Deaf pastor

I was thinking after the Sunday night service in Patos how wonderful it is to observe the on-going ministry with the deaf fellowship, and I had a chat to our deaf pastor Luiz Carlos (via an interpreter) who is a lovely brother. Two other fine young Christian men who are deaf were with him. Our Sunday main services are always translated into Brazilian sign language and Pastor Luiz Carlos leads the deaf fellowship's own parallel sequence of services during the week. Please pray for this important ministry and that we will see many more deaf folk coming to the Lord.

I led the Sunday night service and assistant pastor Rafael preached the Gospel very well on Luke 13:6-9.

The Covid daily death rate continues to steadily fall here in Brazil as the vaccination programme steadily progresses. The current daily average is 671 which is a great improvement on the 4,000 peak earlier this year. The vaccination programme which was ridiculed by President Bolsonaro only has come about thanks to the outcry of the people and the incisive action of the State Governors which Bolsonaro tried to halt!

I have finished reading 'Ministries of Mercy' by Timothy Keller. This book expresses EAB's approach to this subject of the balance between doing and saying the Gospel. I have also checked and adjusted a variety of short articles for the next EAB magazine 'InTouch'. Marian Rashleigh sends me the material for me to check. Marian is a vital aspect of EAB ministries.

I have been hearing the call of the Great Kiskadee outside my office in Patos. This is a bird which is always seen at Green Pastures which has a bright yellow chest and belly and which is the size of a blackbird. It is not common to see this bird in towns but we have planted lots of trees and plants around our house so this is an attraction.  

José Roberto

Sadly José Roberto has died from Covid. We had previously asked prayer for this none EAB church brother who had refused to be vaccinated against Covid. Late on Friday night Liz received a request for a prayer team to go to his wife Adriana's house and pray with her and we sent the team there as she was very low. Adriana (who had been vaccinated) contracted Covid very mildly. We will be praying for the bereaved family tonight in our main service of the week.

Liz and I pray together every day, but on Sunday mornings we spend longer together in prayer and are reading a Psalm per Sunday. We have just finished this devotional time together. We have a list of prayer topics and people so as not to forget anyone in our intercession.

Last night the regular Saturday night service at Green Pastures went very well indeed with our granddaughter Louisa (in her final semester at Law School and her first semester at Theology School) bringing a lovely message for the farming folk from Psalm 23. A little boy from the farming village of Assentamento NS Aparecida II sang a song. The 4-year-old Josué (Joshua) froze when he got to the front to sing, but with his grandfather Paulo's help he managed be courageous and sing his song for Jesus!

The services at night at Green Pastures are accompanied by the bird song of a multitude of birds in the trees around the meeting hall which are awoken by the extra lighting switched on for the people's arrival. The meeting hall has no walls on two sides so it is totally exposed to the external bird song. It means the church needs to sing well to be heard! 

The workers at Green Pastures have virtually finished painting Block A dormitories plus the school rooms. They met up with two snakes this week. One was coiled up on the ball cock of a water tank on the roof and the other was in a store room. Both snakes were released out in the bush as everyone knows that we do not kill snakes.

Andressa

Andressa is a 16-year-old unmarried girl from the Fonseca slave-descendent quilombo community in Manaíra County, which is a 3-hour drive south-west of Patos. We have a small church there plus many projects such as well, goats, chickens and market garden. Andressa is 32 weeks pregnant and seriously ill with pre-eclampsia which includes very high blood pressure. She is in the Patos maternity hospital and our social worker Marah Danielle is monitoring her case. She has been in intensive care twice but is in a high-risk pre-natal ward at the moment. Please continue to pray for her. I have just spoken to our social worker who has spoken to Andressa's mother this morning who is with Andressa in the hospital. She says that the doctors are aiming to control things so as to have the birth as late as possible. This afternoon we will be sending items of personal hygiene (shampoo etc.) to support the very poor Mum.

Please continue to pray for the 4 drug addicts we have at a rehabilitation centre near João Pessoa on the coast. Kicking drug addiction is no easy thing and needs much prayer. The man who is now at the centre from Patos is doing well thus far. Yesterday his mother was visited and she is so grateful that her son is being helped. She says he really does want to get free. She told us her son has attempted suicide is desperation more than once.

I am reading a book by Timothy Keller called "Ministries of mercy: the call of the Jericho road". It is a good book which encourages churches to get involved with their communities with an integral mission approach as we have. The disadvantage is that I am reading the book translated into Portuguese and translations are never as good as the original language - but it's what I've got so I shall press on. For my relaxation I have read another book by Mike Hollow called 'The Custom House Murder' set in East London in the 1940 blitz. His description of air-raid shelters (we used to have one in our back garden in North Kensington), bomb sites (I used to play war games in them as a child) and zinc bath tubs for a once a week Friday night bath (Ah yes, I remember it well!) are just some aspects of Mike's excellent writing. My congratulations to Detective Inspector John Jago on another crime solved!

Independence Day

The 7th of September is Brazilian Independence Day which is a public holiday. On this day President Bolsonaro plans to make a speech attacking the High Court of Justice and threatening a military take over. We shall see what he actually says on the day but that is the reported essence of the speech which wouldn't be surprising as he has often made strong hints in the direction of dictatorship and he is a military man. The sad thing is that many evangelical leaders are calling their people to support this speech with a public protest march in the centre of São Paulo on the same day. Please pray for democracy, justice and peace in Brazil.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time preparing a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Liz and I also went out to Green Pastures in the afternoon for our walk, as well as to check the work being done renovating the dormitories (ready for the new start for church conference events there in October) and the school room. We saw a Striated Heron whilst there. We see our bird tables are keenly visited in this time as food is scarce owing to the low rainfall this year. We took some rice that had gone sour out with us and the Marmoset monkeys devoured it and fought each other for it.

Temperatures today rise to a high of 34 degrees and a low during the night of 21.

I have been having discussions with Eduardo who leads our little church at Passagem. They are going to re-start in-person services next month.

The Ministry of Health has announced that it will be offering booster vaccinations for Covid as from next month using the Pfizer jabs. This will be a step in the right direction for us as our Chinese Coronavac vaccinations (that we were given) are not recognized by the UK government (quite rightly so). This would mean we would be half-way vaccinated for an eventual visit to the UK and would just need to somehow get a second Pfizer jab next year. 

Wild Guinea Pig

On the way to leading the service at Green Pastures on Saturday a baby wild guinea pig (cavea aperea) ran across the road in front of the jeep. We see a lot of them here. They are similar in colour to the wild rabbits in the UK. The service went very well with a lovely word of testimony from brother Manoel whose life was changed by the Gospel after having been quite a local rogue. The service in Patos last night was blessed in the praise and worship, but pastor Lucena's sermon was below par unfortunately.

Average Covid daily deaths are down in Brazil to 765. This is still sadly high but is a lot better than the 4,000 a day peak some months back. The vaccination campaign is bearing fruit and the death rate is slowly decreasing though we don't know what effect the Delta variant (now present in Brazil) may have.

The political situation in Brazil is very tense with President Bolsonaro and his followers calling for a military coup d'état as they see defeat in next year's election on the horizon. We would ask you to pray for democracy, peace and justice in Brazil. 

QPR has made a good start to the new football season with two wins and two draws in the league and one win in the League Cup. 😃

Green Pastures Service

At the moment I am preparing to take the service at our Green Pastures Church later today. We look to the Lord for his blessing. Yesterday at Green Pastures I heard a Roadside Hawk and a Rufous-bellied Thrush. The latter has a beautiful song which I can imagine joining praise to God one day in the new earth together with the angels and the redeemed of the Lord! We saw yesterday that the painters are now in at the Green Pastures School and Block A dormitories. It's starting to look much better. We also saw that Francisco has planted 19 of the 24 seedlings of Mango, Guava, Orange and Lemon trees.

Yesterday evening we spent a lovely time with our daughter Sacha celebrating her 35th birthday and eating a mini-barbecue in the moonlight.

The Brazilian national Minister of Education, Milton Ribeiro, is a Presbyterian evangelical Christian and his remarks about special needs children are embarrassing and outrageous. He has referred to them as being a "nuisance" because they "get in the way"! Such insensitive comments have generated outrage from opponents of President Bolsonaro and his government.

The authorities here are starting to talk about a third dose of Covid vaccine to hopefully be applied later this year so as to improve prevention of the disease. Please pray for this to happen. Daily deaths to Covid are down to 800 which is a big improvement on the 4,000 peak a few months back. A brother called José Roberto who is a Christian from a non-EAB church refused to be vaccinated because he deemed it to be a "lack of faith in God". He is now intubated in intensive care fighting for his life. Please pray for him.

I went to an ophthalmologist this week as my right eye was swollen a lot. He prescribed an antibiotic and an antiallergic drug and already my eye is back to normal.

I have been having a lot of discussions with our projects team about the next round of wells that we will be drilling. Also Pastor Valdemy of Caroá took part in the discussions as the poor rainfall this year is already affecting his region as it is ours. Please pray for us to hit water when we drill the next 4 wells we will be drilling. 

4 Legs

EAB's 4-Legs Project distributed goats and sheep yesterday in a journey of 720 km. The animals were bought over the past few weeks at Tavares where Pastor Robério is the leader and who is a member of our projects team. Then yesterday he and pastor Lindon Carlos loaded up the pick-up vehicle with the animals and left at first light with first stop at Teixeira which is 30 minutes drive south of Patos. They had a nice time of fellowship with the local pastor there, Maésio and his wife Fia, who took them to the rural area of the County to Sítio Sabonete II where the first families of the day received their animals with much joy. One lady called Maria (nearly all women in Brazil are called Maria!) has recently come to the Lord in this community. Each family benefitted by the project also receives a Bible. 

Next stop was the town of Juazeirinho which is a one hour drive east of Patos. There they met up with our local pastor Leandro who took them to the community of Antonio Ferreira where more animals and Bibles were distributed. In this community a number of people have come to Christ and the Juazeirinho church holds a weekly meeting there. There are plans to even build a little church at this place. Once again as well as the distribution of animals and Bibles there was good fellowship here with pastor Leandro and the local Christians in these out of the way places.

On from here next came São Vicente do Seridó which was another drive of about and hour and a quarter in a north-easterly direction. Here the leader of our church is an excellent woman called Maria das Dores (Mary of the Pains!) although she is known by her nick-name of Neném (Baby - which is a common nick-name here). She took the team to the Boa Vista rural community where once again goats and Bibles were distributed. By this time the animals still on top of the truck needed to be given baths to cool them down.

Finally the team drove on again to Portelo Community in the County of Puxinanã which was about another hour and a half drive south east, and were met at late afternoon by local pastor Sílvio and his wife Silvânia. The team drove on to Campina Grande to sleep.

All our projects are church based and so a day like yesterday, distributing goats, sheep and Bibles, just highlights the wonderful way the Gospel is being spread to villages and towns in north-eastern Brazil. All the indications for people to received goats were made by our local leaders who know the people. 

We thank you for your prayers and for the practical ways you support our projects which demonstrate to the poor the love of God. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan the priest and Levite walked by on the other side of the road, but it was the Samaritan who stopped, cared and paid for the wounded man's needs. EAB, with your help, seeks to live out this parable in the real world of north eastern Brazilian poverty.