Adauto Rezende is founder and president of THE HAVEST (Colheita) MINISTRY. He has been pastor-teacher for 25 years, had planted churches in Canada and Portugal, as well as an author, conference speaker and for 16 years had host the programs Door of Faith and Awaken the City on Faith FM in Kitchener, ON.
He had his theological studies from Brazilian Theological College And Ontario Bible College. He was an ordained minister by Canada Christian College in 1994. Adauto and his wife, Gina, presently live in Cambridge, ON and have three married children: Michelle, Rodrigo and Danielle. They also enjoy the enthusiastic company of their three grandchildren: Gabriel, Ana Clara and Mathew.
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TESTIMONY
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Colheita is a Portuguese word for Harvest. The ministry initialized in 1993 as an inter-denominational ministry to serve the Southern Ontario Portuguese speaking churches.
I remember one day, observing more than thirty individuals getting off from a bus at the corner of Bloor and Dufferin Street in Toronto. They were cultists ready to take their wrong messages to the doors of hundreds of people, some of whom would probably end it up believing in the heresies of their sect. As I witnessed this scene I started to cry out to God, saying, “Lord, while we are fighting against each other in our churches, the cults are doing what we should be doing. Jesus, I said, the wolves are devouring your lost sheep. Have mercy, o God, on this people and on this city.”
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I went to work and when I returned home there was no joy in me. I lay down but could not sleep. I decided to get up in the middle of the night and pray. I made a strange prayer. I said: “Lord, give to all the people of the Portuguese speaking community at least one chance to hear the gospel. How can you judge and condemn these people if they do not hear the gospel? Who knows, maybe we could do something on TV.” I prayed for a while and went back to bed thinking about what I had just said to God.
At that time, the Campus Crusade for Christ had a project of evangelism using the Jesus Film. Then I had a thought to ask Campus Crusade for permission to use parts of the movie, and make short gospel messages on TV, to show on the Portuguese network (They had a multicultural TV in Toronto with 2 hours a day broadcasting Portuguese News and a Brazilian super opera).
The next day, Gina told me a dream she had the previous night – Two men came up to her, one of whom was hold an ugly animal under his arms, and he said, “Tell Adauto that the doors are open.” I understood that the Lord had sent his angels to bind the enemy and to make my dream come true.
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Miraculously, the Lord had opened the doors to this evangelistic project. We obtained authorization from Campus Crusade for Christ, who graciously gave us eight minutes of the film from which were taken seven video clips. I was introduced at the time to Tony Gentulucci, a believer who worked on the TV station that I mentioned. He gave me the cost to place the commercials on the air - $13,000.00 dollars. I only had $1000.00. I felt the Lord telling me to ask for $500.00 from specifics individuals that He had showed me. After sharing with them the project and the cost to make it happen, they all gladly received the vision and gave the offering with a divine Joy. We raised sufficient funds to go ahead and within a few days, more than 500 thousand people were watching the gospel portrayed on TV.
However, we still owed $1500.00 to the station and on the day prior to the deadline, at 11 p.m., the doorbell rang. I went to see who was there and had the pleasant surprise to find Rubens, the worship leader of our church. He had an unpleasant experience and was forced to pay a large sum of money unfairly required of him. He then made a pledge to God that if he did not have to pay the amount required, he would give a certain sum to this project. That day he received notice that the Lord had answered his prayer over the matter. Therefore, full of joy, he came to pay his vow and brought me a cheque or $1.500 dollars. God was faithful!
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The commercials were produced from the clips with an appeal for people to surrender their lives to the Lord. At the end of each commercial were the names and addresses of thirty two Portuguese-speaking churches in Southern Ontario. Among these were Baptist, Presbyterian, Assembly of God, and others independent evangelical churches. For four months, the commercials were shown continuously during prime time.
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Besides this project, we started an outreach newspaper. We printed ten thousand copies monthly. Colheita News was twenty pages colour tabloid with many evangelistic articles, testimonies of TV celebrities who had become Christians and famous Brazilians born again soccer players. Also had secular news contextualized to a prophetic biblical explanatory articles. The last page carried the names and addresses of all the Portuguese-speaking churches in the Province so that those who read it and make a decision to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour and Lord could attend a church that would be more suitable to them. The newspaper was distributed in Toronto, London, Mississauga, Brampton, Cambridge, and Oakville.
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Through this ministry, believers began to have a kingdom mentality. The churches grew up in numbers and its members started to honor each other. The paper became a powerful evangelistic tool and also brought unity among the evangelical churches. The newspaper “Colheita News” was published for ten years. The Lord was faithful in answering my prayer.