In Brazil, the Rev. Dr. Amos Brown reunites with student from NAACP fellowship to Ghana, testifies of Savior during devotional with Tabernacle Choir, Orchestra

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Sister missionaries sang “I Will Walk With Jesus” when the Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown, pastor emeritus of the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, California, and his wife, Jane Smith Brown, entered the São Paulo Brazil Temple Visitors’ Center on Feb. 25.

“Here we have joy,” the Rev. Brown said as the singing finished, adding that the joy was in Jesus Christ. “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints … wherever it’s gone around this crusted globe has left people feeling good about themselves, upbeat and having hope for a better tomorrow.”

Among the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was Sister Saiida Webb, who had previously met the Rev. Brown during the Amos C. Brown Fellowship to Ghana in December 2024 and January 2025.

Sister Webb and her training companion, Sister Natalie Marie Moss, of Midway, Utah, both in the Brazil São Paulo West Mission, led the Browns on a tour of the visitors’ center. It included teachings on the plan of salvation and temple work, displays on the history of the Church in Brazil and ended at a replica of the Christus statue.

After the tour, Sister Webb said, “It was such a privilege to see Rev. Brown and his wife again here at the São Paulo visitors’ center, right next to the temple of São Paulo, Brazil. … It’s such a testament to the power of Christ and such a privilege to be able to share our love of the Savior together.”

The Rev. Brown, who was a friend of the late Church President Russell M. Nelson, and Jane Brown were in São Paulo with The Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square’s “Songs of Hope” tour stop in the city from Feb. 23 through March 2.

Webb was one of the two dozen young adults who were part of the NAACP’s Amos C. Brown Fellowship to Ghana in December 2024 and January 2025. The Rev. Brown and Jane Brown were both on the trip, along with other Church and NAACP leaders. A documentary of the trip was released in March 2025.

In 2021, President Nelson announced the Church would create the fellowship with an initial donation of $250,000 to help students learn about the cultural heritage of Ghana. The inaugural fellowship took place in 2022.

Webb, 22, who was born in Provo, Utah, and raised in Orange County, California, said the fellowship was an opportunity for her to learn about her African heritage, including the slave trade, and for “peace-centered healing.”

She was going to college in the Washington, D.C., area, and it was her first week in a new young single adult ward when one of the local leaders told her about the fellowship, and she applied.

“I found there [in Ghana] was the connection that I was looking for, being Black and being a member of the Church,” said Webb, who found through DNA testing her roots go back to Ghana and Nigeria. In Ghana, it was an emotional experience being at a location called the Last Bath, where she felt gratitude for temple work and missionary work. “It was that experience that actually led me to serve a mission.”

On that overcast and rainy day in February, Webb had started her missionary service about two months earlier, including six weeks of training, and had been in her first area for two weeks.

‘Sing on, choir’

The Browns attended all four of the choir and orchestra’s performances in São Paulo, and he also spoke at a devotional with the choir and orchestra members on Feb. 24.

“I love this choir. People will be inspired, and we [will] have hope and not live in moments of depression and dejection and division,” he said after the devotional.

In a conversation with choir President Michael O. Leavitt during the devotional, the Rev. Brown spoke of the power of music in his life growing up in Mississippi, recalled mentors and friends who have helped him and shared his testimony of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

The Rev. Brown noted how music made an impact in his life growing up in Mississippi, as his family’s Sundays included listening to the Wings Over Jordan Choir, an a cappella group from Ohio, and “Music & the Spoken Word” broadcast by the Tabernacle Choir.

“I long remember that rich, rewarding and most inclusive experience,” he said, adding, “because we all learn through music that we are all children of God.”

He pointed to the hymn “Come, Come, Ye Saints” (“Hymns,” No. 30) and quoted some of the lyrics, and shared how this song and “Lift Up Your Voice and Sing” helped give perspective to challenges.

In “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” he quoted: “Come, come, ye Saints, no toil nor labor fear; … though hard to you this journey may appear.”

“I just love that verse goes on to say: ‘Gird up your loins; fresh courage take. Our God will never us forsake.’”

Those musical “expressions empower us, encourage us, enlighten us and enable us to be successful,” he said.

The Rev. Brown said that for him, the legacy of President Nelson will be the Church’s humanitarian efforts and also that members of the Church of Jesus Christ go about “doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God.”

He noted how the Church leaders and members work to show some “love for all of God’s children.”

President Leavitt invited Rev. Brown, who spent nearly 50 years as pastor of Third Baptist Church, to “teach us about the Savior.”

“Our Lord and Savior was about love. Our Lord was about doing the work of being a follower of Jesus of Nazareth,” he said, noting that the book of James observes that “faith without works is dead.”

He pointed to the African American spiritual “Ain’t Got Time to Die,” with lyrics of people being busy praising the Lord and building His kingdom, and that his and other songs point to having an inclusive faith where everyone can feel God’s love.

The Rev. Brown encouraged the choir and orchestra members: “Sing on, choir. … Don’t let go of what you are doing. When, indeed, because of your tenacity, your strength and your great faith, you will inspire others.”

The devotionals also included remarks by Elder Joni L. Koch, General Authority Seventy and the Church’s Brazil Area president, who noted he was “preaching to the choir”; Marisa Saito, an executive assistant in the area office, who shared about her experience at the choir’s 1981 concert in Brazil as a teenager; and Jean Stevens, who is part of the choir staff.

The Rev. Brown has also attended the choir and orchestra’s performances with the Morehouse College and Spelman College glee clubs from Atlanta, Georgia, both in Salt Lake City during “Music & the Spoken Word” and during the choir and orchestra’s tour stop in Georgia.