GROTA, Brazil – Ten years ago, Luíz began helping the itinerant priest in his village’s Catholic parish. Soon, he was leading the singing and doing most of the preaching.

However, the more Luíz heard the gospel, the more he was inspired to explore the Scriptures for himself. He began preaching the truth and taking down the idols and images adorning the church – which brought the wrath of his superior and a demotion from the pulpit.

Last year, however, Luíz was drawn by the joyful sound of evangelicals worshipping in a new Grota house-church, where the bare and dusty doorway was illuminated by a single naked light bulb dangling from the roof. An elder named Chiquinho was leading the service, and Luíz professed his faith in Christ that night.

This story is one ripple in Avant’s church-planting swell in rural northeast Brazil, which now boasts three generations of churches. The new Grota fellowship is the daughter church of a Sacramento congregation where Chiquinho serves, and a granddaughter of the original Nova Russas church founded by Avant missionaries in the 1950s.

“It’s so amazing how the gospel got to me out here in the sticks!” Chiquinho says. About the time Luíz was searching out truth in a nearby Catholic parish, Chiquinho was stirred by Avant gospel programs he heard on a battery-operated radio in the corn fields. He located the Nova Russas church sponsoring the programs, and was soon being discipled by church leaders.

Chiquinho has since caught Avant’s vision for establishing mature and independent churches that are self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating. Last year’s highlight was the ceremonial hand-off of the Lagoa de Santo Antonio church – the oldest of eight daughter churches, all within a 30-mile radius, started by the 200-member Nova Russas congregation. At the other end of the spectrum is the Catunda church, a dynamic house church of 30 that’s thriving but still very dependent on finances and leadership from Nova Russas.

Aided by his Sacramento church, Chiquinho has started house churches in Ipueira Funda and now Grota, his hometown, where he’s been ostracized by family and friends for following Christ. Undaunted, his witnessing strategy is vintage Brazilian: every week, he loads his family of five onto his Honda 125 motorcycle and speeds home to Grota, where he rekindles relationships by visiting and playing – what else? – fútbol.

Chiquinho is still discipling Luíz at the Grota church, which is bursting with new faces. Luíz was baptized in May, a week after his mother also accepted Christ. This family’s salvation is causing commotion in this Catholic community, because many here consider evangelicals a cult.

“Look at Sede and Capim – there is no witness in those places. Somehow we must go,” Chiquinho says.

It helps that gospel radio goes before them. The two Avant radio stations so critical to evangelism and church-planting efforts, AM-780 and FM-103, are also progressing toward self-sustainability; 45 percent of expenses were covered by commercials in 2005.