Footballs

We are supplying our churches at Juru, Flores and Barra de Oitis with footballs for the 'Sport in Action' project, which involves getting children and youth off the streets to play football as well as hearing from God's Word. We have a Bible + Ball approach! Please pray for this project which is now restarting as the pandemic eases.

The daily Covid death rate is now 355 and there were 14,242 new Covid infections in the last 24 hours. It is interesting to compare the latter figure with the UK as it means Brazil has less than a third of new cases than in the UK, whereas the Brazilian population is over 3 times as big. It is clear that the situation in the UK is far worse today than in Brazil. Our Patos senior elder Pedro Guedes is stable in intensive care. If only he would eat it would help! His wife Beatriz is improving at home and their son Jesiel is better. On Thursday I took my Pfizer booster jab against Covid. I felt no side-effects from the vaccination. 

The Men's Conference is in full-swing at Green Pastures as from yesterday afternoon. It is running from Friday through Sunday. Tonight the 'Christians in Action' group will be holding a service at Ipueira in Rio Grande do Norte State. The Kombi will take 9 and another car will go with 5. We pray that God will richly bless these weekend activities. Last night Liz and I did a session of 'Fiancée counselling' with Rogaciano and Monyque who got engaged on the 13th. Our cooking pastor João George has just done another cookery training course for ladies at the Sítio Amolar community in Imaculada County.

I heard Prince Charles on the BBC saying that he has 2 meat-free days a week as his contribution to reducing his carbon footprint. In case he reads this I would like to tell him that I have 3 meat-free days a week with Macaroni cheese one day, egg and chips another and fish another! 😀 

I finished reading the very interesting book by Christian sociologist Paul Freston about the political participation of evangelicals in Brazil. I am now enjoying reading 'Personalized Psalms' by Mike Holmes. This book is a very interesting modern freestyle writing of each Psalm as Mike has clearly thought deeply about each Psalm. I've read the first 44 Psalms so far and am finding it very helpful and interesting with my NIV open alongside. Mike Holmes has some excellent ways of putting things over.