*To download these images please follow the instructions:
Step 1 - Click on a thumbnail to enlarge
Step 2 - Right-click on enlarged image and select "Save Picture As..."
Step 3 - Select a folder on your computer to file the image to and click "Save"
Venezuelan Baptists Luis and Beverly Clemente (center) share some laughs with longtime friends Paul and Robin Tinley (right), IMB missionaries in Venezuela, and their son, Matt, (left). Luis is pastor of Jesus is the Way Baptist Church in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, a missions-minded congregation featured in the 2008 International Mission Study. Matt, freelance videographer in Orlando, Fla., helped with the IMB media coverage for the mission study.
Believers at Jesus is the Way Baptist Church gather for praise and worship. Begun by a Brazilian Baptist missionary and an IMB missionary, the church now sends its own missionaries into Venezuela and the world.
At the close of a worship service at Jesus is the Way Baptist Church in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, Venezuelans from all walks of life respond to an invitation to receive prayer. During this time Pastor Luis Clemente, who was mentored by IMB missionaries, prays for some young women.
IMB missionary Paul Tinley (center) visits with believers at Jesus is the Way Baptist Church in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela. Tinley has been a spiritual mentor for the church's pastor, Luis Clemente, since the two met on Venezuela's Margarita island in 1991 when Tinley and his wife, Robin, were serving there. Today the Tinleys are training and mobilizing Venezuelan Baptists for global missions.
Antonio López (right) once had a successful career as the captain as a Venezuelan oil tanker. Today he delivers something of eternal value--the Good News of Christ. Sent out by Jesus is the Way Baptist Church in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, López serves as a Venezuelan Baptist missionary to the Warao people. Here he travels along Venezuela's Orinoco River with Warao pastor and boatsman Nicolás Marín.
Venezuelan Baptist missionary Antonio López (right) greets a mother and her child at a worship service in a Warao village in Venezuela's Orinoco River Delta. During the last five years, López and his wife, María, have worked with Warao believers to start six new churches in this area.
Warao believers praise the Lord at Jesus is Our Healer Church in the jungle delta of Venezuela's Orinoco River. Many Warao people in this area came to know Christ after experiencing miraculous healings from infirmities such as snake bites, burns and paralysis. Venezuelan Baptist missionaries Antonio and María López helped start this church, working with Warao believers they trained.
At Jesus is Our Teacher Church in Venezuela's Orinoco Delta jungle, Warao Christians sing praise songs during a worship service. The Warao in this isolated village had never heard the Gospel until Venezuelan Baptist missionaries Antonio and María López—and Warao believers they trained—began working there in 1999.
With no roads between the villages in Venezuela’s Orinoco Delta jungle, motorboats and canoes provide the primary mode of transportation for the Warao, an indigenous people group in the area. Many Warao are coming to Christ through the work of Venezuelan Baptist missionaries Antonio and María López.
Many Warao children live in villages along the waterways of Venezuela’s Orinoco River Delta. Antonio López believes that if he can reach the children of the Warao tribe with the Gospel, the Warao will have hope for the future.
Warao men in the town of Tucupita, Venezuela, get together for a game of baseball, Venezuela’s No. 1 sport. At a housing project where these men and their families live, Venezuelan Baptist missionary María López is sharing the Gospel with Warao families through children’s Bible activities she leads.
Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, is home to about 5 million people; fewer than 2 percent of them have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Opportunities exist for a Southern Baptist church or association to serve as a strategic partner with IMB missionaries reaching professionals in Caracas. To learn more, go to takingit2theedge.org/PTZs/venezuela.html.
Forrest and Becky Bohlen (left) stop to visit a Venezuelan farm couple living near Canaguá. Although the missionaries have just met the couple, they are invited in for a cup of coffee, a common display of Andean hospitality.
On the road to Canaguá in the Andes Mountains, Forrest and Becky Bohlen stop to get acquainted with potato farmers working in fields along the mountain pass. Here the farmers work together to sack the potatoes.
IMB missionary Forrest Bohlen prepares coffee over an open fire at a coffee farm near Canaguá, Venezuela, in the Andes Mountains. Forrest and his wife, Becky, have met many farmers in this area by delivering a colorful calendar advertising an agricultural foundation they started. The foundation offers training for the farmers and opens doors for the Bohlens to share the Gospel.
A staple crop in the Venezuelan Andes, coffee grows on many of the hillsides in these mountains. “The Gospel isn’t being preached up here. It’s not even being heard,” says IMB missionary Forrest Bohlen. He and his wife, Becky, are trying to change that through their outreach among Andean farmers in and around Canaguá, Venezuela.
While visiting a coffee farm in the Venezuelan Andes, IMB missionary Forrest Bohlen pours buckets of coffee beans through a shelling machine to prepare the beans to be dried and roasted. As Forrest and his wife, Becky, build relationships with Andean farmers in this area, “it amazes me, and it always surprises me, how fast things turn to spiritual conversations,” Forrest says.
IMB missionary Forrest Bohlen (right) talks with coffee farmers in Venezuela’s Andes Mountains while coffee beans dry in the sun. It takes several days for the beans to dry before they’re roasted. “The work here is slow, but it’s not hard,” says Forrest of the outreach he and his wife, Becky, are doing among Andean agriculturalists. “It never ceases to amaze me that God puts us in the path of people who are ready to hear the Gospel and willing to read the Bible.”
Last year IMB missionaries Forrest and Becky Bohlen (left) led two Venezuelan agricultural professors to Christ while visiting an agricultural school in the Andean town of Mucuchachí, Venezuela. Every time they return to the town, the Bohlens teach a Bible study for these professors—Zulay Guillén (right) and Lilimar Rivas. “I was just waiting for someone to tell me” the Gospel message, Guillén says.
If your order process fails to complete, click here.
