In the very beginning the Memorial Baptist Church was a congregation at the Primary School area of The Mineiro Baptist School at Ponte Nova street number 433. Professor Armindo de Oliveira Silva was the principal of that school that time and he encouraged many leaders about his strong desire to have a Mineira Baptist Convention Church at the Baptist School area. The Barro Preto Baptist Church with the leadership of pastor Ubirassú Tupinambá Mendes Câmara was in charge of organizing the most quick as possible this only Baptist Church at the Baptist School area.

Pastor Elmiro de Oliveira was invited by the Barro Preto Baptist Church to be the leader of that congregation till its organization as church. When the congregation became officially a church, pastor Elmiro got its senior pastorship and stood as such for 7 years.  

The congregation first service was celebrated on September first of 1982, a Wednesday. A small and group desirous to have a Baptist Church in the neighborhood of the Floresta hill was present.

The church was organized as such in 1983 March 26th by the Barro Preto Baptist Church. Many people attended the service, we had a good presence of a great number of pastors and members of other churches.

Wishing to owning its own headquarters the church bought a lot at the Itaguara street and began a building campaign, but the building sit wasn’t very appropriate.

With the leadership of pastor José Alves da Silva Bittencourt the church finally decided that was time to have its own headquarters once for all. After finding its dreaming place the church voted to sell the old lot in order to buy the Itapagipe street 13 address. The first lot was sold by US$35,000 and the new one was bought for the exactly same amount of US$35,000. Now the cooperation and participation of everyone was necessary for we could build the temple. A new campaign was made and the help of the membership was just awesome.

In 1994’s may the preparation of the building sit was started. There was an old house and the lot was pretty damaged. But everything was properly prepared so the chapel could be raised.

We had the great privilege to count on a group of North Americans ho came here on 1994 October 24th to begin the construction. They where a very happy group that quickly got the way of stuff with us, they had so much joy and happiness that we’ve worked together all Day long. There were men and women working. A short service was made every mornings before the construction with everyone evolved.

How it was so good to seeing them working and at the lunch time each one with their own ‘marmitex’ (disposable lunch box) looking for a good place on solid ground to seat and taste that gorgeous meal!

The chapel was completed in 1994 October 1st and a dedication service was made. On Sunday morning the regular services were made at the Baptist School and by night we had the service at the new chapel. It was a great service and it was also our farewell to our North American brothers. We’ve got very emotional seeing those brothers crying during that farewell service.

The church’ services still continued at the Mineiro Baptist School auditorium till the ending of February of 1995.

On March of 1995’s first Sunday, still at the Baptist School, we had our tasty Praying Breakfast and then we left the auditorium of the primary school and together we made the most sweet walk to our brand new temple. Everybody was only smiles, when we got at our new headquarters was astonishing. What a joy! Now we had a special place to thank God who is the owner of everything. We had a very happy service that morning; from that day on we were finally in our own headquarters.   

We got a chapel, but we wish to go on building, for that we continued our building campaigns. One campaign that was very successful was the 1 Real Campaign which has helped a lot.

In a short time the chapel was only a remembering, now we had a building done.

Finally we had a baptistery and our first baptisms at the new temple. The worship hall was very beautiful with new furniture.

We’ve grown a lot and finally got a good structure for the Sunday School as such the other church’s organizations. Today we have two pianos, a digital piano, a organ and keyboards. We have the church’s choir, youth choir, women’s group, child’s choir and in special occasions the church’s musicians give a instrumental presentation. We have good soloists and all organizations functioning. From 9 years we have a functioning Music School in what we have very good teachers and now we are receiving the benefits of it.

Here we have children, teenagers, young adults and seniors working together to our God glory and honor.

In 2006 God gave us the means to buy which borders our Bible studies building, so now we have full access to both streets Itapagipe and Iguaçu. We also have a pastoral residence, an old dream of our church.  

Noeme Caetano Silva