Yesterday morning Mary and I had a stimulating ride to the Sau Paulo, Brazil airport with our chauffeur Rafael (photo 1), a businessman who has been greatly influenced and strengthened by the Puritans and is assisting Puritan Reformed Seminary from afar in developing digital media and marketing.
In the afternoon we flew two hours north to Aracaju to begin our 2nd of 5 back-to-back conferences in Brazil–this one being the Puritan Project, which I have served about half a dozen times over the past 27 years. It is led by Dr. Canuto with the assistance of Pastor Josapha, both of whom have become good friends over the years. This year Dr. Joey Pipa (photo 2, on the left), another very good friend, and I are the two main speakers, each of us speaking five times on the Puritan vision of the Scriptures–he from a more exegetical approach and me from a historical approach.
After we both spoke last night, I had encouraging fellowship with a number of friends, and also made a new friend in Pastor Christopher (photo 3), who loves Puritan writings and started a book publishing house called “De Nadere Reformatie” (The Dutch Further Reformation), which aims to promote Puritan material of both Dutch and English persuasion. He gave me six copies of my festschrift in Portuguese and we talked about various book projects for the future. Pray that this meeting will bear much fruit for Brazil.
