Four Missouri Synod career missionaries deployed to Peru, South Africa, Czech Republic
ST. LOUIS—January 18, 2012—The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) will launch four new career missionaries onto the mission field this month. The missionaries will serve in Peru, South Africa and the Czech Republic.
The missionaries join the 115-year tradition of LCMS overseas career missionary service — responding to the call to share the Good News of God’s love with people of all nations.
The missionaries traveling to their mission posts this month are Anthony DiLiberto, of Diamond Bar, Calif., who will serve in Peru; the Rev. Dr. Carl and Deaconess Deborah Rockrohr, of Ann Arbor, Mich., who will serve in South Africa; and the Rev. Tony Booker, of Fort Wayne, Ind., who will serve in the Czech Republic.
DiLiberto, a director of Christian education, will serve as the Peru mission team’s mercy outreach specialist, where he will identify and develop ways for new members of the emerging Peruvian Lutheran church body to put their faith into action, reaching out with the love of Christ to their neighbors in both Word and deed. He also will help the LCMS church-planting ministry team in Peru. DiLiberto first served in Peru for a two-year term beginning in the fall of 2008, coordinating short-term mission teams and service projects.
The Rockrohrs will serve as career missionaries in South Africa at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Pretoria. Rev. Rockrohr will teach and assist the rector with administrative tasks of the seminary. Additionally, he will assist the bishop of the Lutheran Church of Southern Africa (LCSA), an LCMS partner/sister church. As the director of the new residential deaconess training program, Deaconess Rockrohr will teach diaconal classes and develop this new program. The Rockrohrs’ son, Ted, will join them in the field.
Booker will serve as the pastor to a small congregation of English-speaking expatriates in Prague, Czech Republic, and help build closer relationships between the LCMS and local Lutheran churches so they might work together in mutual mission and ministry. He also will coordinate cultural exchange events with members and institutions of the surrounding community, develop a deeper relationship with a Lutheran Czech day school and serve as the LCMS supervisor for local short-term mission teams and projects. Booker’s wife, Connie, will join him in the field.
To learn more about each of the missionaries, or to give a secure donation, visit their online pages at www.lcms.org/diliberto, www.lcms.org/rockrohr or www.lcms.org/booker. To learn more about the nearly 100 LCMS career missionaries in the field, call 888-843-5267 or visit www.lcms.org/prayercards.
About The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), is a mission-oriented, Bible-based, confessional Christian denomination headquartered in St. Louis, Mo. Founded in 1847, the LCMS has more than 2.3 million baptized members in some 6,200 congregations and more than 9,000 pastors. Two seminaries and 10 colleges and universities operate under the auspices of the LCMS, and its congregations operate the largest Protestant parochial school system in America. The church broadcasts the saving message of Jesus Christ over KFUO Radio, and it has relationships and active mission work in 89 countries around the world. In the last five years, the LCMS has awarded more than $35 million through more than 900 domestic and international grants for emergency response and disaster relief. Today, the LCMS is in full doctrinal fellowship with 33 other confessional Lutheran church bodies worldwide and is a founding partner of Lutheran Services in America, a social ministry organization serving one in every 50 Americans. For more information, visit www.lcms.org.
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