DALE BARTON
1913-1991
BRAZIL
Approved 1953

Rev. Barton was born on a farm near Mt, Pleasant, Iowa, October 23, 1913. He accepted the Lord at the age of 12 in the Round Prairie Baptist Church. He married Wilma Zickefoose on August 14, 1937.

In 1950 they sold their family farm to pursue their call to the mission field. They attended Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, and were approved as missionaries to Brazil with the Baptist Bible Fellowship in 1953. 

They spent the next 21 years in the industrial metropolis of Sao Paulo, where he founded several churches. He was the founder and president of the Instituto Bapista Biblica, which trained many Brazilian converts for full-time church ministry. In 1975 they moved to the rural northern frontier of Brazil and started a work 70 miles beyond the nearest road where there was no electricity nor running water and dirt floors were in their home. They worked there for four years starting several churches and the first elementary and high school in the area.

When they retired in 1979, he had founded, helped found or trained ministers for more than 40 churches. Rev. Barton died of a massive stroke Dec. 23, 1991. He was survived by his wife, Wilma; son, Curtis, and three daughters, Judy, Barbara and Janet, who with her husband Gary Tomberlin, are missionaries in Brazil.