, which seeks to bring multi-faceted support to pastors in the Dominican Republic from over 15 denominations in 120 communities. They train, teach, and mentor small and large groups of pastors and leaders, especially those in rural settings who tend to lack necessary resources. They also partner with local churches and pastors, to organize and execute events focused on reaching and making disciples of people of all ages. They also help lead pastors’ retreats and conferences, ladies conferences, seminary and vocational seminars, and a Community and Family Resource Center, which offers counselling and teaching for families. Their overall goal in what they do is to care for pastors holistically, caring for their spiritual, physical, economic, and social needs.
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Guatemala
Margaret Pfeiffer
After serving as a children’s ministry pastor for 12 years, Margaret has sensed a call to serve abroad. She is in the process of heading to Guatemala to help fellow global workers, Hector and Ruth Aragon, run the ChildCARE Plus (CCP) program. CCP Guatemala reaches over 500 children, in 17 locations throughout the country. Out of a population of 17 million, more than 50% of the residents in Guatemala live below the poverty line. Despite education typically being free, many families often can’t afford school uniforms, supplies, and miscellaneous fees. Moreover, over 70% of secondary schools are private, requiring families to pay tuition. Because of this, many students don’t finish education past grade six. The ministry of CCP comes alongside families with access to quality education, but also introduces them to the good news of Jesus Christ.
Afghan Ministry
Pastor Ahmad
Pastor Ahmad was radically changed by Jesus Christ and is now working to share the transformative message of the gospel with Afghanis both near and far. Pastor Ahmad has a wide reaching online ministry in both the Dari and Pashto languages, reaching Afghanis in both Afghanistan and many surrounding countries. He is also pioneering a church and outreach to Afghanis in the Waterloo Region. He and his wife, Esther, hold regular worship meetings, Bible studies, and prayer groups with Afghan and Iranian believers. The church as a group is working to build connections and relationships with the local Afghan community in Kitchener-Waterloo
Slovenia
Luka and Cassandra Fartek
With less than 0.1% of the population professing to be evangelical Christians, Slovenia is one of the least reached countries in Europe. Many Slovenian cities are becoming increasingly secularized without any evangelical witness. Of the few evangelical churches, many are struggling to find pastors to lead them.
In response to this, we lead a Pentecostal church plant in Ptuj where we seek to help our people answer the call to lead their own community to Jesus. Our church recently doubled in size, with more people coming to faith. Our dream is to see Jesus use our church plant to bring freedom, hope, and life transformation to those within our community in Ptuj. We desire to see God call new leaders who will answer His call and plant new churches across Slovenia.
Along with our congregation we organize a number of outreach events and ministries including our mother’s group and English clubs that meet weekly to reach mothers and teens respectively. Luka is the lead pastor of the youngest Slovenian Pentecostal church in the city of Ptuj. He is also the national church planting leader for the Slovenian Pentecostal church with the task to mobilize, equip and support new church planters. Cassandra is a full-time high school English teacher; however, she is also heavily involved in our church ministries, organizing our worship and kid’s ministries, while continually investing in our community.
Portugal
Jorge and Jacinta Melo
Jorge and Jacinta Melo are PAOC Global Workers, living in one of the poorest countries in Europe – Portugal. With just a little over 10 million people, merely 0.5% call themselves born again Christians.
They are currently planting churches in the Azores Islands, a region that has the highest rate of school dropouts in all of Europe. It also has the highest rate of poverty and domestic violence in Portugal. Furthermore, with a population of approximately 235,000 people, only about 0.3% are actually believers.
With these sobering facts in hand, Jorge and Jacinta are developing discipleship programs, teaching anger management courses to address domestic violence in families, leading Bible teaching in the homes, and developing a feeding program for impoverished individuals. They also hold weekly outreach programs for street kids and troubled youth.
Southeast Asia
Multiple thousands of women and children are sex trafficked daily in this Southeast Asian country. In fact, with each passing year, the age becomes younger. In response to this, the incredible team at ACR who seeks to rescue and rehabilitate women and children who have been trafficked into sexual slavery, bonded labour, and child marriages. ACR encompasses a girls’ home, sewing centre, literacy centres, and self-help groups for women to do sewing, candle-making, basket weaving, cooking, and baking, etc. Most of the women and children we rescue are illiterate with no sense of self-worth.
For more information: https://paoc.org/
Asia
M & E - Restricted Access Nation
After successfully serving the least reached in North Africa and seeing the completion of an audio recording of the New and Old Testaments in the heart language of the people, M. and E. are now continuing their work among a frontier group in South East Asia. Their ministry is twofold: 1. To engage the people of this 99.9% Muslim with the life changing message of the gospel, 2. To facilitate the Business Incubator, which is a tool to help establish God honouring businesses that have a heart to spread the gospel in their local contexts.
To learn more:
Missions Spotlight
Here are some examples of how your missions investment is making a local and global impact. Thank you for your generosity.
Short Term Mission Trips
A few times a year we send teams to small local communities and ministry partners across the globe. Contact us for more information about Short Term Mission trips.
