banhocheiroso

We got back this morning from Rio. Let me correct the name of the church we were with during the weekend. It is the First Bible Baptist church of Rio de Janeiro. Its pastor is Maurício Silva de Andrade, and he had already sent a report on the weekend to the Internet Fellowship of Reformed Baptists by the time we got home. Here it is:

Queridos irmãos,
Dear brothers,

Fomos abençoados, aqui no Rio, este fim-de-semana com a presença de Andrew e Cora, em nossa igreja. Um impossibilidade de outra igreja e a intervenção do Franklin tornou isso possível.

We have been blessed here in Rio this weekend with the presence of Andrew and Cora in our church. A cancelled engagement with another church and the intervention of Franklin made this possible.

Na sexta à noite Cora nos brindou com um jantar à indiana. Delicioso! E Andrew coroou o banquete com uma breve e intensamente encorajadora exposição de Atos 20. Foi realmente muito bom.
On Friday night Cora treated us to an Indian dinner. It was delicious! And Andrew crowned the banquet with a brief and intensely encouraging exposition of Acts 20. It really was very good.

Paulo Vale, Dayse e Jônatas vieram de Volta Redonda (Paulo, estamos orando por vocês. Vocês não estão sozinhos!).
Paulo Vale, Dayse e Jonatas came from Volta Redonda (Paulo, we are praying for you. You are not alone!) Note: this brother is encountering some fierce opposition to the doctrine he is preaching - which is in line with the stated constitution of his church - by an active minority, and is under severe pressure to quit. Please pray for him.

Sentimos a ausência de Hércules (ele tem tido que atender a uma situação bem complicada com uma família de sua igreja. Também estamos colocando vocês diante do Senhor!).
We felt the absence of (Pastor)Hercules (he had to see to a complicated situation with a family in his church. We are also praying for you!)

O pr. Elienai e a Maralice vieram de Cabo Frio, o que nos deu grande alegria. Foi um bom tempo de comunhão com eles. Vários casais estiveram presentes. Pastores e esposas, seminaristas, líderes. Foi muito abençoador e nos remeteu a outros momentos como a comunhão em janeiro na casa de Gilson, em S. José dos Campos, ou o congresso em Petrolândia. Saudades!
Pastor Elienai and his wife, Maralice, came from Cabo Frio, to our great joy. We had a good time of fellowship with them. Various other couples were present. Pastors and wives, seminary students and church leaders. It was a great blessing and took us back to other moments such as the fellowship in January at Gilson's house, in Sao José dos Campos, or the Conference in Petrolândia.

Sábado tivemos um seminário de imersão em pregação expositiva, dado pelo Andrew. Mais de 50 irmãos compareceram. Deus nos deu oportunidade de, assim, abençoar muitas igrejas. Foram cerca de 5 horas de uma maravilhosa reunião.
On Saturday we had a seminary type immersion course in expository preaching, given by Andrew. More than 50 brethren were present. God thus gave us an opportunity to bless many churches. We had about 5 hours for this wonderful meeting.

Domingo Andrew pregou. Pela manhã tive que atender outra igreja, num compromisso já assumido, e não pude participar. Mas os irmãos me disseram, no jeito bem carioca de falar, que nosso irmãos britânico 'arrebentou'.
On Sunday Andrew preached. In the morning I had to be at another church, for a commitment already given, and couldn't be present. But the brethren told me, in a very "Rio de Janeiro" way, that our British brother "did the business".

No culto da noite, uma abençoada exposição do salmo 24. A Palavra é maravilhosa.
In the evening meeting, there was a blessed exposition of Psalm 24. The Word is wonderful.

Durante esses dias Marilene e Franklin nos proporcionaram a venda de livros com bons discontos e prazos. Muita gente aproveitou.
During the weekend Marilene and Franklin ran a bookstall with good discounts. Lots of people took advantage of it.

Compartilho com os irmãos para que juntos demos louvor a Deus, que cuida dos seus filhos e os abençoa! Como diz o Andrew: "Foi muito legal!"
I am sharing this with you brethren so that together we may give praise to God, who takes care of his own children and blesses them! As Andrew said, "It was great!"

Esperamos em Deus que oportunidade como essa o Senhor nos proporcione com outros irmãos, antes do próximo Congresso.
We hope that the Lord will provide us other opportunities like this with other brethren, before the next Conference.

Que ele nos abençoe.
Um grande abraço,
May he bless us.
A big hug,


Mauricio Andrade

PROGRAMME FOR WEEKEND IN RIO.

We are going to Rio tomorrow, catching an early flight (around 0700). Below is the programme as described in a letter to the Reformed Baptist Fellowship by Franklin Ferreira -our host, and the same Franklin who was speaking at the conference in Petrolândia. Sadly, no visits to Copacabana included. Please take up the prayer points mentioned.


Oi, pessoal,
Hello everyone,

Gostaria de pedir as orações de vcs por um encontro reformado que teremos aqui no Rio, na igreja batista bíblica, pastoreada pelo Maurício.
I would like to ask your prayers for a reformed meeting which we will be having here in Rio, in the Baptist Bible Church, pastored by Mauricio.

Andrew e Cora estarão conosco à partir de quinta-feira. Na sexta teremos um jantar indiano,preparado por Cora, para cerca de 20 casais, na ibb (isto é típico de nós homens: nós fazemos a bagunça e nossas esposas tem que arrumar! :-)). Todos os que estarão no jantar são pastores, líderes e missionários reformados. Precisamos de um tempo de comunhão juntos, para conhecer novos irmão de fé e estreitar laços de amizade antigos.
Andrew and Cora will be with us from Thursday. On Friday we will have an Indian dinner, prepared by Cora, for about 20 couples, in the church building (this is typical of us men: we make a mess and our wives have to sort it out!). (I will be taking this point up with Franklin when we meet. Franklin's wife, Marilene, will not be involved, for reasons which appear below. Please pray for me and Maurício’s wife, Rosane, who will be helping me in the kitchen. I had been expecting to cook for 6 people, not 40!!) All attending the dinner are pastors, leaders and missionaries of reformed convictions. We need a time of fellowship together, to get to know new brothers in the faith and strengthen older friendships.

2. No sábado Andrew estará ministrando um curso de pregação expositiva, também na ibb. Esperamos pelo menos umas 30/40 pessoas. No domingo Andrew pregará pela manhã e noite na ibb. Lembrem-se dele em oração, para que todos nós sejamos não apenas estimulados a pregar expositivamente (para honrar o mandato bíblico mas também nossa tradição), mas que aprendamos mais também.

On Saturday Andrew will be giving a course on expository preaching, also in the church building. We are expecting at least 30/40 people. (Franklin has invited his seminary students to participate. He teaches at the Baptist Seminary in Rio.) On Sunday Andrew will preach in the morning and evening at the Baptist Bible Church. Remember him in prayer, so that all of us may be stimulated not only to preach in an expository way (to honour the biblical mandate as well as our tradition) but also that we will learn more.

3. Orem por Marilene. Hoje ela extraiu dois cisos que não nasceram, numa cirurgia que levou três horas. Estas 12 primeiras horas são cruciais e bem dolorosas. Peçam a Deus a pronta recuperação dela, para que também ela desfrute da comunhão, juntamente comigo e com os demais irmãos neste fim de semana.

Please pray for Marilene (this is Franklin’s wife – we are staying with them and their 3 year-old daughter in their small apartment in Rio.) Today she had two wisdom teeth extracted in a 3 hour session of surgery. These first 12 hours are crucial and very painful. Ask God to speed her recovery, so that she can enjoy the fellowship, together with me and with all the brethren this weekend.

Tanto Maurício como Andrew sabem que a vinda deste amado casal ao Rio é obra da providência de Deus. Todas as portas para a vinda deles ao Rio é obra de Deus, que nos guia com sua mão invisível! E que ele seja glorificado naquilo que estaremos fazendo neste fim de semana.

Maurício and Andrew are equally aware that the coming of this beloved couple (he means us!) to Rio is a providential work of God. All the open doors for their coming are the work of God, who guides us with his invisible hand! And may he be glorified in what we will be doing this weekend.

Abs,
Hugs,
Franklin

After the Reformed Baptist Conference.

We arrived back 23.30 on Monday night (14th). All the journeys have gone well; no one so far as we know has suffered an accident or an armed robbery. God chose in his providence to preserve us through hours of travel by car, plane, and a 12 seater van over holey roads at speeds of up to 120 Km/h. The Conference was great! A total of 100 people registered. Other statistics will be made available later. Lots of things to share, but briefly here we will record our thanks to God for the sense of relief from being isolated in our desire to uphold the importance of Sola Scriptura. It was the first time we heard Brazilian Baptist pastors telling of the battles they have had trying to bring reformation in church life through the preaching of God's Word. We were moved by many things. There were also some worries. But overall, a joyous releasing of many hearts excited to discover others who are thinking about and praying for Brazil's need for the true and scriptural Christ to be made known to the people. I have been asked to produce a report in English,for Pastor Gilson to send to English speakers outside Brazil who have been praying,and that includes you! So I will not anticipate that now. In the next week or two I hope to post it on the blog. For now, we give thanks for everything positive and good, and ask you to pray for continuing wisdom for the leaders appointed to serve the newly formed Reformed Baptist Fellowship of Brazil.

Praise and thanks to God too for the completion of all our property negotiations. We now have a home for Bec and Tom when they leave the Nicholls' household in July, and a base for us on Home Assignments/visits back to the UK. We received a letter this week informing us of forthcoming baptisms at Haywards Heath EFC; included were the three Nicholls's children! The only sad thing is we miss their baptisms by just one week, just as we have missed others of people with whom we shared our lives during our ministry in Haywards Heath. But what excellent news! Let's praise God for his mercy in adding more sheep to the fold.

There is much to do in these few days remaining before leaving Brazil. Andrew is on the examining board of IBE this week, participating in questioning final year students on their monographs (Batchelor level). That requires reading all the monographs, preparing questions and being out on Thursday and Friday evenings this week, in addition to his normal classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. Before we leave he also has to mark all the end of term assignments of the students he has been teaching this semester. And fit that around a long weekend visit to Rio de Janeiro. Will post a programme of that weekend later.

In the meantime,the Wednesday evening group continues. The two who come from Campeche have to get three buses each way, but are so hungry to learn they have never missed a study, even on two horrendously wet evenings. This week I started passing on some tips on reading the Old Testament from "How to Read the Bible for all its Worth" (Douglas & Fee) which they all found extremely helpful and somewhat searching. The tendency here is to teach children and adults about OT characters as super-heros, and emphasise their good points, while being embarassed about their failures - aka the "dud factor". This leads to a moralistic and works-based approach in people's relationship with God. Suggest that God is always the hero of every story (even better "narrative") and that he chooses to relate to human beings because of grace, because no Christian is perfect, nor will be in this life, and suddenly there is surprised enlightenment on every face.

Today I had the joy of completing studies in Romans with A, and hope to do so with Z on Sunday afternoon. A is quietly buzzing with excitement and wants to share what she has learned, as she has already done with Mark's gospel. She told me that a woman who lives in the district has asked to study with her. She is praying about whether Romans is the right thing to do. You can too.

Meanwhile, there's A2 exams for Bec and Tom, and the packing.................

FIRST CONFERENCE OF THE REFORMED BAPTIST FELLOWSHIP, BRAZIL.
9 - 12 June, 2004.

Venue: Auditorium 6 de Julho, Praça dos Três Poderes – Centro,
Petrolândia – Pernambuco.

PROGRAMME
WEDNESDAY - 09/06
EVENING

18h – Registration and Conference Opening

19h - Welcome – Pastor Valdir Penaforte and the Host Church

Pr. Gilson Santos – “The Sword and the Trowel – Reconstructing the walls of Zion”

20.30h – Opening comments – Pr. Edson Azevedo

Introduction of speaker: Pr. Gilson Santos

Pr. Maurício Andrade - "Unity, Diversity and a Cup of wine"(I)

THURSDAY - 10/06
MORNING
9h – Opening comments – Pr Edson and Alberto Costa

A word from the FIEL publishing house: Tiago Santos Filho

Introducion of speaker: Pr. Maurício Andrade

Pr. Franklin Ferreira - “Richard Baxter and Pastoral Reformation”

(Interval 15 minutes)

10.30h - 12.00 – Assembly of the Reformed Baptist Fellowship – First Session.

AFTERNOON:
Free.

EVENING:
19h – Opening comments - Pr. Edson and Pr. Laylton Coelho.

Introduction of speaker: Pr. Paulo Valle.

Pr. Andrew King - “Reformed Baptists – Who Are We, And Where Are We Going? (1) A Glorious Inheritance”.

(Interval 15 minutes)

20.30h – Opening comments - Pr. Edson.

Introduction of speaker: Pr. Valdir Penaforte

Pr. Edson Azevedo - Testimony


FRIDAY - 11/06
MORNING:
9h – Opening comments - Pr Edson and Isaac Silva.

Pr. Franklin Ferreira – “Abraham Kuyper and the Construction of a Reformed World View”

(Interval 15 minutes)

10.30h-12.00– Assembly of the Reformed Baptist Fellowship – Second Session

AFTERNOON:
14h – First Meeting of the Directorate.

Free.

EVENING:
19h – Opening comments - Pr Edson and Pr Hércules Souza.

Introduction of speaker: Pr. Franklin Ferreira

Pr. Paulo César Valle – “The Certainty of the Triumph of Christ and our Duty to Announce It to the Nations”

(Interval 15 minutes)

20.30h – Opening comments - Pr. Edson Azevedo.

Pr. Maurício Andrade - "Unity, Diversity and a Cup of Wine" (II).

SATURDAY - 12/06
MORNING:
9h – Opening comments - Pr. Edson and Rogério Brilhante.

Pr. Andrew King - “Reformed Baptists –Who Are We, and Where Are We Going?-
(2) A History of Warnings”.

(Interval 15 minutes)

10.30-12.00h – Pastors’ Round Table .
(Other parallel meetings for men, women and young people)

MUSIC.
The Reformed Baptist church of Caruaru, led by Pr. Edson Rosendo de Azevedo, will be taking responsibility for the music and public address system.

BOOKSTALL.
There will be a bookstall during the conference, which will not function during the times of the meetings. In this first conference there will be few books, but with excellent discounts for participants.

HOST CHURCH.
Emanuel Baptist Church,
Avenida Valgueiros Barros No. 450,
Petrolândia,
Pernambuco.

If you're interested in news of Brazil, sign up to Reuters' reports on Yahoo. Here is an example from today's reports.


A Report from the World Associated Press,
Latin America.

Brazil Prison Riot Prompts Reform Calls
Tue Jun 1, 8:33 PM ET
By HAROLD OLMOS, Associated Press Writer

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - At the end of the second major Brazilian prison riot in less than two months, police entered a Rio de Janeiro jail Tuesday and found 38 dead inmates, some of them beheaded and others with body parts stuffed in the trash. The killings at the Benfica detention center during a three-day rebellion came just five weeks after 14 inmates were killed and mutilated in another prison riot — prompting outrage among human rights groups and renewed calls for an overhaul of a prison system long criticized for inhuman conditions.
"In Brazil, we look at pictures from a prison in Iraq (news - web sites) and everyone is shocked," said Cecilia Coimbra of Torture Never Again, a human rights group tied to the Roman Catholic Church. "People don't realize that this is happening every day in prisons in Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian states."
The scene at Benfica, where suspects are held while awaiting trial, was so horrific that Rio state legislator Geraldo Moreira said his stomach was turned by the sight of more than two dozen bodies and body parts while he toured the prison with police.
Brazil's prison system "is nothing more than a machine to destroy human lives," he said.
Authorities spent Tuesday securing the detention center for 900 inmates and checking cell by cell to determine a final death toll. Fifteen injured inmates were taken to hospitals. By nightfall, authorities had still not provided an official list with names of the dead. Some local media put the death toll at 31, lower than the official figure.
The uprising began Saturday when detainees broke through the prison's main gate. As police intervened, inmates attacked and grabbed officers' guns. They took 26 guards and staffers hostage. The riot ended Monday night when police agreed to inmates' demand to separate prisoners belonging to different gangs.
One prison guard taken hostage was shot and killed as he tried to escape_ though there were conflicting reports whether he was shot by inmates or by police who mistook him for a fleeing prisoner.
Investigators suspect rival gangs, who routinely run drug trafficking operations from inside Brazil's prisons, used the chaos of the uprising to settle scores.
Hundreds of relatives of inmates waited hours outside the prison for word on the identities of the bodies. At one point, dozens broke down a schoolyard metal fence next to the prison and surged toward the jail. They were repelled by police. Rita de Cassia, whose son is an inmate, said she fainted when news emerged of the carnage inside the prison. "They are telling us absolutely nothing," de Cassia said. "We are desperate for news of the inmates."
Rio de Janeiro state police Maj. Marcelo Parrini said later Tuesday there were no more bodies inside the prison and all of those who were seriously injured had been taken to the hospital.
"We're identifying them one by one from photographs since they destroyed the records in the adminstration office," Parrini said. "That's why it's taking so long."
The weekend revolt came after a five-day rebellion in an overcrowded prison in the Amazon state of Rondonia in April. Rioters decapitated some inmates, stabbed others to death and hung them by their feet from the roof of the prison — and ate cats when the food ran out.

Rebellions and jailbreaks are common in Brazilian prisons, often criticized by human rights groups. An estimated 285,000 inmates are being held in a system built for 180,000.
The country's lockups are rife with gang members, many of whom run drug trafficking empires from behind prison walls using smuggled cell phones. The country's most notorious drug lord, Luiz Fernando da Costa, is accused of coordinating a campaign from inside Rio's Bangu prison to terrorize the city days before its famed Carnival in 2003.
Amnesty International last week issued a report condemning "cruel, inhuman or degrading conditions" in the country's prisons and youth detention centers, citing "overcrowding, poor sanitation, limited access to health services, persistent use of torture, riots and prisoner-on-prisoner violence."
Justice Minister Thomaz Bastos acknowledged past errors and problems with the system but said nothing will be resolved overnight. "There is no magic formula for rebuilding the nation's prison system. It's the result of many mistakes over many years," Bastos said. Brazilian politicians rarely heed calls to improve prison conditions, because most Brazilians are fed up with high crime and think criminals deserve harsh treatment. Andressa Caldas, a leader of the Rio-based human rights group Global Justice, said most Brazilian prisons are staffed by guards with poor training, and prisoners rarely have organized activities to keep them busy. "Public authorities are not paying attention," Caldas said. "We warned (Benfica officials) weeks ago about putting members of rival gangs in the same prison. Nobody was listening."
Associated Press Writers Alan Clendenning and Tom Murphy contributed to this report from Sao Paulo, Brazil