Independence Day

The 7th of September is Brazilian Independence Day which is a public holiday. On this day President Bolsonaro plans to make a speech attacking the High Court of Justice and threatening a military take over. We shall see what he actually says on the day but that is the reported essence of the speech which wouldn't be surprising as he has often made strong hints in the direction of dictatorship and he is a military man. The sad thing is that many evangelical leaders are calling their people to support this speech with a public protest march in the centre of São Paulo on the same day. Please pray for democracy, justice and peace in Brazil.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time preparing a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Liz and I also went out to Green Pastures in the afternoon for our walk, as well as to check the work being done renovating the dormitories (ready for the new start for church conference events there in October) and the school room. We saw a Striated Heron whilst there. We see our bird tables are keenly visited in this time as food is scarce owing to the low rainfall this year. We took some rice that had gone sour out with us and the Marmoset monkeys devoured it and fought each other for it.

Temperatures today rise to a high of 34 degrees and a low during the night of 21.

I have been having discussions with Eduardo who leads our little church at Passagem. They are going to re-start in-person services next month.

The Ministry of Health has announced that it will be offering booster vaccinations for Covid as from next month using the Pfizer jabs. This will be a step in the right direction for us as our Chinese Coronavac vaccinations (that we were given) are not recognized by the UK government (quite rightly so). This would mean we would be half-way vaccinated for an eventual visit to the UK and would just need to somehow get a second Pfizer jab next year.