Nogueira, Jr., Antônio (1923–2009)

Antônio Nogueira, Jr., was a pastor, missionary, and canvasser in Brazil.

Early Life and Family

Antônio Nogueira, Jr., was born on May 23, 1923, in the city of Jaú, São Paulo, Brazil. He was the youngest son of Antônio and Alzira Nogueira and had six sisters and two brothers. His family was Presbyterian by tradition, some of whom were pastors,¹ and they expected him to also be one.²

Nogueira’s father was a farm owner and a retired Colonel; hence, his family was financially prosperous and distinguished in society,³ and Nogueira spent most of his childhood in boarding schools.⁴ From 1935 to 1937, he studied in Presbyterian boarding schools in São Paulo’s countryside. When he was 12, he visited churches while his friends did other Sunday activities.⁵ Once, while his father negotiated with farmers, he walked through the Instituto Adventista de Ensino (IAE) and liked the Adventist education. Therefore, he decided to send his son to study at IAE⁶ (now UNASP-SP) in 1938.⁷

Learning About Adventism

One day, a roommate asked Nogueira questions about the Bible, which he tried to answer with his Presbyterian background. This made Nogueira want to study the Bible more. After several weeks, he wrote to his mother, stating that her beliefs were contrary to what the Bible said. This statement made the family fear he would become a “Sabbath keeper.” They went to the dormitory and tried to pull him out of the school. However, the director, Pastor Domingos Peixoto, convinced them to let their son remain there and then advised Nogueira to not write about the matter again.⁸ In a few months, he considered himself an Adventist even without professing his faith. The experiences he had at the dormitory and the sermons he heard made him value the Adventist faith.⁹

One day, the school conducted its harvest ingathering. Nogueira participated, not knowing it was only for baptized members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Nevertheless, he and his ingathering partner gathered the highest amount of money.¹⁰ He continued ingathering for a week on his own.¹¹ Nogueira found a pamphlet with a motorboat on the cover and an article by Pastor Leo Halliwell about his work experiences with the motorboat in the Amazon. Nogueira asked a classmate what he needed to do to be like that pastor and learned that he would need to be an Adventist Missionary. From that day on, Nogueira decided to be a missionary and began abandoning his old practices and customs.¹²

When Nogueira went home for vacation, his family tried to convince him to not become an Adventist, but he had already accepted the Adventist message.¹³ In 1939, he showed a desire to be baptized many times, but the director did not allow it because of his family. Nogueira completed four bible studies, and, on November 9, 1940, he and his girlfriend, Helga Hedy Otto, were baptized. His family was aggrieved by his decision, which resulted in family pressure.¹⁴ When he finished high school, his father was willing to pay for his medical school, but Nogueira had already decided to be an Adventist missionary. Thus, he canvassed in order to pay for his theology studies. He was so successful at selling books that he paid for his and his girlfriend’s college education and, eventually, their wedding.¹⁵ While at college, Antônio and Helga did a one-year nursing course offered by the Red Cross.¹⁶

Missionary Work and Marriage

On December 4, 1943, Antônio Nogueira graduated with a degree in theology. Pastor Halliwell was at the ceremony, and Nogueira talked about his desire to work with a motorboat. Pastor Halliwell promised to call him and provide a motorboat as soon as his girlfriend graduated. The next day, Pastor Germano Ritter, President of the São Paulo Conference, called him to work as a canvassing assistant for his field. Soon after, Nogueira took charge of the Tupã and Marília District in the countryside of the state of São Paulo. Nogueira liked using public transportation for canvassing, for he enjoyed making missionary connections with those traveling with him.¹⁷

On December 11, 1944,¹⁸ after having dated for two years and after being engaged for two more years,¹⁹ Antônio married Helga. He was 21, and she was 19.²⁰ Helga (1925-1998) was a fifth-generation Adventist and the granddaughter of Ana Dietrich Otto and Oscar Otto, the first Adventists of the state of Paraná. While Antônio was an inexperienced pastor, Helga, who knew the church’s doctrines, was his right-hand woman²¹ and made sure he was successful at his work. She accompanied him on his visits and played the organ. When they married, she only had a high school degree;²² later, in Curitiba while raising four children, she studied Journalism,²³ English, and German.²⁴ In São Paulo, she was an English, Portuguese, and German teacher. She helped her husband in all his missionary projects by giving lectures about nutrition and food education. She studied Italian and attended a tertiary college.²⁵ Antônio and Helga had four children: Heldio Livingstone, Helnio Judson, Heldy Ruth, and Helcy Lylian.²⁶ Sometime after Helga’s death in 1998, Nogueira married Gecilda.²⁷

In 1945, Antônio and Helga went to Manaus, where Nogueira was a biblical worker. The following year, they moved to Belém in the Lower Amazon Mission. Pastor Halliwell was not there, and they were informed that the Mission was too poor to afford a motorboat. Later, they were moved to Santarém, Pará, a very old city with unsettling hygienic conditions.²⁸ When they arrived, they had to leave their furniture by the riverside to look for a house to rent. They were able to rent a room in a very old house with precarious conditions.²⁹ Those were difficult times, for, besides being vegetarians in a place without readily-available vegetables, the money they earned was not enough to sustain a healthy diet.³⁰

Since a motorboat was needed at Santarém, the Amazon Conference sent them a harvest ingathering package to work with.³¹ After achieving the harvest ingathering’s goal, which many doubted would be possible, Nogueira sent the money to the Mission, expecting to receive the much-awaited motorboat. However, because of his ingathering success, he was instead called to be the director for canvassing, education, and radio. The motorboat would later be built and given to Valquírio de Souza Lima.³²

Therefore, in July 1947, he took on his role at the North Brazil Union Mission, where he stayed for three years. In 1950, Nogueira went back to the South to work in the Bom Retiro District in the state of Santa Catarina. The following year, he went to the Lajes District, and, in September 1952, he moved to the Santa Maria District in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Two years later, he was called to direct the Home Missionary, Radio, and Sabbath School Departments at the Rio Grande do Sul Conference in the city of Porto Alegre.³³ There, he was repeatedly recognized for surpassing the annual goals by ten times more than what was stipulated for that particular year.³⁴ In 1960, he began working at the Paraná Conference overseeing the same departments.³⁵

His Contribution

His work with harvest ingathering was such a success that, in 1968, the Paraná Conference sent him to the Mato Grosso Mission to help ease the debt related to teacher salaries and the debt the Pênfigo Adventist Hospital had on the market. After solving the debt problems with no difficulty thanks to the money from the harvest ingathering, Nogueira was called to the South Brazil Union Conference (SBUC) in 1969, where he worked in campaigns for special harvest ingathering. In 1970, he became an administrator for the Social Work, Health, and Trust Services Departments until 1981. Later, he directed the department of Social Work and Health.³⁶

Pastor Antônio Nogueira, Jr., worked for fifteen years at the SBUC and, in January 1985, retired at age 61 having worked for 41 years. Even after his retirement, he continued alongside his wife lecturing on health in many churches. He specialized in church doctrines and continued writing many sermons.³⁷ In all his years of service with his team, Pastor Nogueira raised enough money for the maintenance of the medical/dental and missionary motorboats, clinics on wheels, local clinics, hospitals, schools, colleges, and churches.³⁸ He was the harvest ingathering champion in Brazil³⁹ and contributed to the renovation of many motorboats, churches, and schools. Pastor Nogueira also helped acquire four large and four small motorboats. The large ones were the Luzeiro do Sul for the Paraná Conference, the Luzeiro Paulista for the South São Paulo Conference, the Luzeiro do Oeste for the Mato Grosso Mission, and the Luzeiro do Araguaia for the Central Brazil Conference; each one had a smaller motorboat for backup.⁴⁰ In his later years, Antônio Nogueira, Jr., attended the West São Paulo Conference Church⁴¹ and, in 2009, died at age 86 in Votuporanga, São Paulo.

Sources

“Falecimentos.” Revista Adventista. October 1998. Accessed November 1, 2018. http://acervo.revistaadventista.com.br/capas.cpb.

“Falecimentos.” Revista Adventista. September 2009. Accessed November 1, 2018. http://acervo.revistaadventista.com.br/capas.cpb.

Fernandes, Carlos Cezar. “Vida e Obra do Pastor Antonio Nogueira Júnior.” Monography, 1985.

Pinto, Jabson Almeida. “Pr. Antônio Nogueira Jr., Um Pioneiro.” Monography, 1985.

Zimmermann, Claudio. “Antônio Nogueira Júnior.” Monography, 1990.

Notes

1. Jabson Almeida Pinto, “Pr. Antônio Nogueira Jr., Um Pioneiro,” Monography, Brazil Adventist College, 1985, 3.↩

2. Carlos Cezar Fernandes, “Vida e Obra do Pastor Antonio Nogueira Júnior,” Monography, 1985, 4.↩

3. Pinto, 3.↩

4. Ibid.↩

5. Fernandes, 4.↩

6. Pinto, 4.↩

7. Fernandes, 6.↩

8. Ibid., 6-7.↩

9. Pinto, 4.↩

10. Claudio Zimmermann, “Antônio Nogueira Júnior,” Monography, 1990, 9.↩

11. Pinto, 5.↩

12. Ibid.↩

13. Ibid., 6.↩

14. Fernandes, 7.↩

15. Pinto, 6.↩

16. Fernandes, 8.↩

17. Pinto, 6-7.↩

18. Ibid.↩

19. Fernandes, 8.↩

20. Pinto, 7; and “Falecimentos,” Revista Adventista, October 1998, accessed November 1, 2018, http://acervo.revistaadventista.com.br/capas.cpb.↩

21. Fernandes, 8, 13.↩

22. Pinto, 12.↩

23. “Falecimentos,” Revista Adventista, October 1998, accessed November 1, 2018, http://acervo.revistaadventista.com.br/capas.cpb.↩

24. Pinto, 12.↩

25. “Falecimentos,” Revista Adventista, October 1998, accessed November 1, 2018, http://acervo.revistaadventista.com.br/capas.cpb.↩

26. Pinto, 13.↩

27. “Falecimentos,” Revista Adventista, September 2009, accessed November 1, 2018, http://acervo.revistaadventista.com.br/capas.cpb.↩

28. Pinto, 8.↩

29. Zimmermann, 15.↩

30. Fernandes, 12.↩

31. Ibid., 13.↩

32. Pinto, 10.↩

33. Ibid.↩

34. Fernandes, 17.↩

35. Pinto, 10-11.↩

36. Ibid.↩

37. Ibid.↩

38. Zimmermann, 22.↩

39. “Falecimentos,” Revista Adventista, September 2009, accessed November 1, 2018, http://acervo.revistaadventista.com.br/capas.cpb.↩

40. Zimmermann, 22.↩

41. “Falecimentos,” Revista Adventista, September 2009, accessed November 1, 2018, http://acervo.revistaadventista.com.br/capas.cpb.↩