Excited may be an understatement for the volunteers involved in next week’s Festival de Esperança (Festival of Hope) with Franklin Graham in Fortaleza, Brazil.
A whopping 17,000 people have gone through evangelism training for the event. And about 7,000 of them are ready to counsel those who walk forward during the invitation to accept Christ. In all, 2,000 churches are participating in the Festival de Esperança in some way or another.
“You can sense that there’s a great excitement and confidence that God is going to do something unique,” said Fortaleza Festival Director Galo Vasquez.
The two-day Festival set for Oct. 23-24 will include performances by Michael W. Smith and Brazilian singer Rose Nascimento, along with a Gospel message from Franklin Graham.
There’s also a ministry first—a Festival flash mob dance made up of more than 300 young people each night of the event.
Fortaleza sits just off the Atlantic and is a beautiful city that thrives off tourism. But in recent years, Fortaleza has been one of the 20 most dangerous cities in the world—ranking as high as fifth on the list at one point.
Combine that with prostitution, drugs and poverty, Vasquez added, and that presents a great need for the Gospel.
“It’s very attractive and appealing for outsiders,” he said. “Yet, the 3 million people in the city are being influenced by that [negative] environment.
“Pastors and leaders are very much concerned about that. So they have been praying very hard.”
Planning for the Festival de Esperança began in 2013. Churches have organized themselves “in a beautiful way” since then, Vasquez added.
Two weeks ago, hundreds gathered at the Arena Castelão, where the event will take place, and ended their meeting holding hands around the field in prayer.
Vasquez says there have been 24-hour prayer chains, vigils and all-night prayer meetings as well.
“Every day a church has been designated to pray for the Festival,” he said. “Not a day goes by without having a group of leaders that are praying.”
Vasquez, who is from Ecuador and the director of Latin America Festivals at BGEA, says, “Brazilians are very religious people, but the trend all over the world is toward secular society” and that presents a challenge.
“Though the Gospel has been blossoming in Brazil, the city of Fortaleza is one of the less evangelized cities of Brazil,” Vasquez added.
Still, without a Franklin Graham sermon preached, it seems the Festival has already made an impact. At a planning meeting in August, the manager of the Arena Castelão shared some news.
The stadium holds more than 60,000 people and hosted some of the World Cup games in 2013. Since then, however, business has been slow and the venue has had serious financial problems.
“He said, ‘Nobody seemed to be interested in using our facility,’ and they were having difficulty even obtaining soccer games,” Vasquez recalled.
After signing the contract for the Festival de Esperança, organizers told Arena Castelão management they’d be praying for the venue’s finances to turn around.
“And he told us, ‘From that very day we signed the contract, we have had 12 requests for 12 different event contracts between now and 2017,’” Vasquez said. “That was fantastic!”
Now, in these last days of preparation, Vasquez hopes believers will join him in prayer for the logistics, operations and publicity surrounding the Festival. Fortaleza has never had an event like this.
“Pray God will help us as we deal with final activities and preparation,” Vasquez said.
Young volunteers are going out to malls, schools and beaches to pass out invitations to the Festival, and churches are getting the word out for members to bring a friend.
“They’re praying for their friends and relatives, and now the time has come to not be timid, and to take freedom in Christ and invite friends,” Vasquez explained.
“Pray local churches will be ready to receive and disciple the new believers who come. Pray for a true spiritual awakening in the city.”
