Arturo Aguilar wasn’t always a member at Pan de Vida, Santa Ana, Calif. Born in Mexico and raised “100 percent Catholic,” he says he was hesitant to accept an invitation to Pan de Vida when Pastors Michael Foley and Christopher Schroeder knocked on his door in 2002. But Aguilar did go. He was so impressed with the Lutheran service that he soon became a member. Now he wants to share God’s Word with Latinos in Santa Ana.

To better prepare for outreach, he—and other Latinos throughout the country—are receiving training through WELS’ Cristo Palabra de Vida (Christ Word of Life) Hispanic education program. Designed to raise up leaders from the Latino community, this program provides different levels of theological training for lay workers, preseminary, and seminary students. Most lay worker and preseminary training is done locally at the student’s home church and supplemented by regional and national training events. At the seminary level, through Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary’s Pastoral Studies Institute, students have the choice of studying remotely or completing their training on campus.

So far, three men have graduated from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, another is studying to be a pastor, and several are at the preseminary level. In addition, 25 men and women across the country have taken introductory courses in a program that trains lay workers to become certified assistants in their home congregations.

Pablo and Claudia Torres, members at St. Paul, Green Bay, Wis., are two of those people. Originally from Guatemala, they came into contact with Pastor Tim Flunker, Hispanic outreach director, shortly after moving to the United States. They began taking English as a Second Language classes with him in 2005 and soon enrolled their children in St. Paul school and became members of the church.

For a year now they have been working through the congregation assistant program with Flunker as well as helping with Spanish Bible studies and St. Paul’s English as a Second Language program. “I like to know and comprehend the Bible because it’s so interesting for me,” says Pablo. “We have a small group in our community, and I start to teach the Bible to them because it’s important for the salvation of the soul. And when I talk with my wife, we are talking about the purpose of the life. God brought us here, and I don’t know [why] he want me but he started us to these classes—this is the purpose that God give us.”

The same is true of Rubén Gaviria, originally from Colombia. He says it was God’s will that he ended up at Northdale, Tampa, Fla. The congregation wants to begin outreach to the largely Hispanic community, and Gaviria and his wife are the only ones in the congregation that can speak Spanish.