BACKGROUND HISTORY
Great works often have humble beginnings. The foundation for PAZ International was laid in the 1950’s with Melvin Huber, a 36 year old farmer in the heartland of America. He and his wife, Katherine, had worked hard to make their farmland profitable, and were beginning to enjoy the fruit of their labor. With a loving wife, three children and one on the way, a supportive extended family and a good church, Melvin’s life was good. Then, one day, while working in the field, the Lord spoke to him, “You have received everything you wanted. But—what about those who have never heard about My love, and are dying and going to Hell?”
A vision emerged in Melvin’s heart—what if he would move to a poorer country, do farming for a living and mission work on the side? He learned that there were vast areas of uncultivated farming land available reasonably for sale in Brazil. Melvin and Katherine decided to follow God’s call. In 1955 they uprooted their family, packed their belongings, and were on their way to Brazil. They drove to Miami and unexpectedly, Katherine went into labor. Becky was born in the morning of their scheduled flight to Brazil. “The doctor who delivered me, didn’t even charge my parents,” Becky laughs as she relates the story. “They missed the flight and stayed in Florida for a while, then later boarded another plane to Brazil and continued the 30 hour travel with their now four children .” The Huber family’s last child was born in Brazil.
Melvin bought land, but never farmed it, as God blessed their past endeavors to become self supported, full time missionaries. Melvin combined the preaching of the Gospel with practical solutions to improving people’s life conditions.
The family lived in different cities in South-Eastern and Central Brazil for 25 years while planting 20 churches, discipling church leaders, and raising five children who all followed in their parents’ footsteps. After moving to the States to obtain college education, and in some cases living, marrying and working there for a few years, all five children, two girls and three boys eventually returned home to Brazil as full time missionaries.
PAZ – THE BEGINNING
PROJECT AMAZON (PAZ) was established by Melvin and Katherine’s oldest son, Luke Huber. While in college in the States, he had met Christine, who also grew up with missionary parents. In 1973, after graduation, they married and returned to Luke’s family in Central Brazil, both with a zeal for Jesus and the Great Commission. They were assisting Melvin in his church planting, but both Luke and Christine had an increasing desire to bring the Gospel to the unreached peoples in the Amazon Basin.
In December 1976, Luke (26) and Christine (25) with their two small children Sarah and Esther, climbed into their new PAZ truck, and traveled five adventurous days approximately 1500 miles on the newly opened Trans-Amazon Highway from Luke’s family home city of Goiânia to Santarém, a strategically located river port in central Amazon. Along the way they miraculously survived a serious life-threatening accident, “thanks to God’s presence and protection over us,” Christine writes.
“My husband learned that the immense Amazon Basin (see map) was one of the larger unreached areas of the world, with tens of thousands of isolated villages, and millions of very poor people who had no one to tell them the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. Most of the villages had no schools or medical help. Baby mortality was high, due to impure water and unhealthy diets. There were no roads to reach these villages, and at that time, there were no television, nor internet. The very few who owned small boats often did not have fuel. It could take any number of days to travel by boat across the wide ocean-like Amazon River or one of its huge tributaries to reach the nearest town, often through sudden, dangerous storms and rough waters.”
They found that Santarém and the surrounding river villages were ripe unto harvest. Luke found village after village along the river with no evangelical church. It was in those early days that God gave Luke and Christine the vision that was to become the very heart of PAZ: to plant a church in every village and town in the Amazon Basin. @PAZ
GROWING PAINS
To accomplish the mission of PAZ, Luke knew that he would need more workers and lots of boats, but he would always say, “Attempt big things for a big God!” He was never deterred!
Over the next few years, Luke’s parents and all his siblings with spouses and children—the entire Huber family, moved to Santarém to work with PAZ. Additional missionaries also caught the vision and came from the United States. Luke began to build a fleet of diesel-powered riverboats to carry evangelists, church planters and health workers into the surrounding river communities. In some towns and villages the Gospel was met by opposition— sometimes even persecution— from spiritualists and works-based religions.
But the PAZ church, like the early-day church in Jerusalem, grew rapidly in the face of opposition. It is a testimony to God’s power and mercy that many of the Brazilians who once opposed the Gospel so fiercely, have since been won over and become important leaders and teachers in the PAZ churches.
It is emblematic that, when Luke died — in a plane crash in 1994 — he was on the Amazon River, doing the work that he had been called to do and so loved!
An army of born-again Brazilians rose to take important leadership positions in the church. It had been Luke’s vision and his dream from the beginning that PAZ would evolve from being an American-led mission to a vibrant, self-propelled church led by Brazilians. And that is precisely what has happened.
THE VISION COMES TO PASS
After Luke’s death, the Lord poured out an extra measure of grace on the mission and the new churches by raising up new leaders, bringing thousands of new believers in, and filling everyone with a new sense of urgency and devotion. These new indigenous leaders took hold of the vision that was once Luke’s—they continued evangelizing, planting churches and establishing new bases across the Amazon Basin.
The Huber family is still active in PAZ. Today, it is led by Jeff and Becky Hrubik (Luke’s sister). They live at the mission home base in Santarém, and oversee a self supported staff of missionaries and the mission activities at large.
NEXT STEP AT SANTARÉM – PAZ HEADQUARTERS
The church in the city is unified like never before. It keeps expanding and producing thousands of new believers and leaders. To accommodate all our members, we conduct over 50 services each Sunday, four at the Paz Central Church alone! We are in the process of building a 7,000 plus seat worship center that will accelerate the PAZ vision and stand as a testament to God’s great favor and desire to spread His fame to all nations. It will be a training center for thousands of missionaries that will be commissioned to the Amazon Basin, Brazil and yes — by God’s grace, to the ends of the world!
TRANSPORTATION
A large portion of the people of the Basin live along its rivers, lakes and streams. So the main transportation is by boat and sea planes. PAZ has a fleet of over 100 boats – from several small canoes and speedboats for national pastors and missionaries to larger live-in boats for support teams (medical, water filter, construction, disaster relief, etc.). Small aircraft and seaplanes allow our top leaders to oversee several locations in much less time.
STRATEGIC CENTERS
PAZ has established church centers in the nine Brazilian states in the Amazon Basin. From there church planting teams have been sent to almost all states capitals. As the team plants a mother church, initial resources are concentrated on developing strong, independent churches. As they grow, they in in turn send out their teams to new fields.
APOSTOLIC DISCIPLESHIP MODEL (ADM)
The essence of the vision: Before a church plant takes place, a cell group (small group or home church) is started and people are won for Christ and discipleship. This cell group is led by a fully committed disciple of Christ (typically a local worker from the larger mother church). 
The purpose of our cell groups is to grow and multiply. This happens while raising up the next new leaders in the cell group. As they multiply, the local church is born and eventually a building is needed. We are more successful when planting a mother church by sending a team of Brazilian pastors and leaders who have already worked together fruitfully with the ADM model, instead of only one experienced couple.
The base plant in Fortaleza was a team of 40 families lead by missionary/pastor Abe Huber. In six years, the church grew to over 4,000 people and they planted 50 new churches!
CHURCH-PLANTING MINISTRIES
We develop key ministries which aid in church-planting, such as medical, water filter, education, construction, work programs, aviation and more. For example, a medical team will arrive in a target community via boat and host a health clinic while the water filter team installs filters.
Each night the team, in collaboration with the river missionary, holds services, preaching the Gospel and winning converts. At the end of the trip, cell groups are established and a new local church is born, putting ADM into practice right away!
THE FIELD
The principle mission field of PAZ is the Amazon Basin, containing nearly 3 million square miles of land and water and makes up 36% of all of South America. It is nearly the size of the Continental U.S. and most of it is located in Brazil, as well as in the neighboring countries of Peru, Columbia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. An estimated 10 million people live in the Basin. Largely undeveloped and unreached, it lacks a paved highway or railway networks. The majority of the transportation is done via boat on the immense river system.
The Amazon River is the widest and second longest— 6,400 km—river on earth. It carries almost 20% of the world’s total freshwater discharging into the oceans. In fact, it drains more water than the world’s next nine largest rivers combined,. The land mass from which the water is draining into the river, the Amazon Basin, is the largest basin of any one river in the world.
THE PEOPLE The greatest asset of the Amazon Basin is not the fresh water, oxygen, wildlife or rainforest – it’s the people. They are very responsive to the Gospel. Most of those who live along the rivers in the Basin are simple people who work as fishermen, farmers and ranchers. There are 350 ethnic groups among them, 60 largely isolated. To visit them is to step into a different world where life is much more raw and a need unmet is life-threatening. These people are so precious to the Lord and we have the great privilege and challenge of sharing God’s love with them where they live. @PAZ
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Mt. 28:18-20
FROM R.K.’S CORNER
We all stand on the shoulders of men and women in our family who went before us. Their love, hard work, and sacrificial efforts helped shape us. Today, when the attack on the nuclear family is relentless, the fracturing of family relationships disastrous, it is a tremendous blessing to present you with an intact American family who through a generational legacy of faith in action have embraced the Great Commission to reach the world for Christ!
Jeff and Becky Hrubik visited us in our home in the early 2000s. They told us about their family’s mission work through the then Project Amazon, now PAZ International. As a result, The Bridge helped finance some of their riverboat medical missions to the remote upriver villages in the Amazon basin. Later, in 2008, it was an honor to invite Melvin Huber, Becky’s father, and two of his children, to stay for a few days with us on their way back from the States to their home in Brazil. We were impacted by his and his family’s testimonies of passionate faith, courage and sacrifice through now four generations in bringing Him, who is the Light of the World, to those who have not heard! PAZ International is a mission worthy of your support!
Please mark your donation: PAZ International. Thank You!!