Saturday, July 29, 2006
Encontros da Fé Reformada
The long awaited trip to Fortalez and São Luis came round at last. The overall theme was Sanctification: A Biblical Imperative. Andrew had to deal with Preaching and Sanctification. The other main speaker at both the conferences was Conrad Mbewe from Lusaka, Zambia. Other speakers only did one conference: Paulo Brasil and Valdeci Santos in Fortaleza, and Hermistem Lopes and Mauro Meister in São Luis. Valdeci and Mauro interpreted Conrad's expositions from Romans 6.
Our total flights added up to around 4100 miles as the crow flies. The section between São Luis and Belem was probably a further 3-400 miles by car over rough roads. It took 20 hours.
Part 1:Fortaleza
The first leg of the Encontro da Fé Reformada was in Fortaleza.
Fortaleza is a modern city, well-run, and with a solid economy based on tourism. The sea is always warm, the sun nearly always shines, the humidity level is lowish, making the heat bearable, and their are BIG beaches. The conference put us up in a hotel near the beach; from the balcony we took the photos of the people walking on the beach at dawn, a hat-seller chatting with a sunglasses man, and another hotel going up across the street.
A bit of local biology.
Pastor Ilmar, of the Renascença Presbyterian Church, São Luis. Ilmar is short, quiet, unassuming, steady, focussed and strong. He gets things done, and yet has no interest in the limelight when they are done. We have never seen a pastor here spend so little time at the microphone in a conference. He was the stimulating force behind the two Encontros in the North-East. We met at the Encontro in Manaus several years ago, when he first spoke of plans to do something similar in his region, and, sure enough, he saw the thing through.
Pastor Ilmar with the preaching team: Valdeci, Paulo, Conrad, Andrew
Various people at the conference: preachers in action: book table.
Pastor Ilmar with Edinildo and Jónatas, the two local pastors who organized the event.
The ever humorous Pastor Edinildo.
Views of the conference, one morning and on the final evening.
The long awaited trip to Fortalez and São Luis came round at last. The overall theme was Sanctification: A Biblical Imperative. Andrew had to deal with Preaching and Sanctification. The other main speaker at both the conferences was Conrad Mbewe from Lusaka, Zambia. Other speakers only did one conference: Paulo Brasil and Valdeci Santos in Fortaleza, and Hermistem Lopes and Mauro Meister in São Luis. Valdeci and Mauro interpreted Conrad's expositions from Romans 6.
Our total flights added up to around 4100 miles as the crow flies. The section between São Luis and Belem was probably a further 3-400 miles by car over rough roads. It took 20 hours.
Part 1:Fortaleza
The first leg of the Encontro da Fé Reformada was in Fortaleza.
Fortaleza is a modern city, well-run, and with a solid economy based on tourism. The sea is always warm, the sun nearly always shines, the humidity level is lowish, making the heat bearable, and their are BIG beaches. The conference put us up in a hotel near the beach; from the balcony we took the photos of the people walking on the beach at dawn, a hat-seller chatting with a sunglasses man, and another hotel going up across the street.
A bit of local biology.
Pastor Ilmar, of the Renascença Presbyterian Church, São Luis. Ilmar is short, quiet, unassuming, steady, focussed and strong. He gets things done, and yet has no interest in the limelight when they are done. We have never seen a pastor here spend so little time at the microphone in a conference. He was the stimulating force behind the two Encontros in the North-East. We met at the Encontro in Manaus several years ago, when he first spoke of plans to do something similar in his region, and, sure enough, he saw the thing through.
Pastor Ilmar with the preaching team: Valdeci, Paulo, Conrad, Andrew
Various people at the conference: preachers in action: book table.
Pastor Ilmar with Edinildo and Jónatas, the two local pastors who organized the event.
The ever humorous Pastor Edinildo.
Views of the conference, one morning and on the final evening.
# posted by Andrew and Cora @ 2:09:00 pm 
