Innovative training. A new generation. Bi-vocational and cross-cultural. These concepts saturated speeches as HCJB Global launched its missionary mobilization initiative called Corrientes at a special event at the Plaza Hotel in Quito, Ecuador, on Saturday Oct. 3.

HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson speaks at the inauguration in Quito.

Perhaps the central concept is summed up in “Latin American missionaries.” Working with about a dozen mission agencies, HCJB Global is participating with the Latin American church to provide missionaries with an “integrated training that includes bi-vocational skills, cross-cultural relationship building, language acquisition, spiritual formation and biblical studies,” states the program’s website.

“After hearing the testimonies and seeing the magnitude of the work, I realized that Corrientes isn’t just something small,” observed Sandra Paredes, “but a group that pushes you and helps you so that you’ll go out…. It injects you with energy!”

Paredes, a nurse at Hospital Vozandes-Shell in Ecuador’s Amazon region, has already served as a bi-vocational missionary in Africa. After being invited to work at HCJB Global Hands’ partner hospital in Impfondo, Republic of Congo, she joined a medical team there in 2007. Now back in Shell and an active member of her church, she retains a heart for Africa and hopes to be part of Corrientes in the future.

Carlos Pinto is the first director of Corrientes

Dance groups, folkloric music, worship and words from Corrientes collaborators were all part of the launch event. Program Director Les Hirst highlighted other Ecuadorian missionaries, including Aida who has served in Thailand. She is now back in Ecuador, studying in Corrientes. She plans to return to Thailand as a missionary, teaching English to elementary schoolchildren as well as to adults through the Spotlight listeners’ club program.

Emphasizing collaboration, Hirst said, “This is not a work of HCJB Global. This is going to be the work of the Latin American church.”

Carlos Scott, the Argentine president of COMIBAM, an organization that supports mission agencies in Latin America and Spain, challenged attendees about the importance of the work of missions, emphasizing that it must always be centered in Christ.

Scott reminded the group that Jesus gave the Great Commission in Galilee, a place that was marginalized and on the periphery, similar to Latin America, and that missions is the greatest calling from the Lord. “I want to be focused on where God’s heart is focused—on the unreached,” he related.

HCJB Global President Wayne Pederson’s words summarized the heart of Corrientes, “May we come together so that Latin America will believe, so that the world will believe.”

Motion, rhythm and bright colors punctuate a Corrientes launch event in Quito on Saturday, Oct. 3, with the steps and swirls of Talita Cumi, a folkloric dance troupe from Hospital Vozandes-Quito.