We arrived in Goverador Valadares, Brazil Thursday for a conference at the Presbyterian Church of Gra-Duquesa. God’s splendorous creation was on display from our hotel room balcony last evening in the form of a full rainbow surrounding nearby Mount Ibituruna (photo 1). It’s winter here below the equator, and yesterday it was 81 degrees.
Mary spoke to the women last evening on “Teach the Child to Work,” and today she is to speak on “Laying our Anxieties Before Christ.” Her interpreter is Tiago (photo 2). The theme of the conference is “Growing in Glorifying God in the Ministry.” I spoke on “Cultivating Prayer as a Pastor to Glorify God” last evening, and am speaking today on “Growing in Applying the Word to God’s Glory” which focuses on Reformed experiential preaching and on “Cultivating Growth in Coping with Criticism as a Pastor to God’s Glory.” The approximately 250 attendees are primarily ministers and church leaders, but there are many lay people here also. At conferences, Brazilians eat dinner late after all the addresses are over (10:30 p.m. to midnight), so here we are in a restaurant with (photo 3, from left) Christian singer Paulo Cesar, my translator and future Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary student Danilo, and Pastor Ricardo Silva Ferreira. As we were eating, just before midnight I suddenly noticed a man at the next table getting down on one knee and holding up a ring in a box to his girlfriend! She said, “Yes!” And suddenly everyone clapped!
