The day after...

The day after the Brazilian elections has left me a lot to think about. The race for governor of Paraíba is finely balanced - neck and neck! What concerns me are reports filtering though to me about rampant corruption and vote buying in this process. If such reports are confirmed it will sadden me greatly as we have worked so hard to combat this and it also makes a mockery of democracy.

In the presidential race the current left-wing president starts the second round with a big advantage over the centre-right candidate. However that is far from decided either as people are happy with the left's help to the poor but unhappy with their party's corruption. On the other hand the centre-right candidate has a pretty dodgy track record too. People are starting to ask me who to vote for and I am saying I'm praying and thinking! 

Today I have written and sent to the EAB UK Board of Trustees the annual report and appraisal document for the AGM on October 18th. Please do be there for the Celebration with the 5.30pm eats + 7pm service. Liz and I will be speaking via Skype from Brazil.

People are asking me what happened regarding my Islamic article which made me take it off the secular news site here and keep it only on my blog in Portuguese? What happened is that I was receiving lots of racist hate comments on an awful scale! My article, as you can see if you translate it on my Portuguese language blog, was mild and more a challenge to the evangelical church to wake up than anything else. However there are people here that hold the Brits as responsible for Crusades in the middle ages and for anything colonial done by us. The USA and others get put in the same basket. There were many here who cheered at 9/11. Brazil's current president Dilma said last month at the United Nations that Brazil is against the 50 or so country alliance of nations fighting ISIS and that we should be holding a dialogue with them! In other words when we talk about Islamic radicalism many here say that we are the cause of it!

We need to pray and wake up about Islamism! God has woken me up through the BBC and I am not intending on going back to sleep!