About Me

I was born in 1955, and came to know the Lord Jesus in 1978. You can read the story of my conversion at "When Angels Rejoice". Since then, I have worked as an architect, an editor, and a translator, and now I work as a consultant, writer and speaker. I write business articles and stories for many sites, newspapers and magazines and give lectures on business and marketing. I am also a writer with four books on business and marketing published. Besides this website I also publish my business site, a blog on marketing and another blog about my son, a special child. Besides this one I have another son and a daughter who is also a writer.

History of "True Stories" Website

"True Stories" began in 1993 as a little paper in Portuguese, done by my son Lucas Persona and I on an MSX home computer, printed and distributed as Xerox copies to the Sunday school children. It was called "Escolinha Dominical", which means "Little Sunday School"

Later I discovered that the grown-ups had as much interest as the children did for the stories, so I decided to change its name to "Histórias de Verdade", the Portuguese name for "True Stories". By that time it was being printed as a four-page tract, and later as a booklet. All the stories were in Portuguese and most of them were translated from a similar publication called "Message�s of God�s Love", printed by Bible Truth Publishers in the United States.

The printed version of "True Stories" was published until the beginning of 1999, then already as a bilingual magazine, when I had to stop. I decided to use the little time I have at night or on weekends to concentrate my energy on the Internet version of "True Stories.

In 1996 I created the Internet site for "True Stories" and since then I am working to improve this work. The site receives now more than 1,000 page views every day by people from more than 70 countries. In two occasions the site was mentioned in the Internet section of one of the major Brazilian newspapers, the Folha de São Paulo. In June 1998 I started a newsletter called "Chapter-A-Day", a bilingual Bible study sent free by e-mail from Monday to Friday. Norman Berry, from Canada, wrote the texts. I translated them into Portuguese and sent the bilingual newsletter to more than 6,000 people from different countries until 2002, when I decided to keep only the web version of it. Norman Berry departed to be with the Lord in 2001.

Besides Norman Berry, there are others who have contributed to this site, and to mention them all would take much time. Many have contributed with their stories, others with their prayers. Considering only the work done directly in the creation of these pages, I would like to mention the help I�ve received from Ewell Tonn, who have gladly translated many stories into English, and also from Peter Rule and Gordon Whitaker, who gave their voices to some stories in Real Audio. I own Tony Whitaker, from Soon Magazine, much of what I�ve learnt on Web evangelism in his excellent article. Cristóvão Pereira de Barros also helps creating the html pages.

I am a Christian, but I am not a member of any denomination or religious organization. I believe all those who were saved by the Lord Jesus Christ belong to the one body we find in the Bible, also called the church. Unfortunately the testimony of this one body, which was put under the care of men, was divided in hundreds of denominations and groups, becoming a "great house" where you can find all kinds of people. If you want to know a little more about the way I see this, read this article. It also describes the way I am gathered with other brethren in Christ in His name alone.

I look forward to get acquainted with you in days to come. Why don�t you write me an e-mail message and introduce yourself. Let me know how you found out about this website, and what God is doing with you.

Yours,

Mario Persona