Pastor Chef

Our Pastor Chef (please note the pun! i.e. not Master Chef!) João George is the assistant pastor at our Imaculada church up in the mountains. He is a very dedicated man in all he does. He is an Action School teacher and he is one of the most dedicated teachers we have in any school. It's just how he is! He is also very good at cooking and at teaching cooking and has done excellent work teaching women to cook at Fonseca slave-descendent community in Manaira County. The aim in this project is to in this way teach women to make bread or bake and decorate cakes so that these things generate income for their families. So yesterday he was at another slave-descendent community at Barra de Oitis in Diamante County teaching a new group of women to make bread and it was a great success. It is so good to see extremely poor women treated with respect and recovering their personal dignity through such projects as this one as well as increasing their income. 

The rain situation continues the same at Green Pastures. We had 30 mm of rain the night before last and 9 mm last night so not big rains to fill our lake and stream up. With just a week left in April the situation in serious at Green Pastures. Last night in Patos it rained 88 mm of torrential rain but unfortunately this didn't fall at Green Pastures. The rain was so hard last night that I had to turn the volume up to the maximum for Liz and I to be able to watch our serial on Netflix so as to relax before going to sleep.

I have been trouble shooting at one of our Action Schools this week. Problems crop up from time to time but the Lord helps us to solve them and our experience helps too.

Thanks to those who have been praying for 85 year old Brother Silvino at Manaira who had Covid and a stroke. Praise God he is now home from hospital and much improved.

The 2 latest toilet/shower units that we have built are now totally finished and their happy owners are using them with great satisfaction. It's sad to think that these are the first toilets these families have had in their lives. How the other half lives! For the very poor here a toilet is a luxury and a shower as well is a super luxury! However the photo of Francisco de Assis, his wife Maria de Fátima Lucas and their two children shows a family all masked up and looking very serious. (see on Facebook) That's just how poor folk here are! To get them to smile for a photo is extremely difficult! I understand such people and I realize that's their normal, but it might be difficult for people overseas to figure out.