EMAF workers travel thousands of miles each year along dangerous, mosquito-ridden coastal waters, establishing contact with these fishing villages. The goal is to establish contact with new villages, and set up Bible study groups that, with nurturing, become churches.
EMAF's team - presently around 70 workers - has reached a total of 1,600 such villages, planting scores of churches; establishing many additional preaching points and home groups; and following up with medical and dental teams visits together with the establishing of pre-school children's centres.
NEW Watch video (Youtube), made by our Canadian sister organisation Partners International, introducing EMAF founder and director Marcio Garcia.
Click to view EMAF's 'A Christmas Song' video (plays on Youtube).
The mission context they find is a demanding one. Though nominally Catholic in background, fishing villagers’ lives are, in reality, more influenced by occultism and spirit worship. Isolated from the outside world, the villagers have become suspicious of strangers.
The resistance to anything that breaks tradition means that Christian workers must prove their friendship and concern for some time before villagers will listen to them.
Isolation and lack of education can result in villagers suffering loss at the hands of landowners and businessmen who take advantage of them. They are understandably hesitant to accept strangers.
