Hope and longing in Portugal
Two core concepts within Portugal’s culture are called “Sebastianismo” and “saudade.” Sebastianismo is a sense of hope that something will happen while also feeling it never will. Saudade is similar, a missing or longing for something that is distant or unattainable.
Nowhere are these two concepts more emergent than in Catholicism, the religion of Portugal’s inception, history, and national identity. Portugal did not even allow religious freedom until 1974. Over 80% of its population currently regard themselves as Catholic, though most are non-practicing.
Portugal is famous for religious shrines and pilgrimages, the most popular being a pilgrimage to the village of Fatima, where legend has it that the Virgin Mary appeared to some children back in 1917. Since that time, those who have visited, hoping for healing, number in the hundreds of thousands.
Hope for healing, but not really expecting it. Longing for heaven, but not seeking the truth of how to get there. How will they turn from the idols and shrines if they don’t know that they should? How can they turn to true salvation with no one to tell them the Way?
God’s plan to bring the Gospel to Portugal includes Source of Light and a Brazilian man named Adil Bispo dos Reis. Source of Light’s connection to the Portuguese language dates back to when Adil was born 61 years ago. The first record of translation into Portuguese was in 1961. Over the years, requests to translate into Portuguese have come from believers in Cyprus, Australia, Azores, Brazil, and the United States.
SLM’s connection to Adil is also long-standing, though no one at Headquarters knew it.
Saved at age 23, Adil was compelled to study at seminary and enrolled at a Baptist Bible Institute. He states, “I understood the importance of deepening my study of the Word of God in an internal seminary where I would be able to study languages, original ideas, and better prepare myself to be an organizer and church planter. So, I went to the seminary one year and two months after being regenerated and having read the entire Bible almost three times.”
After graduation, Adil and his new wife, Erica, returned to his hometown church, where he became Assistant Pastor and helped plant two churches. He also became a father.
Only three years later, he was called to pastor a small, struggling church. He remembers, “We went in to minister . . . understanding it to be God’s will, due to the fact that with 24 years of existence it had only 36 members, very few children, not being able to support the pastor and being located right in front of the Temple of the Church of the Mormons.”
Adil and Erica had three more children, he became a professor at a seminary, and he partnered with other ministers to plant three new churches in three different cities.
Another church needed help. Adil says the church “had been without a pastor for years and it was, among us pastors, a very challenging and difficult ministry because of some situations that occurred and existed in it. My wife and I, after a good time of prayer and conversation between us, understood that it was God’s direction to face the challenge, because the Lord had placed in our hearts the desire to help the church that He had bought with His own blood (Acts 20:28).”
During his time at the second difficult church, he planted three more churches. Also, at that church was a young man named Wesley, who would marry and become a missionary to Portugal.God had a third tough church situation ready for Adil. As he was becoming Dean and then Rector of the seminary where he taught, God called him to take the pastorate of a church which was, as he says, “going through a process of division among the members and had no condition to support a pastor.”
He did not take every offer, praying over each one with his wife and discerning God’s will and direction. All of this was in Brazil, but even back in seminary, Adil and Erica had talked of being missionaries to Portugal. When Wesley, missionary to Portugal, came to speak at their missionary conference and heard of their heart for that country, as Adil says, he “wasted no time, challenging us to get to know the Portuguese field and be missionaries working together with him and his family.”
Wesley’s advice was taken. Adil says, “We took a trip in 2016 to get to know the Portuguese mission field and, after three months of prayer and meditation, we understood that it was God’s will to be missionaries on the South Bank of Portugal.”
They raised over 80% of their support in one year, and in early 2017, traveled to Portugal as missionaries. Adil says, “Since we arrived, we have helped with the restructuring of a small Baptist church which currently has 30 members.” They’ve also started another congregation in another city.
“Our ministry,” Adil says, “has been with personal evangelism, discipleship, counseling, preaching, and church planting, in addition to hospitality. My wife and daughter work with children and women’s ministry. My son and son-in- law help with teaching and music for young people.”
Portugal is not an easy field. Adil says, “Here we have many challenges, because people are materialistic, individualist, selfish, consumerist, and do not want to know about the things of God and spiritual things. They are religious, but not spiritual.”
Where is Source of Light in this story? All through it. Adil says, “When I was still studying at the Baptist seminary, God had a third tough church situation ready for Adil. As he was becoming Dean and then Rector of the seminary where he taught, God called him to take the pastorate of a church which was, as he says, “going through a process of division among the members and had no condition to support a pastor.” I got to know the Fonte de Luz [Source of Light] ministry” through a missionary there. “I started to use the courses in every church I worked for. I am now a missionary, and God has put it in my heart to establish a partnership between my missionary agency, Brazil Gospel Fellowship Mission, and SLM International to evangelize and edify brothers and sisters who live here in Portugal.”
Source of Light is honored and grateful to partner with this incredibly effective veteran missionary and his family. May God change the longing without hope of Portugal’s Sebastianismo and saudade into the everlasting hope God longs for them to have through faith in His Son.
- Written by Kim Thigpen
