MIRACLE IN MACEIO:
Texas Baptists build firm foundations
___By Toby Druin
___Editor Emeritus
___MACEIO, Brazil--Observers call it the "miracle of Maceio." Hundreds of volunteers--most of them Texas Baptists--have helped build almost 30 churches in the Brazilian coastal city south of Recife during the past 24 years.
___It all started with termites, though.
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VOLUNTEERS work on the new building of Boas Novas (Good News) Baptist Church in Maceio.
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___Texans Boyd and Irma O'Neal, now retired and living in McKinney, went to Maceio, capital city of the state of Alagoas, in 1948 as Southern Baptist missionaries. The entire state had only six Baptist churches at the time. Twenty-five years later, the O'Neals had helped the Brazilians build another two dozen across the state, six of them in Maceio.
___Termites, however, were eating up the buildings about as fast as the Brazilians could construct them. Roofs had to be replaced every three to four years.
___When O'Neal visited Texas on furlough in 1977, he talked to Taylor Pendley about the problem. Pendley was his old friend from seminary days and then coordinator of the Baptist General Convention of Texas church building department. In 1978, Pendley went to Maceio to research what could be done and also to present the "Together We Build" stewardship program to the churches.
___The termite problem quickly struck a chord with him.
___"We arrived at the O'Neal residence just in time to help them uncover their furniture," Pendley said. "When we took the cover off the piano, we found termites had eaten all the wood."
___Back in Texas, Pendley consulted with two architect friends who proposed concrete support arches for the roofs. One, John Sanders, drew up plans for fiberglass forms. The BGCT State Missions Commission in 1981 dispatched Pendley, R.V. Rhoads, Sanford Jones and Bill Walters of the church building planning department to Maceio to build the forms.
___However, they soon discovered the support beams they were planning to build were almost
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BOYD O'NEAL, right, retired missionary to Brazil, talks about church construction projects with Wayne Wood, left, and Taylor Pendley. All have been volunteers in building churches in Maceio._
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identical to concrete electrical poles already being manufactured by the Cipesa Corp.
___So instead of building forms to make the support beams, a team of 15 volunteers from Woodhaven Baptist Church in Garland began working with the poles. Within 10 days, they had erected two 50-by-110-foot buildings and had them completed enough for worship services. The roofs were constructed of 4-inch-thick concrete and sugar cane pulp.
___Using this model, more than 30 churches have been constructed over the last 20 years to meet the burgeoning population growth in Maceio, which has quadrupled in size to more than 1 million. Most of the buildings will seat 250 to 600 people, and the congregations are growing rapidly, Pendley said.
___As an example, he cited Bethania Baptist Church, which had 20 members when volunteers erected its building in 1989. The church now has 400 worshippers in the morning, 600 in the evening--typical for Brazil, he said--and has built two education buildings debt-free.
___All the churches have been built with volunteer labor by groups enlisted by Wayne Wood and Lindy Dennis at First Baptist Church in Beaumont. Other volunteers have come from Missouri, South Carolina, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Mississippi.
___Wood has taken more than 260 volunteers to Brazil, most of them from Woodhaven, which now is Arapaho Road Baptist Church. He served the Woodhaven Church 10 yearsbefore retiring in 1999, but he still enlists volunteers for several mission trips each year. He's led groups to Brazil 21 times and to 16 other locations around the world. His groups have built 16 of the buildings in Brazil. Earlier this year, his volunteers worked in Seattle; in March they are working at the Baptist encampment in Hawaii; and later this year they will work in Lithuania and Wales.
___"We still need more church buildings in Maceio and Alagoas," O'Neal said. "When we started, $10,000 would finish a building; now it takes $15,000 to just close one in that may take two to three years to finish."
___In addition to the miracle of the churches, Baptists in Maceio have established a boys' home they also consider miraculous, Pendley said.
___A group of local Baptists purchased a walled four-acre tract with a large house, two smaller houses, a swimming pool, orchard and well. Although valued at $350,000, they purchased it for $100,000. The dentist and his wife who sold the property stipulated that it be used for a home to minister to more than 1,000 homeless boys in Maceio. A girls' home also has been established by the local association and can accommodate 120.
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