Market Gardens

The market garden project continues to go well and as time goes by we have an ever increasing number of people and places involved. So we have created a group on WhatsApp with all the project participants plus me, the project team and an agricultural expert so that experiences, photos and videos can be shared and questions asked. This online aspect of the project is going very well indeed. Yesterday, for example, a lady who is new to the project was helped because it was noticed by a video she posted that she was planting her lettuce too close together. Other help was given on how to protect bananas, guava and bread fruit from being ruined by insects without using insecticide. Another advantage of this online group is that those who are doing better can encourage and wake up those who are slacking. 

I went for a walk yesterday morning at Green Pastures with Francisco. I photographed the tiny Tawny Piculet Woodpeckers, a Tropical Kingbird and a pair of Great Antshrikes. Such outings are good exercise and are very enjoyable. We are very grateful to God for the way the Green Pastures Project has developed over the years from a little farmstead to a nature reserve and Christian Conference Centre. As Chris Wright says in his book I am finishing reading: "Creation Care flows from love for the Creator." To care for God's creation is proving to be a real testimony to folk in our part of Brazil. And this is coupled with the Christian Conference Centre side of things which is also a great blessing to so many of our leaders and church youth and members. But "holistic mission is not truly holistic if it includes only human beings and excludes the rest of creation for whose reconciliation Christ shed his blood (Colossians 1:20)."

The pandemic nightmare carries on here. President Bolsonaro's government has been found out buying vaccinations with one dollar per dose built into the price as a kick back! This means that for every million doses Bolsonaro and his gang makes a million dollars! Meanwhile the Covid crisis goes from bad to worse here with 2,000 people dying every day which seems to be something which people have got used to. A couple in the Patos church, Márcio and Jacyara, have gone down with Covid and Marcio, who was in church on Sunday, is extremely nervous. Brother Wilson from our Princesa Isabel church is in intensive care, intubated, with Covid, having 70% lung damage. Ana Paula in Campina Grande continues in hospital with Covid but is out of intensive care. Please pray for all these people.

I watched the England x Germany match in the Euro Championship on Tuesday. My forecast of 2 x 1 to England was nearly exactly correct. I certainly got the result right and expect England to beat Ukraine on Saturday in the quarter-finals. I'll forecast a 3 x 1 win for England.