Lovely Christmas!

Last week was as hectic as ever with a lot of EAB correspondence to deal with on top of everything else. During the week we distributed Christmas Hampers in various places, but the main distribution was on the Friday in the Patos Project Centre, next to the church, with toys as well for the kids. It went great with a total of 244 full hampers + 36 smaller hampers from food we managed to get together at the last minute to help yet further people + 150 toys.

Saturday night was the typical Brazilian Christmas Eve supper at Philip & Gylmara's house, with all the family gathered for the occasion. On Christmas Day Sunday Liz cooked the typical British lunch and again got all the family together for this, followed by some gifts round the tree. 

At night we had a fantastic Christmas service in the Patos church which was so utterly packed out that we had to use every extra chair we had! The play was very impactive and blessed being a modern mixture of the old Christmas story from the angle of the "Heaven's Angels" (as opposed to Hell's Angels) Canteen getting the news that they had to get on their motorbikes and take the news of Jesus's birth to a group of "landless" shepherds. The half hour play ended with a switch to Jesus' second coming and a challenge to the church. I brought a short message after this followed by the church children receiving sweets and presents round the tree. It was all lovely and really blessed.