From Tram Driver to Evangelizer

One of the first things I did when I arrived in Salvador was to buy a Bible. After attending the Baptist church for some years, I struck up a friendship with Durval, a fellow tram driver. Durval and I often had long discussions about the Bible. One day he gave me a booklet entitled Where Are the Dead?a Although I believed that man has an immortal soul, I was curious enough to check the Bible texts quoted in the booklet. To my surprise, the Bible confirmed that the soul that sins will die.​—Ezekiel 18:4.

Noting my interest, Durval asked Antônio Andrade, a full-time minister of Jehovah’s Witnesses, to visit me at home. After his third visit, Antônio invited me to accompany him in sharing Bible teachings with others. After he spoke at the first two doors, he said, “Now it is your turn.” I was petrified, but to my joy, one family listened attentively and accepted the two books I offered. To this day, I experience a similar rush of joy when I meet somebody who is interested in Bible truth.

On April 19, 1943, the anniversary of Christ’s death that year, I was baptized in the Atlantic Ocean off Salvador. Because of the lack of experienced Christian men, I was appointed to assist the group of Witnesses who met in Brother Andrade’s home on one of the narrow streets that connects the upper and lower section of the city of Salvador.

Early Opposition

Our Christian activity was unpopular during the years of World War II (1939-45). Some officials suspected that we were North American spies because most of our publications came from the United States. As a result, arrests and interrogations were common. When a Witness did not return from the field ministry, we concluded that he had been detained, and we would go to the police station to seek his release.

In August 1943, Adolphe Messmer, a German Witness, arrived in Salvador to help organize our first assembly. After permission was obtained from the authorities to hold the assembly, advertisements for the public talk “Freedom in the New World” were placed in local papers, and posters were displayed in shop windows and on the sides of the trams. But on the second day of the assembly, a policeman informed us that our license to meet had been canceled. The archbishop of Salvador had pressured the chief of police to stop our assembly. The following April, however, we were finally granted permission to hold the advertised public talk.

[Picture on page 9]

Witnesses advertising the public talk at the first assembly in the city of Salvador, 1943