"You have to love suitcases"

Carina Schmidt looks after a parish in Brazil that stretches over several hundred kilometres. in this interview, she talks about how the people in the "Far West" have grown close to her heart.

ELM: Ms Schmidt, the "Far West" of Brazil, i.e. the parish in which you work, stretches almost 400 kilometres from west to east. How does it work to work in such a large area?

Carina Schmidt: You really have to travel a lot by car. I don't sleep at home every weekend. I'm on the road from Thursday onwards, because as a pastor I have to visit the churches, hold services and so on.

ELM: Did you want such a large parish or did it just come about somehow?

Carina Schmidt: It's a long story. I worked for six years in a very traditional parish in the very south, near Porto Alegre, but I had always wanted to work in the diaspora, but more in the direction of the Amazon. I was still married at the time, but then I got divorced. And then I said: well, my husband never wanted to go to Amazonas. I'm alone now and I want to do this. And the church leadership immediately gave me a job in Amazonia. Because nobody wants to go to Amazonia.

I was supposed to be there for six years, but it went so well that the church said after four years: Carina, we need you back here in the south. There's a parish there that will be closed if nobody goes there.

ELM: This position was vacant for some time beforehand, wasn't it?

Carina Schmidt: Exactly, it was vacant for three years. Nobody wanted to work there.

ELM: So you probably need pastors like you who enjoy travelling.

Carina Schmidt: Yes, you really have to love being on the road and you have to love suitcases. But it was important to me. I've seen how people have brought their faith back into their lives, how they are living as a family of faith again.

ELM: What kind of people live in this area? Are there many who farm?

Carina Schmidt: The realities are very different in this large area. There are communities with many families, but also some where there are almost only women or many older people. And then there are also people who live from farming. I think it's just as different as here in Germany.

ELM: Do people wait for a pastor to come to their neighbourhood? Or do you have to approach them first and say: Look, there's a church offering here now?

Carina Schmidt: That is biblical. God comes and we go. And it's the same in my reality. I go and they come. It was important to first visit the individual people and families and then bring them together. I did a lot of counselling in the first year. And now it's like this: I go there and the people, the congregation, the members, they are very happy when I am simply there in the church service and also for visits. Everything that a pastor does.

ELM: Many of the people who live there are newcomers to the region, so perhaps they're not quite at home yet, are they?

Carina Schmidt: Yes, it really is the diaspora of the diaspora. The history of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Brazil begins in 1824, when emigration from Germany to Brazil began, especially to the Porto Alegre region. This was followed by movement to the south and centre of the country. And from there, people emigrated again to other federal states, for example Santa Catarina or Paraná. In the region where I now work, there were almost no Lutherans until 30 years ago.

ELM: What do you see as a particular challenge in your work?

Carina Schmidt: The problem is that there are very few members. A normal or large congregation has between 500 and 800 members, we only have 192 who pay contributions. Including the children, there are 258, which is always a bit of a difficulty, also financially.

ELM: Because there are so few members and because they are so scattered, you don't just preach in churches, but also at so-called preaching points. What does that look like?

Carina Schmidt: That's near the border with Uruguay, for example. I preach to five or six families there, about 20 people. I'm there every fortnight and then we meet in a private house, always with a different family.

ELM: Let's talk briefly about the future of the Far West project and your future there. Projects are usually limited in time. What's next for the "Far West"?

Carina Schmidt: I just sent the next project application to the church leadership before I came to Germany. Let's see what happens next. It is clear that we will continue to need support.