Bill & Mary Barkley -
Evangelical Publishing House - São Paulo, Brasil
Bill is a native of Ballymena in Northern Ireland. After four
years in business he felt called to missionary service, so spent four years
training at London Bible College. While there he felt God drawing him to South
America. The call later became more specifically to Brasil. He eventually sailed
for Brasil in October 1958.
Mary grew up in Banner, Kentucky. She graduated from Prairie Bible Institute in
Alberta, Canada and then served on the staff, editing their children's magazine
Young Pilot. She felt a calling towards Brasil and went out under the auspices
of The Evangelical Union of South America in April 1961. She spent a year at
language school in Fortaleza, Ceará, and then worked from 1962 to 1964 in
Manicoré, on the Madeira River, a tributary of the Amazon.
Bill and Mary met in Manáus in May 1962 and were married in March 1964. They
have two children, now adults. Tommy was born in 1967 and Sharon in 1971.
In 1974 they moved to São Paulo, the largest city in South America where they
founded the first registered, public evangelical library in Brasil. For 22 years
the library served pastors, bible school students and the general public until,
in 1996, the work was assumed by two seminaries. In 1977 Bill and Mary
established a publishing firm,
Publicações Evangélicas
Seleçionadas (Selected Evangelical Publications), with the intention of
translating and publishing the best Christian literature into Portuguese. In
September 2004 they completed the monumental task of translating a 14 volume set
explaining the Bible book Romans. This set of books is primarily a collection of
sermons preached by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, former minister of Westminster Chapel near
Buckingham Palace in London, 1939 to 1968. Subsequently more expository
collections were added: 6 volumes on Ephesians, 4 Volumes on John Chapter 17, 6
volumes on Authentic Christianity (Acts of the Apostles) and 3 volumes on
Great Doctrines.
The total number of publications is currently 205 and include exports to Mozambique, Portugal, Angola, England, Ireland, Canada, and
The
United States.
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