I travelled to Caroá last Thursday and spent 3 days there travelling from there to various churches. I preached on Thursday evening at Caroá and to see 50 in the service on a Thursday night in the middle of nowhere is quite something.
On Friday morning I was up at dawn to go walking with Valdemar who leads the Água Grande church. Not many birds to see as the drought is terrible in that area. This year we have had good rains at Green Pastures and Patos but so many places are utterly desperate for rain.
We were joined after this by Pastor Valdemy and we visited and had fellowship at Pinheira, Mandacaru and Água Grande where all these little churches are going well. I had good chats to the leaders etc.
In the afternoon I went to Travessia which was about a 45 minute drive. All the travelling in this are is jeep country. At Travessia we inaugurated a well for this 62 family village. The Mayor turned up to the service so I took the opportunity to present him with a Bible. The inauguration took hours to finalize and we finally got back to Caroá well after 8pm pretty exhausted.
On Saturday morning I walked early and photographed a couple of nice little birds prior to visiting the Umburana church where there is a little tension. It is a pity that bad feelings have taken hold of some there so I talked to the leader and tried to give advice, though I felt like she wasn't wanting to hear it. From there we went on to a community I hadn't been to before with the strange name of 'Chico Nenem' (Chico Baby!) where I visited the home of Lídia and Célio whom I married 5 years ago. I was pleased to see them so well and happy.
On Saturday afternoon I went to inaugurate another well - this time in Pernambuco State - about an hour and a half from Caroá and vaguely on my way home to Patos in the process. That went off fine and I got back to Patos around 7.30pm - half dead with exhaustion but very happy and blessed.
I was of course back in the Patos church last night where I preached on John 3:16 as the 10th sermon on my series of sermons in John's Gospel. Numbers were down somewhat owing to the heavy rain which started about an hour before kick-off.
And talking about kick-off I should draw everyone's attention to the unbelievable news that QPR beat Birmingham away 4 x 1 on Saturday. Now how about that for a miracle!
This morning I went to Green Pastures to see the dam overflowing for the third time this year with us past the 16 inch rainfall mark already. We thank the Lord for this but are sad for so many areas getting little or no rain. Rainfall is erratic and irregular around the region but we are really being blessed. Our goal for this year is 40 inches.
Tomorrow I go back up the mountains to chair a community meeting again to try and save the area of conservation around Jabre Peak and I value your prayers.
Carnival Camp starts this Saturday so we are all stations go in the preparations. More are coming this year than last year. We're expecting at least 250 people. Please pray for this important event for the youth which will run from Saturday to the following Wednesday.
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