Feeling Brighter

My virus symptoms are diminishing. Thanks for your prayers. Our eldest daughter Deborah has been in hospital today on a drip, owing to dehydration, but is on the mend and should be back at her home to sleep.

We had another school visit to Green Pastures today for an environmental education tour but I didn't feel up to being their guide so our son-in-law Hutan did it as he knows the routes and all my stories that I tell kids about encounters with foxes, raccoons, snakes etc. as he always goes with me for school visits to take the photos.

Moving things always happen at the Care Centre and this week was no exception with three lovely children coming to our dentist for the first time in their lives at 7, 8 and 11 years of age. They were thrilled with their treatment and with their tooth brushes and paste too. The deaf fellowship also always has its meetings there of course. In fact the deaf consider the Care Centre as "the place to go" on a Saturday night. I really don't know where so many deaf folk appear from!

It was lovely to see 4 baptized at Mandacaru at the weekend. That's the place where the leader nearly died about a year ago with a terrible hemorrhage. He's now fine. PTL!

It was great seeing the youth, led by Philip, doing door to door evangelism in Jatobá borough where our school is on Saturday. They do this in the afternoon and hold an open-air evangelistic service at night in front of the school. Philip has a real gift for personal evangelism and it was wonderful to see him taking his son Lucas and his neice Alice (both only 11) and training them on the job to do door to door evangelism with him, which isn't easy.

The month of April draws to a close with some further small rains taking us up to 31 inches total for the year - so just 9 inches needed in May/June to reach our target. 

Please pray for our Mission EAB which goes through a difficult time in terms of finance. When I ask you to pray some might say it is a way of asking people to give - which it is - but it isn't just that. Prayer does change things, as we have proved over the years, and at this "rock bottom" time with zero contingency fund (a fund the mission seeks to maintain as a buffer for low income periods) we look to God who does intervene and can touch people's hearts to give or to act to raise funds. We praise God for Cadnam Methodist Church which raised money for the Mission last weekend with a concert and for Kira Taylor who is running a half marathon this weekend for EAB. We also praise God for those who regularly support the work here - both churches and individuals. Please do join us in special prayer for the work - which must press on for God's glory and in blessing - that lack of funds will not be a hindrance to the multiple aspects and ministries of the Mission.

Finally let me tell you that I am reading 2 good books at the moment - God's Strategy in Human History by Forster and Marston - and Cat Wars by Marra and Santella. The books are from rather different fields but both are equally difficult to stop reading!

On Thursday I start the ambitious journey, in the Thursday night church Bible studies, through the 'Key stories of the Bible' in chronological order, following the BibleGateway.com - Chronological reading plan. Thus we read different chapters and comment on them - starting this week with creation and the fall. Please pray for this too.