Interview with Victor Cardoo

Victor Cardoo has served in Brazil for many years now and poured his life into making Jesus known in that country. I first heard Victor talk about his mission and calling on a monday morning at Every Home Crusade and have enjoyed folding many millions of tracts and packing many containers to be shipped out to him. So I thought that it may be a good idea to interview him about his life and ministry. Below is an interview of gold;

Tell us a bit about your background, upbringing and call to Christ?


Victor Cardoo: I was privileged to be born in Nigeria of missionary parents. When I was 6 years of age I was sent to a WEC Home for Missionaries Children in Arbroath, Scotland. It was there on the 14th February, 1953 that I vividly remember asking Jesus to be my Saviour. During my teens I went to all the WEC Missionary Youth Camps. It wasn´t until I was 17 and living in Belfast that the Lord first spoke to me about missionary work at the Easter Faith Mission Convention in Bangor. I dedicated my life to Him there and then. This was the beginning of a real battle in my life that lasted two years. I was scared to become a missionary. The call unmistakably came through the Bible Reading in my home Church one Sunday morning in Exodus chapter 3 v. 11 “Who Am I that I should go…?” Like Moses I had my many excuses. Then the confirmation came in v.12 “Certainly I will be with thee…” From that moment I never looked back.

Tell us about influences in your early years as a Christian that God brought to you that may stand out in your memory?

VC: First of all, my parents influence was strongest of all. Talking about missions was very common at home. I set up a WEC Warrior Band in our home in order to send young people to the mission field. At that time I hoped I could stay, get a good job and then support missionaries. But, of the regular group of around 30 nobody went so I was the first to go! Nearly half the group followed into missionary work or the ministry after that. Secondly, Pr. Hugh Orr´s teaching and personal counselling was used of the Lord time and time again. Thirdly, Pastor Willie Mullen´s ministry was a real driving force and inspiration as well. All this drew me closer to the Lord.

How did Christ lead you into missions, in particular Brazil, and what steps did you take in preparation for it?


VC: After the clear call from the Lord I immediately spoke to Pastor Hugh Orr who then accepted my testimony. Since my links with WEC were very strong and I was so blessed by so many of their missionaries I went the WEC Missionary Training College in Glasgow with the backing from my home church – Gt. Victoria St. Baptist. When I went to Bible School I had no idea geographically where I would go. Thailand, Ivory Coast and Uruguay were uppermost in my mind. The other problem was which kind of missionary work could I do? I suffer from a physical deficiency so what did God want me to do? I had a long chat with the Finlays from Bangor who were home from Uruguay. They suggested I pray about Brazil which was known then as the awakening giant. Through a remarkable godly lady at WEC/MTC God made it clear that my ministry would be literature. I spent several restless months trying to decide between Acre and WEC. Later CLC came into the picture. I met another couple from Belfast home from CLC Brazil. I had no doubt from that encounter of the Lord´s leading to Brazil.


What are the biggest issues facing Christians in Brazil?


VC:There has been an incredible growth rate of the Evangelical Church in Brazil over the past 30-40 years. It is difficult to know exact figures but about 15% to 20% of the 182 million population are born again Christians. Most of the Pastors and Church leaders are evangelists so the weakness lies mainly in good sound Bible teaching. One other problem is to take a very relaxed attitude towards church attendance and involvement. Although overseas missions has grown greatly the church has not matured adequately preparing their missionaries and assuming their financial support. They would begin supporting but then forget their missionaries when they are overseas and fail to maintain their support. This has caused a lot of problems.

What advice or encouragement would you give to anyone who’s currently thinking of giving their life to missions?
VC: I like this question! If you have the call from God keep moving and if it is a call for life, that I never personally doubted, then stick it out to the very end! As Winston Churchill said during the II World War: “Never, never, never give up!” It is easy to give up (many have) but harder to keep going. If you are in the center of God´s will that´s the best place in the world to be!

You’ve had a long relationship with Every Home Crusade, how did that come about and how has it developed over the years?


VC: I worked for 30 years with CLC in Brazil and got to know nearly all of this wonderful country. Many Brazilian Christians, especially the Pentecostal ones, have a terrific passion for soul winning. Since they are less privileged economically many cannot afford to buy Gospel literature from our bookshops. I can´t remember how many years ago this was but I visited Mr. Allen and Samuel Adams during my furloughs and for a while they supplied us with EHC literature with those famous tea chests! SGM in London invited me in 1996 to open up their work in Brazil and our ties were temporarily suspended but I was able to indicate others to Samuel that kept up some form of distribution in Brazil. After seven years with SGM they were restructuring worldwide and I was released. Brought home by my home church to talk about the future I had no doubt in my mind that Brazil was still the land of my calling. I popped in to see Samuel and told him I was an unemployed missionary!!! He jumped to it and said why don´t you go back and set yourself up for distribution? I was not expecting this at all! I immediately recalled the vision I had many years previously in Brazil that something needs to be done to supply literature to many churches and people who cannot afford to purchase evangelistic material. This vision began to crystallize and without any hesitation I accepted Samuel´s invitation and my, what a blessing this has been! The demand and potential here is enormous and many souls are being saved! It has been very exciting serving the Lord these past 4 years with Every Home Crusade.

What is the focus of interlink?

VC: Our major focus is and always will be supplying Gospel literature produced by Every Home Crusade to Churches and believers all over Brazil. In our office we have a huge map of Brazil showing all the towns and cities that receive supplies from us. We still have a long way to go! Brazil is 604 times bigger than Northern Ireland! For nearly seven years we have a Christian Volunteer Programme in the UK for Brazilians wanting to improve their English. Over 400 young people have taken advantage of this and it is still part of our ministry though not as big as it once was. The main difficulty is finding places in the UK that would accept them. There are many social needs in this country and our Board is interested in some projects but this is just on paper at the moment. There are some other small ideas which are still at embryo stage.

There’s a constant stream of tracts going through the folders for Brazil, and we just packed a container for Brazil a couple of days ago, (I believe we send a container every 2 months or so). But could you tell us a bit about the demand and need for literature in Brazil and how Christ is using it to advance His kingdom?

VC: You pinpointed tracts. Brazil is a tract culture. People of all ages love them. We repeatedly receive letters and emails telling us how much they like our literature and the fact that very rarely they are thrown away. We don´t receive a container every two months – yet! That is our dream! Last year for the first time we received 3 containers. I know Samuel wants to help and we are working on this because we need to get the logistics right. Our depot here in Brazil can hold approximately 22 tons so stock cannot be more than 4 tons when a container arrives. At present we are always out of stock before a container arrives but we are trying to reduce this gap. Demand is very steady but there are times it is more than we can cope with. EHC have just sent us another container last week and we have about 3 tons of stock which is already totally “sold out” by the number of orders awaiting shipment and some orders for the next container are already on file. Perhaps one unique feature about Brazil is that some churches and missions want to order up to 10 tons!! We cannot do this and deprive others of supplies. We offer our artwork free to anyone wanting to do their own printing. One ton is a maximum order we will allow only if we are satisfied with what they intend to do with the literature. For example, there is a very fast growing Baptist Church up country that has 36.000 members. They have a very strong evangelistic team and they divide up their order with many of their daughter churches. This reduces a lot of work for us if we were to send directly to each of their churches. Another smaller church says that 75% of their membership is involved directly in evangelism so we send them something proportionate. We never like to say “no” but sometimes we say “take this now and when the next container comes you can have some more”.

Most of the focus of the literature going from EHC has an evangelistic focus, but I often wonder about follow up or discipleship for people who respond to the Gospel. Could you tell us about the follow up or discipleship that may be in place in Brazil?

VC: At the beginning of our work many people wrote or phoned asking why there was no space to rubber stamp the tracts with the address of a church. For this and other reasons we decided to redesign the EHC tracts for Brazil and presented them to Samuel during his first visit our way. Samuel gave us the green light and our whole range now has the same format and all of today´s printing has space for the rubber stamp. However, not only does the reader know which church distributed the tracts, a church that he can attend, he can also write to us for a free copy of W. J. Patton´s booklet. We send out on average 150 copies each month of this booklet to enquirers, some of whom actually have made a decision to accept Christ as their Saviour. We are doing quite a lot of follow up answering queries briefly but we encourage discipleship at local church level.

You’re spending your time ministering to others, but who ministers to you? And is there any books, messages, preachers or authors etc that you’d recommend to others?

VC: In my early years in Brazil there use to be an all Brazil Conference for foreign missionaries working in this country. They were great and inspirational with renown speakers mainly from the USA. This petered out as many missionaries returned home for good and Brazilians took over the leadership. Today, I try to attend one Bible teaching Conference each year for three days for my own spiritual nourishment. For the rest of the year I lean very heavily on my worn out Portuguese Bible and Christian books! I am a bookworm (when I can find the time) and for the past five years my main theme of study has been the Second Coming of Christ. Eschatology fascinates me as so many things happening in the world today are so relevant to the hundreds of Bible prophecies we find in God´s Word. Lately the author who has been a huge blessing to me in person as a Conference Speaker, Bible Teacher and Author and whose most recent publication is JUDGEMENT DAY is Dave Hunt. He came every year to Brazil to minister and because of age – now 81 – feels he needs to cut down on his world travels. I don´t know if his books are available in Ireland but you will find some of them at Amazon Books. Norbert Lieth from Switzerland is another author and Bible teacher who is very challenging indeed.

One thing I ask everyone is how important they would say personal/family devotions are, and what have they looked like in your life?

VC: When the family was small we had regular family devotions but once our kids grew into their teens and adulthood our time schedules rarely coincided. From time to time we manage to sit round the Word but what is pleasing is to see each one having cultivated the habit to have their own quiet time when it suits them best. I feel very uncomfortable when for any reason I don´t have my daily quiet time. Our son at the moment is in need of prayer as he hasn´t been as regular as he use to be.

You’ll be in N. Ireland later this year, (While you’re here I believe your speaking at the Every Home Crusade conference, which I had to plug), but do you find many differences between the church here, spirituality her and culture than in Brazil?

VC: Yes, each time we go home we find it very strange at first. The cultural differences are more distinct and we try to be careful we don´t say or do anything wrong! Apart from some brief visits home we haven´t really been back in Belfast to stay for a while since 1991! We´ll probably get lost! We really don´t know what the churches are like now in Ireland but since most of them are traditional we will notice the difference! In Brazil most churches of all denominations both traditional and revived tend to be very lively especially when it comes to music! We are looking forward greatly to taking part in the Every Home Crusade Conference.

There’s a huge gay/homosexual community in Brazil, have you had much opportunity to reach out to many of them?


VC: Sad to say the gay/homosexual community in Brazil is not only growing fast but also growing very strong in society. The Brazilian Government is very sympathetic to this minority group that has many sympathisers within the Government itself. In May 2008 the Government will be sponsoring an all Brazil Gay/Homosexual, Lesbian and Sympathisers Conference to study new laws that if approved could be the beginning of a new wave of persecution against the Church. Much prayer is needed. There are some 24 Gay Parades each year and we usually have orders for one tract called LOVE written by a converted gay but because the author has been severely persecuted for his outspoken remarks and comments, especially on TV, he has had to go into hiding. Our Board doesn´t want Interlink to come under scrutiny as the supplier of this tract (our name doesn´t appear on it) so this year there will be a low key approach to outreach by nearly all parties concerned about reaching these lost people until we know the outcome of this May Conference. Caution is the norm.

As the gay/homosexual community is on the rise in N. Ireland is there any advice you’d give to Christians here about how to reach out to them with the Gospel of Christ?


VC: This is a very delicate situation and anyone burdened to reach these people must have a deep knowledge of their mentality and beliefs and about their liberal views. They are best reached on a one to one basis. I have met some gays and prostitutes whose lives have been wonderfully transformed but they face immense difficulties in society and in finding jobs as well as the bias found in many Christian Churches. Some Brazilian Missions that I know who work in this area say the fruit of their labours is slow and once someone is converted it is an uphill struggle to keep them within the faith. It takes time but once they are through they are a blessing!

Within the busy task of ministry, do you get time to relax and what does Victor Cardoo do to chill out?


VC: I have to force myself to take time to relax and I think it works pretty well. My family may not agree but they have been most understanding. It is so exciting to work for the Lord and when you know there is so much to be done for His Kingdom and my strong belief that Jesus is coming much sooner than anyone can imagine we have a duty to reach as many people with the Gospel as we possibly can. Incredibly there are people in Brazil who have not even heard of Jesus! When people question me about my workaholic habits I usually say: “I live at Interlink and sleep at home!” Since travelling is beyond our means and my mind is tired I enjoy watching sport or a good football match on TV!! Last night Brazil played Ireland but I only saw the last 30 minutes! It helps to chill out!