With a population of over one billion people, India is the second most populated nation on earth. Some projections indicate that India’s population will surpass China’s by the year 2025. In this vibrant, bustling country, with an emerging middle class of over 400 million people, the Lord has established and nurtured Christ Evangelical Lutheran Ministries, the WELS mission. This young church is flourishing in a country in which fewer than three percent of the people know Christ as Savior.

Since 2003 the membership of CELM has grown from 3,677 to 7,457 souls.  National pastors, now numbering 14, are taking an increasing role in supervising congregations, spearheading evangelism and stewardship efforts and preparing men for ministry. In addition, the spiritual and physical needs of three hundred children are more than amply met through the orphanages that WELS has established in cooperation with the national church. We thank and praise the Lord for his manifold blessings!

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Since 1964, WELS has been working to bring the good news of Jesus’ resurrection to Latin America. Missionaries were first sent to Puerto Rico. During the following decades, mission work spread to more countries south of the U.S. border.

Today, 12 WELS missionaries serve Latin America. In addition to Puerto Rico, they reside in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil. They also travel to Colombia, Bolivia, and other places.

Missionaries learn the languages of the countries they serve, which include Spanish, Portuguese, French and Creole. This helps them share the Gospel with others, train men to be pastors, and work with these pastors to develop self-supporting congregations and church bodies.

Approximately 550 million people live in Latin America. To reach them all with the good news of salvation is a steep task. Yet we give thanks to God for providing opportunities to do so. While cultures, people, and languages vary, the goal is one: to bring more sheep into Christ’s resurrected arms

The close of World War II opened a window for WELS to enter Japan as its third world field in 1957. Missionaries to the Land of the Rising Sun encounter a culture steeped in a blend of three world religions: Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism. While Christianity is still young in Japan, the members of the Lutheran Evangelical Christian Church are exceptional in their high level of commitment to the cause of Christ, and are well along the path to becoming a fully independent church body.

With the fall of the iron curtain in 1989, WELS entered three countries of the former Soviet bloc, Russia, Bulgaria, and Albania. To do mission work in these lands, WELS missionaries use the Slavic languages of Russia and Bulgaria with its Cyrillic alphabet, and the Shqip language of Albania, an old form of Indo-European which predates even Greek and Latin.

The geographic spread of these fields is daunting. Russia covers the largest land mass in the world, stretching across 11 time zones. WELS mission work in Russia is carried on mainly in Siberia which is part of the Asian Continent, but includes also remote outposts in European Russia that require our missionaries over a day’s travel to reach. Bulgaria, on the western shore of the Black Sea, is the ancient Thrace. Albania, on the Adriatic Sea across from Italy, is the biblical Illyricum, also called Dalmatia, to which the Apostle Paul sent Titus to preach.

We are privileged in WELS today to be winning souls for Christ and salvation in lands that for over two generations were closed to the gospel by godless, communist regimes.

The last of the WELS traveling teams has finished its work at Christ the King Lutheran Seminary. Graduation for the ten seminary students is set for April 5, 2008. The three Christ the King Lutheran graduates will serve as vicars until their ordination in December 2008.

Two weeks after graduation, seven of the graduates will be ordained as pastors of All Saints Lutheran Church of Nigeria, the ordination service taking place in Ogoja, at the north end of Cross River State. This is a big step forward for a synod of nearly 5,000 members currently being served by just two pastors.

A big event this April is the “Sisters Serving Jesus” visit by four women of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary Society. They will travel with Liaison Pastor Doug Weiser, and meet with their sisters from both Christ the King Lutheran Church of Nigeria and All Saints Lutheran Church of Nigeria. As God blesses this visit, there will be three one-day conferences in each of the two synods there. The idea is to have conferences to which women of the local area can more readily travel. On returning to the USA, the WELS women will speak at the LWMS convention in Tucson, and be available to speak about Nigeria to groups wishing to hear them.

Christ the King Lutheran Church has increased its congregations enough that one of their parishes subdivided. CKLCN now has 38 congregations in eight parishes. All praise to God for a report from the pastors of CKLCN that they have been blessed with a new sense of unity in their ranks. All available pastors met with Liaison Weiser in January, and plan to march in the April graduation service as a sign of their unity.

Everyone in the Thailand Mission fills many different roles.  As a Kingdom Worker, some of my jobs are to teach English to the Bible Institute students, to help run the handicraft program and weekly craft times, to teach English outreach classes a few days a week, and to be a support to the mission with other general needs.  I also live with the girls who are studying at the Bible Institute. Overall, I see the purpose of my job being to encourage the national Christians who are studying here who will go on to be Christian leaders in their communities.

As I was looking into what to do after graduation, I kept seeing WELS World Mission updates on my church bulletin board. I was interested in doing something where I could actually live with national people in a different culture, see the church from a global perspective, and be in a place where I could encourage Christians and non-Christians.   Many Kingdom Worker positions are geared toward teaching English, but the Thailand role has a variety of other responsibilities which have been a good fit for me.