O.E Davis’ Life and Ministry Is Memorialized in New Brazil Documentary
3 December 2024 |
“In 1911, Seventh-day Adventist pastor and missionary Ovid Elbert Davis traveled to Brazil’s remote borders with Venezuela and British Guiana. In the region of Mount Roraima, despite very poor health, he opened the Word of God to the Taurepang, Macuxi, and other ethnic groups, teaching them about the ‘Great God,’” according to Adventist Review.
This origin story brought Christianity to the Indigenous people of northwest Brazil and is the subject of a documentary entitled O. E. Davis – The Legacy. Produced by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in northwest Brazil, which covers the Brazilian states of Rondônia, Acre, Amazonas, and Roraima, the project took eight months to make, with screenwriter Luciana Costa utilizing Davis’ diaries, magazines, articles, and books, along with interviews with surviving friends and colleagues of his, to create a clear image of the pastor and missionary. Historians and researchers dove into Davis’ life and the impact of his mission work, charting the legacy of his ministry.
Though Ovid Elbert Davis had done mission work with Indigenous people in Alaska and Canada, Brazil is where the roots of Adventism took hold, leaving a profound influence. The Adventist church recently inaugurated work in the Aleluia Community, in Pacaraima, Roraima, making it the 2,000th church in the region where Davis began his mission with the Indigenous people 113 years earlier.
