Autor: eabrazil

We had an excellent service in the Patos church last night following on from a brilliant street service on Saturday night outside the EAB School in the Jatobá borough of Patos. 150 people came to the service which is really something! It was an amazing blessing in a place we have been trying to plant a church for some time. Please pray.

I am happy to say that yesterday we received the results of tests done on Liz last week which have finally discovered the bacteria which is the root cause of all Liz’s very serious health problems and which no previous tests had managed to discover. 


Last Tuesday Liz had 7 syringes of fluid removed from one knee and this fluid was sent to a laboratory for different tests including a culture. This culture both discovered the hidden bacteria as well as defining which antibiotics will be effective in killing the bacteria. We are all very happy about this of course and thank you for your prayers. The specialist caring for Liz is really thrilled too and says that this bacteria is what had stopped all previous medications working for Liz.


Thus Liz today has started on a mammoth 2 month course of antibiotics and we hope and pray she will start to improve in the near future and feel stronger and better. Please continue to pray.

The whole of north-east Brazil had a long blackout (which I refuse to call a power outage!) yesterday afternoon and evening. It was yet another example of the chaos Brazil is in at the moment.


Amidst all this the brightspot was to observe dear Liz just a bit brighter! PTL! She has had 2 B12 injections and will have another tomorrow which is at least combatting some of the side-effects of her condition. She also had lots of liquid removed from one knee which was sent to a laboratory for tests and it is now confirmed that she will soon be starting on different ‘biological’ treatment which we hope and pray will zap her illness. Please continue praying.


Please also pray for the rains to restart here. March has been a hiccup and the rains have stopped which is most concerning as either we get plenty of rain in the first months of the year, up until May, or we have had it till 2019!


I am working on my sermon for Sunday. Yesterday we received feedback from the ladies of the Desert Flower Project (pseudonymn for Battered wives involved in drugs – never use these terms on Facebook please unless you want me killed) and there was a wonderful general buzz of approval. 16 went plus 9 kids. We feel it was a real breakthrough with the group. Some have expressed their desire to come again. One woman made a genuine comittment to Christ out of the group last Sunday and we checked this yesterday which she reaffirmed. PLEASE PRAY. She is on drugs and trying to get free, lives with a partner which complicated things, has a child and wants to live for Jesus! We are doing all we can to support her first steps with the Lord and hope she will be back in church this Sunday.


Results in from Manaira’s follow up work (2 months) after the special 10-day Outreach in January show 6 firm in the faith and 2 or 3 humming and harring and coming and going. We praise God and ask prayer for all.


I had an excellent meeting yesterday with Pastor Lindon Carlos about churches and projects issues. It really was a blessing.

When I drove into Green Pastures this morning in a large police van, followed by three more full of police armed to the teeth, Tarcisio nearly fainted! The special police visit had not been planned and Tarcísio thus was expecting nothing. What happened was that I had had a meeting with the new environment police chief and other police authorities in Patos – and everything went so well that they asked if they could go and visit the Reserve at Green Pastures there and then! I said sure, and we took off in convoy!


It was a fantastic opportunity to speak to these powerful men and discuss how we need to care more for God’s creation and combat hunters, poachers and tree choppers! “The earth is the Lord’s” is what I told the Police chief. I think he got the message!

Liz has become very unwell indeed and stands in need of much prayer. I have never seen her so ill before. She has a sudden and severe version of reactive arthritis, formerly known as Reiter’s syndrome. It has developed suddenly in her body as a response to an unknown infection, causing cross-reactivity. She is being looked after by two specialists but has thus far not responded to any medication. She is weakened, has much pain and has limited mobility. She will apparently need a long period of treatment over many months. Please pray.

I have just got home from a great Sunday night “Desert Flower Project” service which went so well. PTL! 16 of the 23 women at present in the project came with 6 smaller children plus an older daughter and her boyfriend! Even 4 of the devout spiritists came! 


The service had had lots of prayer put into it and it was electric. The praise was great and the sermon flowed in the Spirit. At the end 2 of the women made decisions plus a number of others who were visiting as well. Thank you Lord.


After the service we had the sale of their handicraft products and that went very well too. So thank you for your prayers and support. God is good!

Liz and I were travelling on Thursday and Friday as Liz needed to see a blood specialist as she is far from well. She has something which has recently and abruptly cropped up which is wrong with her immune system and we value your prayers very much.


Today is the big “Desert Flower Project” service at 6.30 pm our time and I have prepared my sermon and we are looking to God for a greatly blessed service. We count on your prayers. A big spiritual battle is going on around this and the spiritist women involved in the project are creating difficulties – but we believe God is greater than all the opposition and difficulties.

People tend to seek us out when they have wildlife they want to return to the wild so that we can put it in the Green Pastures Nature Reserve which is becoming increasingly well known. We do all we can to make people understand that birds should be free to fly in the wild and wild animals should be left in the wild unharmed. Sometimes our message and example produces the desired effect and people either let free what they had in a cage of had captured and were planning to kill and eat.


Hence yesterday I received a 6-banded Armadillo which was saved from the knife. So this morning Liz said she would take it to Green Pastures to set it free there as she was going to check the toilets renovation work on-going there. I put the Armadillo in a large bucket in which it was brought to us and off she went. But after a few minutes Liz called me on her mobile asking for help as the Armadillo had got free in the Jeep! So I got a lift to where she was and put the Armadillo back in the bucket and went with Liz to let it free. In the end all was well, but it was rather funny when I got to Liz and saw the Armadillo sitting on the back seat!


I am now preparing my sermon for Sunday which will be a very important and special service for the Desert Flower women’s project.  I will be preaching on Isaiah 35.

Our EAB website is temporarily off line owing to a technical matter which we are trying to sort out as soon as possible.

The Sunday services went well with a full church as usual. PTL! Today I have done so much that I hardly know how to relate it all but there was lots of work linked to the Action Child Programme. I also have done a lot of work with the Drug Free Project. The team is really fired up after the weekend’s training sessions. 


Last night I miraculously managed to watch a film – Dunkirk. I really enjoyed it. I watched it thanks to my granddaughter Louisa who managed to download it some how or other in English for me and put it on a pendrive.


Please pray for the special service this coming Sunday with some of the women in church from the Desert Flower Project. They will be selling their handicraft after church and will have to come to the service to do so.

Sunday was blessed with a lovely communion service as always here on the first Sunday of the month. I preached on John 9/10 in my 33rd sermon in the John’s Gospel series. After the service I had quite a difficult incident with a deaf couple who wanted me to do a sort of façade wedding cerimony so that they can live together without actually being legally married! They want this because the man is on government benefit for his deafness which he fears losing if he gets married. I declined to get involved other than to help them check with a lawyer regarding if in fact he would lose his benefit. Both families were there to pressurise me! The things we get involved in!


On Monday we travelled to João Pessoa for Liz to see her eye specialist where she got top marks for her sight after the cataract surgery. On the Tuesday Liz had a check up with another doctor. We headed back to Patos yesterday morning.


On the way back Tarcísio phoned from Green Pastures to say the local authorities had illegally set fire to the rubbish dump not far from Green Pastures. I got Lynn’s husband Hutan to go and photograph and film it so as to be able to register a formal complaint with proof of what occured. 


When I got back to Patos I posted a film on Facebook and made a formal complaint. I have since received profuse apologies from the Mayor and Secretary for the Environment as they knew they were in trouble as what they did is totally illegal. They promised me never to do it again and promised to make efforts too for rubbish not to be allowed to come with the wind to Green Pastures. I decided to give the authorities one more chance or else I will take legal action.


Tonight is the Bible study and tomorrow and Saturday are training sessions for our anti-drugs teams. Please pray. It was lovely to see last night how a young married couple have got back together as a result of the “Drug-Free” project and the help the husband battling with getting free from drugs received.


It was also great to see out young pastor in Teixeira lead a neighbour to the church to the Lord yesterday. PTL!

The above title is the title of my sermon tomorrow in the Patos church based on John 10. I finished preparing the message this morning. I will endeavour to present the context from John 9 (the healing of the man born blind) and the ensuing flack from the Pharisees as usual, which takes us into Jesus’s words in John 10. There Jesus declares that “the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber (the Pharisees?). The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep (Jesus)… I am the gate for the sheep… I am the good shepherd”. It is a great passage of Scripture and I am ready to roll and preach it!


Yesterday at Green Pastures I saw how the revamping of toilets (normal + special access) are progressing well.


It is good to see a new church plant at Jurema village in Tavares County getting started. There is no Gospel witness in this place and the challenge is great.


I have been preparing for the new anti-drug project training which will happen from next Thursday to Saturday. Then following that on the Sunday I’ll be dedicating baby Daniel. This Sunday is the monthly communion service. Then on the Sunday two weeks from now (18th) will be the Desert Flower Project special service when some of the rough diamonds from the project will be present to sell their hand made produce after the service.It will be wonderful to thus get these women into church and I will be preparing a special appropriate Gospel message for that night. Please pray.


Rainfall is now up to 19.3 inches at Green Pastures this year. PTL! Please keep praying.

I have been flat out this week organizing the drug free project training sessions for next week from the 8th to 10th of March. So far we have enrolled:


23 for the training in João Pessoa on the Thursday.


14 for the training in Patos on the Friday.


15 for the training in Patos on the Saturday.


Your prayers are greatly valued for this tremendously needy field of action for the church of Jesus Christ.

With the good rains thus far the imminent water supply collapse in February was averted at the last minute and we now have enough reserves to last to the end of August. PTL! Of course we obviously need a lot more as in the second half of the year it doesn’t rain like you don’t get snow in England in the summer. However we have water now and pray for lots more in March, April and May.


The 4 Patos reservoirs are now as follows:


Jatobá – the one you can see from the road in south Patos – now has 10.2% of its capacity.


Farinha – not far from Jatobá but a bit to the east – has 7.24%.


Capoeira – south west of Patos – has 8.2%.


Coremas – from where the pipeline comes and which even the BBC reported on back in 2002 – has reached 6.83%.


Thank you for your prayers. Please don’t stop praying. We pray that we will see all 4 reservoirs overflowing by June!

My sister Jean is doing a sugar fast to raise money for the EAB Desert Flower Project. Please have a look, support if you can with any amount and spread the word to friends.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/jean-north

The youth led an afternoon of door-to-door evangelism today in Patos’s borough of Jatobá, having been very well trained for it. Then Liz and I joined them for a street meeting outside our school there this evening and it was excellent. A short play was performed, plus song and dance to praise the Lord and then Philip preached the Gospel. How lovely it was to see a young man at the street service who had committed his life to Christ during the door-to-door evangelism earlier. He says he’ll be in church tomorrow. PTL! Please pray for him and this new effort to plant a church in Jatobá borough.

Tonight sees yet another start at planting a church in the Jatobá borough of Patos which I have been trying for about 20 years! It’s in south Patos, as opposed to north Patos where the church is, and it’s where we have our EAB Pastor Frank Dyer School. Hence we have a building… we have one young man converted in the borough over the years… and now the youth have taken up the gauntlet to do door-to-door evangelism and hold evangelistic services there. Please pray for continued persistance, blessing and many commitments to Christ this year!

Tonight we have received the blessing of another just over half an inch of rain at Green Pastures, taking us up to the total of 14.3 inches in 2018 with 40 inches being our final goal by the end of the rainy season in May/June. We have to fill up lakes and reservoirs and plant now as the second half of the year is always drought. 


I’ve worked a lot on the ‘Drug Free’ Project today and on the 4 Legs Goat Project with 4 more EAB goats going to Belém Community in Tavares County and to Macambira Community in Princesa Isabel County. I have also has other discussions with pastors and leaders.


I had meetings with the Desert Flower Project leader also. The project at the moment is being a real blessing to 22 desperately needy mums and their kids. Some are starting to ask for prayer for their lives and two actually asked prayer for “deliverance” last week! God is working in their sin torn sad lives. Please continue to pray and support.

Our tour of European churches, family, friends and supporters is now set up and here are the details in case you haven’t already seen them:

Sunday’s service in Patos was very good and there were 4 decisions for Christ at the end. PTL! When we say decisions we of course do not mean conversions as only time will tell that. They were people who raised their hands at the end of the service asking prayer in commitment to the Lord. Please pray for them.


More rain has fallen at Green Pastures this week bringing the current total for January and February to 13.6 inches. The lake is about one third full. PTL! 40 inches is our need and target. 


Now that the Carnival Camp is over we will be revamping some toilets and showers at Green Pastures including the necessary construction of one toilet for wheelchair users which we do not have and definitely need. 


The church at Princesa Isabel is EAB’s oldest church (1943) and is to be expanded. EAB will be helping towards this project too.


I am now preparing my sermon for Sunday on part of John 9. I have also had a lot of discussions and meetings with some of our church and project leaders today. 

The Carnival Camp was a real blessing with 250 present. The theme this year for the messages was: EAB/ACEV 80 years – our commitment to integral mission carries on. “Here I am, send me”! (Isaiah 6:8)


The opening message on the Saturday night was brought by Pastor Wostenes (Campina Grande) on”what integral mission is and what it is not”. On the Sunday morning his wife Gleydice spoke on the place of art and culture in the integral mission of the church. On the Sunday night Pastor Gersé (Princesa Isabel) spoke about integral mission in rural areas drilling wells etc. On Monday morning Pastor Lindon Carlos (Imaculada) laid out the Biblical Basis for Integral Mission and at night I spoke about how environmental care is part of the integral mission of the church. On Tuesday morning our Social Worker Marah Danielle (Patos) spoke about the place of the woman in the integral mission of the church and the closing service that evening heard Pastor Rafael (Teixeira) speaking about church planting and evangelism as part of integral mission. 


As well as this Bible teaching there was much great praise and worship plus leisure times, walks, sport etc. There was a parallel programme for the children which also went well.


Thanks to one and all for your support and prayers.

I have just filmed this on this Monday morning after 4 inches of rain fell last night. This now takes us up to 9 inches this year. PTL! Thank you for praying. Our aim and need is 40 inches. Let it rain!

On Friday night it rained two and a half inches at Green Pastures so this is wonderful. The best rain of the year so far! We have now nearly reached the five inch mark this year. PTL! We value your prayers for the Camp which runs until Wednesday.

This morning I had a meeting with the Federal Job Agency in Patos with a view to setting up a partnership with our Projects and Care Centre. I had a very profitable discussion with the director explaining our wide-ranging scope of projects and how one way to help people out of the poverty rut was to get them a job. This is especially difficult when someone has a drugs track record as does one man in our church, now off Crack for 20 months. PTL! We agreed a partnership in which we will send them CVs of folk from our projects needing work and I am thrilled to say that the man I mentioned got a job interview this afternoon already! PTL!


Last night’s “drug-free” project meeting was excellent. The meetings are for for people who have stopped using drugs and are fighting to stay off them, or the same for excessive alcoholism. The meetings are also to support the families of people affected by a family member on drugs or alcoholism. Last night we had people pouring their hearts out with all the stress of seeing family members under the grips of drugs or drink. It was wonderful to be able to really minister into these families. 


Liz and I continue flat out for the Carnival Camp which starts this Saturday. We expecting about 200 there and count on your prayers as we look to God for rich blessing.


The rain situation continues precarious. No rain this month yet at Green Pastures.

This is almost live film. Tarcísio’s son filmed the three quarters of an inch which has just fallen at Green Pastures. I’m sorry it’s a bit erratic! He got rather excited!

The rains are getting going here somewhat. PTL! At Itaporanga today they have received 5 inches in one bang and there has been flash flooding! Caroá has also received a total of 7 inches so far and at Green Pastures we’ve had an inch and a half. We rejoice at this, pray that these rains will go on and on, and be evenly distributed.


I have been doing stacks of work linked to EAB/ACEV projects today.

My Flickr Nature photos album has now passed the 400,000 viewings spot. If you’re interested please see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmedcraft/


My blog, which started in 2004 when many asked me what a blog was, has now passed the 212,000 visits spot. We plod on!

It was a lovely journey to Manaíra this Saturday to preach at the final big Gospel rally in the open-air as the last public service of this year’s 10-day special Outreach. This Sunday morning the 100 strong team broke bread together in a service of thanksgiving prior to everyone heading home. 


The service was great yesterday and the sermon went down really well. The crowd present was enormous. It was lovely to chat to all the team and the leaders and get a full feel of how well the Outreach had gone and which yielded a total of 25 decisions for Christ. PTL!


The only difficult part of these Saturday night services are the long journies (about 3 hours each way) plus meetings and service etc. It meant we got to bed at 1am and we never manage to sleep in the next morning so it is tiring but well worthwhile.

This year the Outreach is being held at Manaíra and as usual I go with Liz to preach the final outdoor Gospel service message. I spent yesterday preparing for this. There have been a number of decisions for Christ during the event. PTL!


It makes for a long tiring night as we need to be back in Patos for services tomorrow and we value your prayers.


We had 9 mm of rain at Green Pastures on Thursday night and the weather forecast is good for some more rain tonight. We sure need massive abundant rain over the next months as the situation is desperate here.


We continue going flat out preparing for the Carnival Camp now just 3 weeks away. The dormitory being expanded and upgraded should be finished next week I hope. Then the car park needs to be finished off. We should just about make it with all being done prior to the Camp. All the cleaning and preparing of all the dormitories and buildings now starts. The painters are doing overtime today. We also have snake and frog researchers on site all weekend too. 


I went to the dentist’s (and survived!) this week and to my dermitologist to sort out routine skin problems which crop up as a result of the heat and my walking a lot in the bush. I also have has Action Child Project meetings and done a lot of EAB administrative work. I have also done some counselling. 

Despite January being the big holiday month here we had a good crowd in church on Sunday with a dear sister, who was born in Patos but now lives in the south, who is an excellent poet. She recited three beautiful poems in the service which were a great blessing. I then preached on John 8:1-11 and this went well. PTL! We saw that some important first-time visitors to church were greatly impacted by the Gospel! Please pray for them.


We are working flat out getting ready for the Carnival Camp. We are desperate for rain at the same time! Please pray!

Our Desert Flower (euphamism for women targeted by the project in our semi-arid region) Project goes into its 4th year in one of the hardest and poorest and most dangerous parts of Patos. The area is dominated by drug abuse and the women attended by the project all have partners involved. The project at present attends 22 women and their children. Their problems are varied as they face domestic violence, health problems, low self-esteem and spiritual involvement with the realms of darkness.


The Desert Flower Project is teaching these women handicraft skills so as to give them the capacity to have an income through its sale as an alternative to drugs. The group now approaches the stage where the marketing of their handicraft will start to happen from 2018 onwards.


Parallel to this core aspect of income generation are: 1) A psychologist working on their self esteem etc. 2) Advocacy work by our project coordinator who is Marah Danielle (an experienced socialworker) teaching them about their rights as women etc. 3) Health with voluntary nurses from our church, teaching and giving them health guidance etc. 4) The children are given basic education + Bible lessons by church volunteers. 5) Evangelism in every session for the women.


Every session of the project everyone gets a meal. Many arrive not having ate that day. We bring them in to the Care Centre / Projects Centre paying for their bus tickets and to get them home again. We fund the materials used in the handicraft lessons.


This project has always been funded by EAB + Tearfund but the challenge now is for ACEV and EAB to stand alone and fund the project as Tearfund is apparently stopping support for it for reasons known only to them. We as a church feel we can’t abandon ship with such a desperately needy community and so yesterday Liz, me and the project leader and social worker from our church, Marah Danielle, had a long meeting planning and praying for this year. We have another meeting of the full team tomorrow. So please pray and support this project. We believe in the God of miracles who will help us carry on and see people converted and transformed in the name of Jesus!

Our dear brother and long time EAB supporter Don Skivington will be layed to rest at Blackfield Cemetery on Thursday, 18th January at 1pm. This will be followed by a Celebration of Life Service at the Lighthouse Community Church at 2pm, with refreshments afterwards. We trust that EAB will be well represented. Special prayer was offered for the family in the EAB/ACEV Patos church this Sunday.