August 20, 2003

Dear Friends:

We returned to Brazil on March 17, after eight months in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we renewed family ties and interpreted the mission of the PC(USA) to various churches. We are grateful to so many of you who have prayed for us, and especially for our children, during this time of transition.

Jenny (22) will continue her studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, although presently we are enjoying her presence for the summer. Tim Jr. (21) remains in the United States and especially needs our prayers as he tries to figure out what he wants to do. Sarah (16) is with us, completing her junior year of high school, taking horseback lessons and being involved in a local church theater group. Marta is more involved than ever at the Mission Training Center, counseling students, correcting papers, and helping with administrative duties. I have been more involved with the pastoral team at our local church as they transition to a new pastor. I continue to develop texts for students preparing for missionary service at the Mission Training Center, and I assist the national church in the development of their mission strategies.

Later, in July, I taught a graduate course in cultural anthropology for mission at the Presbyterian seminary in Fortaleza, in northeast Brazil. The students were not only Presbyterian pastors, but Catholic, Methodist, and Pentecostal church workers and one Cuban pastor. Our primary focus was to study the two-way interplay between culture and the gospel, especially in light of God incarnating through a peasant Jewish culture in Jesus of Nazareth.

This year several churches were organized in Rio Grande do Sul through the work of our students and other Brazilian missionaries. In July, our school’s director, the Reverend Jonas Furtado, was in this southern state for the official organization of the first Independent Presbyterian Church of Porto Alegre, the state capital with a population of several million.

At the end of July, I headed off to the city of Dourados in central-western Brazil for the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Caiuá Indian Mission, a joint partnership of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil, and the Presbyterian Church of Brazil.

One young woman told me of her father’s death this year at the hand of assassins hired by a wealthy local farmer in an attempt to thwart this Protestant Indian leader’s initiative in the demarcation of an Indian reservation. The high cost of discipleship and the need for a holistic approach to ministry among these peoples became graphically apparent to me. Please pray for these peoples (Caiuás, Terenas, and Guaranis) and the role of the mission in empowering their Christian leaders to proclaim and live out the gospel in all its consequences.

We continue to grateful to God for your participation in these various ministries. Thanks for all your support.

In Him,

Tim & Marta Carriker

The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 258