Barra do Corda and our new Ministry

We made a visit to the village of Sardinha for one day of the retreat being held there.
It was great to see how many young people are interested in following the Lord. Too many of the older Christians have backslidden or grown more interested in money from government jobs .

On Tuesday we had a planning meeting - here at our house, for the first time. We finally got enough barrels and boxes unpacked and organized that we could arrange chairs and invite people in! That is "order and progress" as our flag states! Thursday we met and planned the schedule, the classes for the first semester of 2009, Feb - May, how many hours of class time we have to prepare for, what classes we each would teach and what we still need to find a teacher for, etc. Robert may be responsible to oversee the gardening, caring for raising animals, etc. besides the daily maintenance of the property where we all live. I may teach a class on Devotional Life and I will plan to organize the Portuguese classes. Hopefully Dorilene, Bendito's wife, will help to teach Portuguese the first semester and carry on in the next one. So, we are getting into our new responsibilities, and we are grateful for your prayers.

Friday our team met for prayer and then walked up to the Training Center and around the property - to decide where to build a playground for children, a workshop, a chicken house, etc. Benedito, the director and our team leader, has done a lot of work there since we were here in November - a big field has been cleared and is ready for planting when rains come - corn, manioc, beans, etc. They have dug big holes and are now putting better soil into the holes and planting fruit trees - but they have to be watered every day. At the Center they have extended the big tabernacle to include some bathrooms and an office. The kitchen and the two classrooms have been done and painted. The dry brush still needs to be cleared back from the fence that marks the property line at the back, so in case a fire comes through again, there is less chance of it going on through as it did last year. It will also allow us to have someone walk around the property occasionally for security.

RJ is going to have to renew his driver's license in October; it was issued in Para state. He has to take some first aid and defensive driving training classes, since these requirements have been added since he first got his license, or study the materials and take a test, before getting an eye exam. It is also just at the time of elections (October 5th, Sunday), which can be very tumultuous here - often candidates spend money on parties and buying votes, and services to the public just go by the way! Please pray that he will be able to get it done quickly. He will eventually have to transfer his license to this state, but he was advised not to try to do that just now - it could take a very long time, and he needs to get it renewed to be able to legally drive.

The "wildlife" in the house is diminishing. We have poisoned a lot of cockroaches, the small frogs are still getting in sometimes (I do not like sharing my shower nor my kitchen with them!), and yesterday we found where a lot of mosquitoes were breeding, so that has been cared for - maybe they will be fewer now too. The other night a felt a "woosh" past my ears several times - a bat! That scares me, too. We certainly need to sleep with a net, because they are out and about at night. I guess I am calmer about these things than when we first came - one month ago this weekend.

The temperature here has been high! Several days ago I needed bread, so I made bread in the afternoon. (I can not easily go to a bakery nearby.) The thermometer read 99 degrees F in the house before I started baking!

We celebrated 4 weeks here with an ice cream cone in town!