Baptists -- Missions -- Brazil; Brazil -- Description and travel
He is the President of a remarkable body. It was our privilege to
attend the Brazilian Baptist Convention which met in Sao Paulo, June,
1910. It was composed of sixty delegates, about one third of whom were
missionaries. The remainder were natives. They came from all parts of
Brazil. One man from the Madeira Valley traveled three weeks on his
journey to Sao Paulo. They represented 109 churches, which had a total
membership of 7,000. These churches increased by baptism twenty-five
per cent, last year. They maintain a boys' school and a theological
school at Pernambuco, a school for boys and girls at Bahia, a boys'
school at Nova Friburgo, a girls' school at Sao Paulo and the crown of
the school system, the Rio Baptist College and Seminary in the capital.
They have a Publication Board to produce Sunday School and other
literature, a Home Mission Board to develop the missionary work in the
bounds of Brazil, and a Foreign Mission Board, which conducts foreign
mission operations in Chill and Portugal. While their country is so
needy, they believe in the principle of foreign missions so thoroughly
that they gave last year for foreign missions as much per capita as did
the churches in the bounds of the Southern Baptist Convention. One
night during the Convention, I addressed them upon the subject of
foreign missions, and after I had finished speaking one of the
missionaries came forward and said he had thought that in as much as he
had given his life to foreign mission work, he was not under any
special obligation to contribute money to this cause, but now he saw
his error and proposed to give as a means of grace and in order to
discharge his duty to the larger cause.
What a privilege it was to attend this Convention! All of us took our
meals at the Girls' College and by this arrangement we had a most
delightful time socially. It is a fine body full of good cheer, hope,
faith, courage, consecration. To come to know them--missionaries and
native Christians alike--is to enter into fellowship with some of the
choicest and most indomitable spirits that have ever adorned the
Kingdom of our Lord.
CHAPTER V.
THE GOSPEL WITHHELD.
When I went to South America I decided that I would spend little time
upon the material aspects of the trip, but would, on the other hand,
attempt to arrive at an understanding of the religious conditions and
needs of the people. I consider that the religious needs are the
abiding and vital interests of any people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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