Encounters with God in Brazil

By Dr John Dyer

The stories in this book are about real people, known personally to the author, during more than years of missionary service in Brazil. He tells movingly of the loss of his first two children and the miraculous healing of a sick child in the Amazon rainforest and of a young man cured of cancer, having been given two years to live by the doctors.

 

In this book, the author describes how he was hit by a car and held at gunpoint in his own home. Why does God respond to some prayers and apparently not others? Where is he to be found? For those who feel that God's intervention in human affairs can be explained as mere coincidence, these stories challenge that assumption.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kingdom Publishers
• Release date: Jul 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781911697602

Book preview

By the same author

Jesus: Dead or Alive? the evidence

Encounters with God in Brazil

Personal stories to amaze and inspire

Copyright© Dr John Dyer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be

reproduced in any form by photocopying or any

electronic or mechanical means, including information

storage or retrieval systems, without permission in

writing from both the copyright owner and the publisher

of the book. The right of Dr John Dyer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in

accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act

1988 and any subsequent amendments thereto.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the

British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-911697-50-3

Finding God in Brazil

First published 2017

2nd Edition, with revisions, May 2018

3rd Edition, November 2018

4th Edition by Kingdom Publishers

Kingdom Publishers, London, UK.

You can purchase copies of this book from any leading bookstore or email

[e-mail]

Foreword

The responsibility of all Christians is to be available to God in the task of Kingdom building. Some, of course, will have notable roles and we will likely admire them. But often their story, whilst bearing evidence of God’s hand upon their lives, may have less to teach the ordinary person. After all, most of us are not called to greatness.

The beauty of John’s book is that it recounts the story of an ordinary couple whose lives witness to the trust that in God’s hands, extraordinary things can happen. The early details of their encounter at the Brazilian Embassy in London is one such example. But as well as being a blessing for them, it should also raise our own level of expectations, to believe that God is still ready to use us in amazing ways.

I’d love every young mission worker to read a book like this as they set out on their mission service because it shows how the everyday events of life weave together to make a beautiful tapestry. There are wonderful descriptions here of a Brazil that is rapidly disappearing, places that in the 1970s and 1980s resembled the Wild West in the 19th century! The stories assembled here capture all of human life – from times of laughter and success to times of intense heartbreak, not least in John and Maria’s own lives.

Through it all, a picture gradually emerges, as if out of a morning mist, of a period of church growth that has made Brazil today a major missionary sending nation itself. This is God’s work, but people like John and Maria, and their many BMS colleagues, as well as those from other nations played their role.

I would encourage the reader to chart the trajectory of Christian service through the book. From the early process of discernment, the faltering process of language learning and its inevitably hilarious mistakes, through the discipline of learning the culture and entering into the lives of people who in so many ways were from a different world. Piece by piece we see how the individual elements of pastoral visits, prayer, conversions, baptisms, weddings and funerals come together to build what is God’s Church in Brazil today.

Finally, it was heartwarming to read afresh what I saw first-hand in my time with BMS World Mission, namely the effectiveness of the Timothy Project. What a blessing to be able to use one’s closing years of Christian service by investing in tools that would offer learning to the next generation, and not just in Brazil but in other countries too.

Here then is a book, not about people who are famous but people who were – and are – faithful and effective. Those qualities, I suggest, are the ones we learn most from.

David Kerrigan

Former General Director

BMS World Mission

Table of Contents

Foreword

Endorsement

Prologue

Beginnings

On our own

A sad tale

A packed house

Our darkest day

Light in our darkness

The best thing that ever happened to us

The European South

Our remarkable son

Encore

The times we’ve lived through

A final twist of events

Map of Brazil by One Stop Map/onestopmap.com

Endorsement

Finding God in Brazil, as the sub-title suggests, both amazes and inspires. John and Maria Dyer’s memoirs, recounted from John’s perspective, describe the Brazil of the past as this vast nation looked to the future, now our present. This frank and engaging account is enriched by the Dyers’ privilege of having served in four quite different, equally enthralling, corners of the land of the Southern Cross. As you read you are carried through the doubts, joys, tragedies, and victories through which God carried them over three decades, as He revealed Himself to them in a rich diversity of episodes and contexts. You can laugh with them. You can cry with them. The narrative gives glimpses into the lives and perspectives of a cast of colourful and fascinating personalities who revealed God to John and Maria, or who found Him through their ministry, as they journeyed together in prayer, preaching, church planting and theological education.

Family life is a central feature of the volume, both in vivid descriptions of the way of life of those with whom the Dyers shared their lives, and through John’s open and honest struggles with God as he and Maria faced one set-back after another in their own quest to form a family. If you are struck by a particular incident and wish to revisit or faithfully recount it to others, the Index of stories at the back will be the perfect tool. This is the country I fell in love with, so beautifully described that you too might fall in love with Brazil.

Mark Greenwood, Regional Team Leader for South America and Sub-Saharan Africa, BMS World Mission.

Prologue

Many of the stories that unfold in this book are known only to me and my wife, Maria. Of course, the participants involved in each story may well remember these moments with fondness, laughter or anguish, and perhaps a mixture of all three. But it occurred to me that the full story of our time in Brazil is known only to two people and the chief protagonist, our wonderful God, who made this story possible. The story and stories are being told here, with the desire to make known the mystery and wonder of his ways, in his dealings with ordinary human beings.

While I was researching for my doctoral studies on grassroots theological education in Brazil, a missionary colleague recommended a book by John Burdick. It goes by the title: Looking for God in Brazil. The book is about the progressive Catholic Church and explains how the radical wing of the church in Brazil was lagging behind the explosive growth of Pentecostalism and Afro-Brazilian Spiritism. The title of Burdick’s book points to a quest to find God in urban Brazil, particularly in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The present story, Encounters with God in Brazil, describes how God was found in unexpected places on the part of the people we met across that vast country, their hopes and fears, as well as our own. God is there for us when we need him; in situations beyond our control and also those of our own making.

Some of the material used in these stories has been retrieved from our personal archives stored away for many years. To be truthful, even I had forgotten some of the details, and had to be reminded from the letters we wrote about events at the time; a reminder to us of the Gospels, which all those years ago, were written before the first-hand witnesses had passed from the scene. The passage of time and forgetfulness was another of the reasons that we felt we should write these things down now so that a permanent record existed when we were no longer here to tell the story ourselves.

And so, our story begins.

My wife, Maria, and I both grew up in the London area. We worked in London, she in a well-known Bank. My own work experience was for the State Government of Victoria, Australia at their office in the Strand. At the age of eighteen, I made my public profession of faith in Jesus Christ and was baptised by immersion at the local Baptist church in Holmesdale Road, South Norwood.

My call to the ministry was not a Damascus Road experience, as in the case of the apostle Paul. I had other ideas about my future work and was planning to obtain professional qualifications in business and marketing. There was, however, an inaudible still, small voice at the back of my mind that prompted me from time to time. This was more akin to the experience of the prophet Elijah than the apostle Paul. Eventually, I decided to test the waters, and I applied to Spurgeon’s College in South London. Spurgeon’s College is a theological college for the training of Baptist ministers, founded by the Victorian preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon in 1856. Spurgeon’s College was only a short distance from where I lived with my family until my teens.

My application to the college to train as a Baptist minister was successful, and this was the beginning of a massive shift in the direction of my life. To begin with, I had no thoughts about living or working abroad. However, by the end of my second year of study, I sensed that I should be thinking about service overseas. This was the first time that such a thought had occurred to me. Looking back, I believe the thought process would have started when I heard a Baptist missionary from my home church at Holmesdale Road, South Norwood, speak about her work as a nursing sister in the Belgian Congo, as it was known then. She spoke about her experiences as a missionary in a vivid and colourful way, and she held my attention throughout her talk.

So, I made an appointment to visit the headquarters of the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS), at Gloucester Place, in Central London. The instruction I received from that visit was to return during my final year at college when I would be in a position to make a formal offer of service.

My focus for the next two years was to conclude my theological studies and pray about the future. I was already quite set on the idea of being a missionary in Africa. The two years passed, and I was back at BMS in London to discuss the next step.

Sitting across the table was the kindly figure of the Reverend Fred Drake, the Overseas Secretary. He seemed hesitant to start the conversation. The first question he asked me was: ‘Do you have an open mind as to where overseas God might want you to serve?’ I knew that the right answer to that question should be - Yes. At the same time, I was sure in my heart that it was to serve in the Congo. So, I answered, ‘Yes.’ That was as far as we got discussing the Congo, as the discussion was then guided towards Brazil. After our meeting, I must admit I felt devastated. I now had to begin to take from my mind all that I had thought about over the previous two years. Did I want to go to Brazil? I really didn’t know.

At the College, one of my contemporaries was João Garcia, a Brazilian student on a BMS scholarship. One day soon after my interview at BMS, he and I were walking along the main street in Upper Norwood. He began to share with me the challenge of pastoral and evangelistic work Brazil; in particular, he mentioned the new government initiative to open up the interior of the country by building a road from east to west. This was to be known as the Trans-Amazonian Highway, and new towns would be established at forty-five-mile intervals along this new highway. The thought of perhaps being involved in this drew me like a magnet. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Brazil, it was!

I had already met Maria through a church Holiday Club at her home church in South East London. I helped lead that Club during my first summer vacation in 1969. It wasn’t until the young people’s Easter Bible Class Camp in Southampton, in 1971 that we started going out. We became engaged in 1973 and married at the beginning of May the following year.

We didn’t get to Brazil overnight. In fact, it was another six years before that became a reality. To gain experience of pastoral ministry, I first worked alongside Alan Easter, the minister of a large Baptist church in Ipswich, Suffolk. I followed that with a pastorate in the city centre of Birmingham.

Impatient though I was to get to Brazil, I was able to complete the requirements for ministerial recognition with the Baptist Union. The experience of ministry in these two churches was to serve me well, even more than I could have imagined at the