Rev. Bennie L. DeMerchant

At sixteen years of age, Bennie DeMerchant and Theresa Shomberg felt God’s call to the mission field of Brazil, although they had never met and were separated by 1,500 miles. Theresa went to ABI and graduated before Bennie arrived from New Brunswick, Canada in 1959. He acquired a private pilot’s license, married Theresa and graduated in 1962. After a three year pastorate in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1965, this couple journeyed to Manaus, capital of the huge Amazon state in Northern Brazil with their six month old daughter, Beth, where they studied Portuguese and built the home in which they still live.

In 1970, Sheaves for Christ helped Brother DeMerchant purchase a Cessna 172 seaplane that still flies after 10,000 hours, which is more than a million miles. A larger Cessna 206 was purchased in 1977 and has logged 5,000 hours. When he is not flying seaplanes, Brother DeMerchant evangelizes using a fleet of wooden and aluminum canoes, portable cement block forms and hundreds of trained workers as they plant churches in Amazon cities, towns, villages, on islands, lakes, and among Indian tribes.

Manaus has a present population of about two million souls with some 200 United Pentecostal Churches. A UPCI convention center has been built on the north side of the Amazon River near the floating seaplane hangar and accommodates up to seven thousand people for special events.

Theresa DeMerchant, national director of Bible schools, coordinates the work of translating, printing and the curriculum for eighty-two Bible school locations with 292 teachers. The late Robert Norris started this ministry in Rio de Janeiro. There are 1,121 two-year students registered and 5,500 alumni in these schools which are all named ABI.

Brother DeMerchant was elected bishop of the UPC of Brazil in 1989, by the thirty-two districts and 1,200 church congregations. Approximately 750 churches are located in the Amazon Basin, the northern half of Brazil. This hot, equatorial zone is equivalent in size to all the United States east of the Mississippi River.

Full Throttle, (a Pentecostal Publishing House publication) records the adventures, challenges and fears of flying thousands of hours while opening for evangelism the world’s largest standing forest for His kingdom.

He passed from this life on February 8, 2017.