Rains slow

The rainy season this year for Green Pastures is well down on the last 3 years. On the other hand the reservoirs for Patos have done much better and one is overflowing. The big reservoir at Coremas, from where Patos has its pipeline, has also taken in a massive amount of water. So things vary from area to area with the Patos area doing really well but not at Green Pastures where the lake is nearly dry and the river bed is dry. All very green, but it doesn't get passed this as rain which comes in small quantities doesn't accumulate in lakes and reservoirs. We pray that April will be better because its the last month in which we can get big rains.

In the work of the Lord we press on with internet being our means of communication like it is for you. We bring messages, praise and prayer through this means and use Zoom for some fellowship groups. Lots of prayer and counselling goes on via WhatsApp too. Clearly we really do need your prayers as I know you need ours. We must stand together in Christ. 

We are carrying out supplying food parcels where we can for our poor Action Child/Schools children as they are very poor. This we are being very discreet about as we can't do it for everyone so we are saying nothing about this on Facebook to avoid possible tumults. The whole situation here is very complex and precarious. The political chaos is hindering a lot with lack of emergency healthcare preparation abominable. Please pray.

Please pray for us personally, for our family and all our leaders and church members. We are constantly under pressure. We look to God - our refuge and strength. 

I am shocked to the core!

Brazil's president has just decreed that "church services are essential services" like water or electricity supplies - thus bowing to the mass of fanatical evangelicals who elected him. It is an unbelievable decree! This means the prosperity theology lot and many others can gather their money as usual. 

Tragically Brazil's president is not taking this virus serious. We can only cry to God to intervene. Please join us.

(1) However do these things happen?

Liz was born in 1949 in a house in the street where our church is in Patos. I was also born that year, thousands of miles away, in a maternity hospital in London, England. The chances of us ever meeting were very remote, like winning on the lottery, but when God...

Liz was involved in the EAB church in Patos from very young. Liz is an amazingly strong devoted Christian. Many don’t realize what a rock she is because she rarely says much about it. I talk the hind legs off a donkey, but Liz gets on with the work, serves the Lord and never turns away a poor person in need. She taught a Sunday School class with 120 children when she was only 13 years old.

I was in Notting Hill, London at this time, at my church called Peniel Chapel. I too was involved in the church from very young, and I too was involved as a teenager with children’s work. My job was to go round with driver Steve Grantham in the church mini-bus and collect the kids to take them to church 4 times a week! My job was to knock on the doors of houses and flats and get the kids into the mini-bus. Our record number was 252 children one Tuesday night and not one was white! I loved the Anglo/West Indian community and still do.

My church was missions mad! Founded by pastor Ben Griffiths who was fruit of the 1904 Welsh Revival, he was a tremendous man of faith and missionary vision. We supported dozens of missionaries all over the world and this included Brazil. Our missionary family in Minas Gerais, in south east Brazil, were the Roults, and on their visits to the UK they stayed with their family a couple of streets from where I lived. I started hearing a lot and to feel God’s call on my life, and was already planning to head for Brazil one day still in my teenage years of child evangelism. It was just a matter of turning the West Indians into Brazilians!

I had never heard of north-east Brazil. Who had? My church worked down south and I thought one day that I might head there. However, 1966 (the year that England won the Football World Cup) was far more significant for my life for another reason. In the October the Millbrook Church youth from Southampton came to my church in London for a united youth service during which a young lady, who had recently arrived from north-east Brazil, was asked to sing Psalm 51 in Portuguese. My jaw dropped at her beauty!

I tried to chat to Liz after the service, but to no avail. I prayed a lot over the following weeks! In the New Year I went to run with my Cross-Country athletics club at Southampton and in the evening I went to see a Christian film for youth at a Baptist church and prayed that Liz would be there – and she was! But no amount of insistence for her to have an ice-cream with me after the film worked, but I kept praying. Then I heard that my church had invited EAB’s Frank Dyer to preach at our Good Friday morning service and of course I wondered could this be my answer to prayer? I contacted my friend David Irish in Southampton to invite Liz, Frank’s daughter, to my house for lunch after the service if she was coming with him. David “Sherlock” Irish discovered she was coming, together with her brother Sam, so he invited them both and they accepted! The rest is history.

Our courtship (see photo) lasted from Easter 67 to November 69 in which time I went to Liz’s house one weekend at Dibden Purlieu near Southampton and she came to mine on the other. All I heard constantly was about EAB and the needs of north-east Brazil! Frank, Liz’s Dad, showed me slides and told me endless stories about the Mission and I soon realized they had a point. The needs of north-east Brazil were incomparably greater than where my church was working in the south. Thus we got married at that same church in Southampton, who had visited mine 3 years earlier, and where God had brought Liz and I together. Pastor Winston Shearing conducted our wedding (leader of the Board of Trustees of EAB), Albert Mundy (EAB’s founder) also took part in the service as did Reuben Gunter, then pastor at Peniel Chapel, and Jack Dyer (pastor at Liz’s local church in the area at Hardley). Of course EAB missionary Frank Dyer gave away the bride and our good friend Pastor Colin Whittaker was also present. 6 ministers at one wedding did the trick!

Liz and I married committed to working with EAB in north-east Brazil and I studied at the IBTI in preparation for this. Later on I did a degree in theology at LBC (this was great) and a master’s degree at Leeds University. So at the beginning of August 1972 we took off to Patos, Paraíba, north-east Brazil, with our 4-month baby Deborah. And here we still are serving the Lord, but now with a bigger family. But I’ll tell you more about how our first years went here in Brazil in my next chapter…

Flooding

With so much in lock down it's services on line, lots of counselling via WhatsApp or by phone, and lots of meetings online with different teams of our leaders. I am also seeking to maintain a positive approach doing creative and enjoyable things such as reading (a commentary on Galatians at the moment), praying and Bible reading, and writing stories of our experiences in the work of the Lord over the years. I'll post here chapter 1 today and I pray it will bless you.

We're in the rainy season here and at Green Pastures rains are quite poor, but further to the west the rains are much heavier. We have just received news from Flores that our Pastor Nemias and his family have had to move out of their house and move into the church on higher ground for fear of severe imminent flooding. Please pray for this on top of everything else.

We pray for each other

We're all in the same boat with this pandemic so we pray for each other. We do really value your prayers and support. We minister to so many people via Internet as this is the only way. Liz and I plan to do a live transmission to the church at the time of what is our normal main Sunday service. All services were banned here, as from this week, which we are aware is the case in so many countries.

We seek to remain positive in all this and watch little news broadcasts. I am on the BBC opinion panel, as I have been for years, and I have just been asked for my opinion on its coverage of the crisis. I gave very frank answers to their questions.

We maintain our daily devotional times of course, listen to good inspirational music, read good books (reading a commentary on Galatians at the moment with one on Romans next), watch films, and in the evenings we have a fun and jokes time with the family on WhatsApp. There is a lot of guidance to be given to our different fellowship groups and major decisions being taken with the general church leadership team. We value your prayers for us that we may be kept healthy and strong in the Lord for us to be able to keep counselling and supporting the many who need it. 

I plan to write some EAB stories here on my blog and on the EAB Facebook page in the coming days. I will continue to write for the churches here's benefit as well. We all must have a positive agenda for the glory of God whether in isolation or not. May God help us all to this end at this time.

Please especially pray for Brazil facing immense ignorance from many (disbelief in the problem!) and much inertia and irresponsibility from some authorities. Our public health structure is frighteningly inadequate. Please remember us in your prayers and help support us as we seek to continue the work and care for the flock and very poor communities in creative blessed ways. 

Sunday

We have reached another Sunday with the Sunday School for all ages held this morning and all is now set for the evening service when God's Word will be preached and the Lord's Name praised. These are tense days for everyone, though the full impact of the current public health crisis has not been felt yet in Brazil, though it is forecast for between now and the end of April. We all certainly need to pray for each other at this time.  

I have been working on the next edition of EAB's magazine 'In Touch' (edition 93). Over the 82 years of EAB the name of its publication has changed a lot, but we have managed to stick to 'In Touch' for many years this time. Marian Rashleigh is my co-editor and she is key in the whole process. We are very grateful to her for her faithful service in so many ways. 

Of course we, as a local church and as a Mission here in Brazil are busy working on contingency plans at this time. We value your prayers a great deal. 

Building Repairs

International Women’s Day was celebrated on Sunday in Patos with all the women standing for a photograph, all the prayers and Bible reading conducted by Women as well as the sign language for the deaf. The Men’s Fellowship distributed chocolates to all the ladies and I preached on Women’s Ministry in God’s Kingdom. It was a blessed & happy evening.

Liz & I were checking out the work being done on our Patos church extension today, as one of the outer walls had not been properly plastered by the previous owner, so we are removing it and doing the job properly. Please pray!

Bible Study

I will be off very shortly to give the Thursday evening Bible study and I'll be attempting to cover Deuteronomy 28-31 + 34 tonight to complete our journey through the key stories of the Bible, in chronological order, having done the Pentateuch plus Job thus far. My task tonight is almost impossible but I'm going to try! 5 chapters of Deuteronomy in a night! Wow! This takes us up to the batten swap at the Jordan with Moses handing over to Joshua. 

I've also prepared my sermon for Sunday when I'll be preaching on women's ministry in the church, on International Women's Day. 

I have had a lot of trouble shooting to do this week in the work and lots of problems to discuss and work on. It has been quite a week! One son of one of our leaders sadly attempted suicide, whilst away studying, was one of the problems. So we value your prayers always for us and the work of EAB. 

Communion Service

Yesterday I conducted our third communion service of the year (being the first Sunday of the month) in the Patos church and the church was completely full with our communion cups just working out to the right number! I breathed a sigh of relief with one cup left for me after all had received, as this is so unnecessary because we have another tray of cups which a stubborn deaconess refuses to use as she doesn't like the spare tray's format! I have asked Liz to fix the deaconess! 

The service was lovely with Lucena back, a retired Congregational pastor who is now with us, who had been in Recife for treatment for 2 months with a liver abscess. Lindon Carlos, pastor of our Imaculada church, preached the Word from the book of Hebreus. 

We have suspended hugs and handshakes in church for the time being whilst this Coronavirus matter is not sorted out.

Please pray for the very difficult rain situation at Green Pastures. This year rainfall at Green Pastures is the lowest since 2016. We have only had 6 inches to date of the 40 inches target which we need to receive so as to keep going till the following year. As things stand the little lake at Green Pastures will soon be totally dry. Everything is more or less green with the light rains we have had, but it is what we call a "green drought"! That is, to the visitor seeing things green they will think all is well, but when they get to the lake they change their minds! The strange thing is that in Patos it is getting much more rain. It's good for Patos but we could do with some at Green Pastures too! The rainy season here is during the first 4 months, plus dribs and drabs in May and the odd shower in June. So we are praying for rain in abundance between now and the end of April.