Saturday night

Every Saturday night we take part in the Green Pastures Church service which is a 20 to 25 minute drive from where we live. Saturday was the postponed communion service from last week and all went very well. Sacha led the praise and worship, assistant Pastor Rafael led the service and Pastor Lucena preached from John 15.

Yesterday morning we held our annual church business meeting in Patos and it went off very well. We brought the members list up to date and votes of approval were made for our assistant pastor Rafael, deacon Ricardo and deaconesses Josinete, Deborah Maria and Marcia. Then some adjustments were made to the leadership of our different church ministries. This was followed by the decision to try and return to holding our annual carnival camp at Green Pastures from February 26th to March 2nd. This will go ahead as long as the pandemic situation does not get worse here between now and then. To attend the 4 day camp people will have to pay 30 pounds. If anyone would like to contribute to this camp it would be appreciated as it will enable poorer people to go to the camp who would not be able to otherwise. After this we had a good discussion on the modernization of the Care Centre which was applauded by all present.

Our church has set the date for our next baptismal service in Patos so that it will be a Boxing Day Baptism! It will be held at 8.30 am and over 10 people will be baptized. I cannot give the exact number as yet as we are still sorting this out in the light of the backlog we have owing to the pandemic. It was decided that the baptism will take place in the pool at Green Pastures.

Last night's main Sunday service of the week was blessed. I dedicated 2-year-old Marina and assistant pastor Rafael preached. At the end we bid farewell to pastor Lucena and his wife Magaly. He clearly doesn't want to move to Recife and wept. His wife clearly does want to move there where her family live. I will say no more. I hope and pray that the move goes well for them.