Pastor Siegfried Rudy Zilz

A pastor from Porto Alegre

Siegfried Rudy Zilz was born on October 23, 1933. A Brazilian pastor of German descent, married to Irma, father of four children and grandfather of many grandchildren, he lived in Porto Alegre, in the Cristo Redentor neighborhood, in a house that for many years was also the mission’s central office: the phone ringing, emails from several countries, packages arriving with medicines, vaccines, musical and surgical instruments, clothing and computers.

Although his name was Germanic and mythological, as one journalist who visited him wrote, he was “very Brazilian and very real.” “All the members of his family are committed to the Lord Jesus,” the same report noted.

The call

The words of a prisoner

In the early 1980s, at the invitation of the Open Doors mission, Siegfried served as interpreter for a Siberian pastor of German origin who came to give his testimony in churches across Brazil. That man spoke of his more than twenty years in prison for his faith, and of the sufferings of the persecuted church. As he listened and interpreted, Siegfried heard the Lord’s own call as well: to do something for the persecuted churches and for missionaries in hard places.

In September 1981 he made his first trip with Open Doors, to Mozambique (bringing relief to Pastor Celso Prado and the missionary Valnice Milhomens, with no photographs taken, under a communist government) and returned in 1982, this time as team leader. That year he welcomed Brother Andrew, the founder of Open Doors, in Porto Alegre. He traveled the Trans-Siberian Railway and passed through Moscow, and went on to hold leadership positions in the mission, which he called his “alma mater.”

Cuba, 1984

Bridge of love

In 1984 he led the first team of Brazilians to Cuba. There he got to know the church up close, not just the front room but “the kitchen, the pantry, and the bathroom,” and he saw that more was needed than bringing Bibles. The A Fim de Proclamar Mission was born: to help the workers on the front line of the battle with whatever they could.

More than fifty trips to Cuba followed, alongside the Liga Evangélica de Cuba, with more than 150 Brazilian volunteers over 25 years, some of them arrested or expelled because of the work. The Cuban customs receipt from September 26, 1984, listing the 24 Bibles confiscated on that first trip, is still kept in the mission’s history, along with the memory of one bold sermon that cost a deportation. Every trip began the same way: getting the newcomers ready, packing the bags full (a guitar to leave behind at the destination, Bibles, supplies, hospital instruments, spare parts), and the charge to depend on the Lord for everything.

Africa

Iemberém and Conakry

Then came the cry from the other side of the ocean. In Guinea-Bissau, with the Feistler family, the mission helped build and sustain a small hospital, a school, and a church in the village of Iemberém. In 2007 he organized the shipment of a container of hospital supplies, and offered to accompany it himself. On one of the trips, in 2005, he delivered a baby himself at the small hospital, and the mother named the girl Irma. “When she asked me not to cut the umbilical cord yet, so that the spirits of the ancestors could pass through it, I told her the Holy Spirit had already passed through, and I cut it at once.”

It was in Quebo, Guinea-Bissau, that he met Mohamed Keita, a Muslim of royal lineage who began coming every day to talk “about God’s supreme purpose.” Siegfried talked with him for hours. Mohamed came to faith, married the missionary Tânia, and returned to his homeland, Guinea-Conakry, to preach to his own people, and the mission reached out its arm of love there too.

In his words

“We do not know what God has in store, but we see that He is taking care of every detail.”

That is how Siegfried concluded his account of Mohamed Keita’s conversion. It is a good summary of the way he worked for more than forty years: attentive to the details, trusting the Lord of the harvest, and always as part of a team.

He knew how much the people willing to roll up their sleeves mattered, and he ended every one of his messages with the same signature: “Siegfried Zilz and a fantastic support team.”

At 89, at home, he could still recite from memory the promise that sustained him: “Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you… I have made, and I will bear,” says the Lord (Isaiah 46:4). Ingrid Hort, the mission’s secretary for many years, described him as “an elder with a young heart when he talks about Jesus and Missions.” He went to be with the Lord in August 2026, at 92. He leaves his wife, Irma, four children and grandchildren. And he leaves bridges in four nations.