‘A salvation plan’: Flood recovery in Brazil

Photographs by Erik M. Lunsford

On a recent Sunday morning at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Porto Alegre, Brazil, church members and visitors gathered for worship barely three months after unprecedented floods destroyed numerous buildings and displaced an estimated 580,000 people in this area of Brazil. At last count, 181 Brazilians had lost their lives, and around 60 remain unaccounted for.

The Rio Grande do Sul region is home to the largest Lutheran population in Brazil. More than 2,200 Lutheran families had floodwaters invade their homes, 16 Lutheran churches dealt with water in their buildings, and eight Lutherans lost their lives. Floods also severely damaged the publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil (IELB) and destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of its stock.

By God’s grace, the IELB — a partner church of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) — was prepared to respond with mercy work and pastoral care as soon as the flooding began to recede. Over a decade ago, the Rev. Airton Schroeder, now vice-president of the IELB, began studying how to respond in a disaster. As recently as a week before the spring flooding, the IELB held a disaster response training event at its seminary.

Members of Christ Congregation in Três Coroas, Brazil, which experienced flooding earlier this year, return to their pew after receiving the Lord’s Supper on Sunday, July 21.

The Rev. Dr. Ross Johnson, director of LCMS Disaster Response, is working closely with Schroeder and the IELB to see how the LCMS can walk alongside the IELB and help it extend its work to care for those in need from the flooding.

This work is already bearing fruit. “You see in the Divine Service … yesterday how many visitors [there were]. This is new to the church,” Schroeder said. “A lot of people that don’t know about the Lutheran church see the church in this disaster. I think God opened doors to mission and to evangelism and to care for people. He has a salvation plan in this disaster.”

Posted Aug. 29, 2024