Deforestation

As you probably know deforestation has been a serious problem in Brazil in recent years. So you will appreciate my joy this morning when I saw the headlines of my daily Brazilian newspaper online 'Folha de São Paulo' telling me that in 2024 deforestation declined 32.4% in comparison with the previous year. 🌳🌴🌵

Liz and I have just had another counselling session. Sometimes these sessions leave us with heavy hearts and near to tears, but we can only ask for prayer and leave things with the Lord. 🙏

I was very sad to see the news from one of our 15 little schools that 2 little boys have been abandoned by their mother and live with their father who is very poor and doesn't enjoy good health. I can't go into detail in such a public place as this, but I do ask you to pray for this family. 

Today is our great friend Marian Rashleigh's birthday. Happy birthday Marian! Have a great day!

Preaching

This week I am preaching 3 times. On Tuesday night I travelled to São Mamede where I preached in a street service with 50 people in attendance. I preached on Mark 3:1-12 on Jesus' healing of a man with a shrivelled hand. On Saturday I will preach at Green Pastures and on Sunday I will be preaching in Patos. I value your prayers.

This year the EAB/ACEV Action Schools are helping and teaching a total of 835 needy children making sure they know how to read and write well and can do their sums and times tables, plus teaching them about Jesus and feeding them. Please do help us support this important work in 15 little schools which will hopefully increase to 16 in August. For £25 a month you can support this wonderful work. The current 15 little schools are as follows with the number of children in brackets: Caroá (11), Manaira (19), Juru (15), Imaculada (22), Patos (272), Soledade (10), Matureia (253), Itaporanga (15), Tavares (17), Princesa Isabel (80), Flores (18), Vazante (16), Barra de Oitis (21), Ibiara (14) and Campina Grande (52).

I have just concluded the third of 3 counselling sessions. I can't go into details, but value your prayers.

Our market garden project at the Lage de Onça Community in the municipality of Tavares is going exceptionally well producing lettuce, coriander, spring onions, okra, marrow, cabbage, passion fruit, paw-paw, barbadian cherry, pomegranate, lemons, guava and sweet potatoes. All is grown without using chemical pesticides, using natural defensive methods as taught by the project. All is readily marketed in Tavares and Princesa Isabel to the government school meals project.

Serrinha dos Pintos

The town of Serrinha dos Pintos is not far from Patos (186 km) in the neighbouring state of Rio Grande do Norte where EAB/ACEV has a small church at Ipueira. It was my sister Jean who drew my attention to a fascinating article by the BBC about this town and its prevalent condition called Spoan syndrome which has only recently been discovered by Brazilian geneticist Silvana Santos. The high number of cousins married in the town contributed to this which means many in the town end up in wheelchairs.

On Sunday night I led the special service allusive to Mother's Day at which our daughter Sacha preached an excellent sermon on Matthew 15:21-28 in which she focused on the Canaanite mother's fight of faith for her daughter's well-being. It was a very clever application of the text. The service was lovely with a full church.

It was great to see our grandson Arthur in church again back from Japan. He only arrived back in Patos 3 hours before the service, after a 3-day journey, including being stuck for 14 hours in Brasília owing to a flight cancellation, but he still came. 

Yesterday we went to the wake of our keyboard player Rogério's uncle who died suddenly. 

Judges 2 (résumé): Disobedience & Defeat

The angel of the Lord rebuked Israel at Bokim for not having driven out all the Canaanites and not having destroyed all their pagan religious sites. Hence the Canaanites "will be thorns in their sides and their gods will be snares to them", and God will withdraw his support. Israel was devastated by this and offered sacrifices to the Lord.

However with time the post-Joshua generation turned to serving the Baal and Ashtoreth pagan gods leading to God withdrawing his support for Israel. (It is impressive how fickle the Israelites' faith was and how easily they switch to worshipping pagan gods!) 

So God raised up judges to fill the leadership vacuum in Israel. The judges had partial success in leading Israel, but very easily the people of God slipped back into apostacy. This made God very angry and he withdrew his support in driving out the Canaanites, which God said he would now use to test Israel. 

Judges 1 (résumé): Israel fights the remaining Canaanites

The book of Judges covers a period of about 330 years following the death of Joshua. It was a time which stands in stark contrast to the blessings and conquests of the book of Joshua. For Judges is full of disobedience and idolatry leading to defeats and a cycle of apostacy. 

Chapter 1 relates how the men of Judah and the Simeonites conquered the Canaanites and Perizzites. At Bezek they killed 10,000 men and captured King Adoni-Bezek cutting off his big toes and thumbs! It says they did this cruel act in retribution for him having done this previously to 70 kings. Then the men of Judah captured Jerusalem and attacked the Canaanites living in Hebron. In the on-going warfare Caleb promised his daughter Achsar in marriage to the man who helped him conquer Debir, so it was that Caleb's younger brother Othniel conquered the city and married Achsar. The text goes on to show that the descendants of Moses' father-in-law were intermingled with the tribe of Judah.

Then the tribes of Judah and Simeon conquered other Canaanite cities including Gaza. However victories were partial as the Israelites were unable to defeat the iron chariots in the plains, and they could not dislodge the Jebusites. Then they conquered Bethel, but in the region as a whole the Canaanites were never completely defeated and so they ended up co-habiting with Israel being frequently reduced to sources of forced labour.

Birds at Green Pastures

I went to Green Pastures and saw a Spotted Nothura, many Red-Cowled Cardinals, Guira Cuckoos, Picui Ground-Doves, Smooth-billed Anis and Caatinga Cacholotes. This year's produce of 4 peacocks has been reduced to 1 by predators 🐺. There were still 3 at Easter. Our Cockatiels' offspring have also been reduced from 2 to 1, but they have now laid more eggs. 🐤

Congratulations to our school at Matureia, where I was on Wednesday, for having received an award for excellency from the town council. They also have received a 'best of the year' award as chosen by the general public.🏆All glory be to God! Our school there has 253 pupils. 

The wanderer returns! Our grandson Arthur returned yesterday from his latest international adventure having visited Panama, USA, Japan, South Korea and Peru! I wonder where he'll be going next year? His final flight from Brasília to Recife was cancelled because of a fight between a passenger and a member of the crew, so Arthur had an annoying and tiring delay to a later flight. Not to worry as Arthur is a lawyer and will sue the airline for the delay!

Yesterday afternoon the senior leadership of the mission held an excellent 2-hour online meeting in preparation for the general conference to be held in Itaporanga on the 23rd and 24th of May. First of all we discussed the conference celebration which Pastor Wostenes will lead and at which I will preach on the 'Year of Jubilee'. We then discussed the agenda of subjects to be dealt with in the 4 business sessions of the conference. It was an excellent meeting. Please pray for our general conference.

What a wife I have! I have just eaten 7 pancakes! 😋

Today is mother's day in Brazil and I send a happy mother's day to all mums!

Mountain Trip

On Wednesday I drove up the Teixeira Mountain to the town of Matureia where we have a church and school. On the way up the mountain I had to negotiate getting past an enormous broken down lorry which was blocking the road on a sharp bend. At the church I enjoyed good fellowship with the local pastor Renilson and his wife Getiane. I visited the school, which has 260 pupils, as the children were enjoying lovely tropical fruit: melon, banana, water melon and paw-paw, so I joined them!😋I enjoyed hearing Getiane speaking to the school assembly tactfully explaining to the children how to avoid abusive touches and teaching them to tell their mum or their teacher if anyone is abusively bothering them. It was a very good talk, fruit of her wide experience working with children. I was impressed.

From the school I drove a further 15 km to visit a market garden project run by the church piano accordionist called Gilsandro at the Bom Conselho Community. It was so good to see how well his market garden is doing with lettuce, coriander, spring onions, bananas (hundreds of them!), passion fruit and a great number of paw-paw drawing my attention. He told me how simple things like a wheel barrow, which he received as part of the project, is so helpful because he collects manure from neighbouring small-holdings to put on his plants. He thanked a lot for the piping for irrigation, the tools, shading netting etc. which the project gave him. He told me too of the contract he has with the main Matureia 'Souza' supermarket to supply fruit and vegetables every day as he has produce ready for market.

Our grandson Arthur is on his way back to Brazil from Japan and has made the 12 hour flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles where he now is. ✈

Last night I led the mid-week prayer meeting and Bible study and Pastor Rafael brought the study on Micah 6:1-8. It was a good service.

Last night too our son Philip attended his graduation ceremony online with the FTSA Bible College, and received a Bachelor's Degree in Theology. He concluded the course in December but the graduation ceremony was only now. We give our warmest congratulations to Philip for having achieved this award of a degree officially recognized by the Brazilian Ministry of Education. (MEC)