Autor: eabrazil

I want to thank everyone for their prayers and say that I am improving in health. My secondary infection is much better and I am now resting as much as possible recovering from the Zica virus. I have
done a further blood test today to monitor progress, will be seen by my
doctor later, and continue to value prayers. I certainly feel I have turned the corner and it is a matter of slowly building up strength again whilst resting as much as possible.


Liz tells me that the service in Patos last night went very well and the Lord really blessed. Philip does a great job leading in my absence. Please pray for him too.

Blood tests today confirm that I have the Zica Virus and secondarily infected legs. Please pray for my speedy recovery and for Philip as he leads the Patos church in the meantime.

My virus drags on and I will be having blood tests done in the morning. Please pray. I feel lifeless and far from right.


The rain crisis also drags on. We just get the odd shower from time to time which is useless for filling reservoirs. Some towns are without water completely (Itaporanga, Princesa Isabel etc.) causing great hardship and the men are moving away to find work in the south. We desperately need big prolongued heavy rains this month and next. Please pray.


Politically and economically Brazil is in a very bad state too. The country is very tense. Please pray.

I value your prayers as I have had a nasty virus since Thursday afternoon. There is an abolute epidemic of virus in our part of the world at the moment with Dengue, Zica etc. 


Philip will be leading the service in Patos tonight.

Please read this superb report on the EAB/ACEV Planting Project. A very good read full of important imformation: http://tilz.tearfund.org/en/resources/publications/footsteps/footsteps_91-100/footsteps_99/planting_for_the_future_in_brazil/

EAB’s latest magazine – InTouch, edition 85, dated March 2016, will be posted to everyone on our mailing list this week. It is already available online on the EAB website at http://www.eabrazil.com/wp-content/uploads/intouch85-web.pdf

Everything is green with the measure of rain we’ve had this year, but the reservoirs are in an increasingly desperate situation. In the State of Paraíba there are 124 public reservoirs of which 23 are bone dry, 57 have less than 5% of their capacity still with water and 36 have less than 20%. If we don’t get an abundance of rain in March and April then we will be in unbelievable trouble. Please pray!

I travelled down to São Paulo on Tuesday for a meeting ot the Brazilian Evangelical Alliance. A 6-hour drive to the airport followed by a 3-hour flight to Campinas, São Paulo. Two days later it was the same again the other way round.


The meetings were very good however and I felt the trip was well worthwhile. It is important for us to be part of and support endeavours to unite the genuine Biblical orthodox evangelical church in Brazil, work together to influence with Christian ethics the government, and have a united voice in the name of all of us who make up the Evangelical Alliance.


Sacha led the Bible study on Thursday night in Patos and Pastor Sílvio from our Portelo church came and gave an excellent Bible study. Pastor Angelo will be coming tomorrow from Soledade to preach in Patos and I will lead the service.


We had half an inch of rain at Green Pastures whilst I was in São Paulo – so the rains continue to follow the pattern of dribs and drabs and so we hope and pray for a couple of really big rains to fill up lakes and reservoirs.

The new EAB InTouch magazine – edition 85 – is ready for the printers thanks to the work of Marian Rashleigh (EAB Board), Dave Flowers (our design man) and me putting in some overtime in overdrive! It will be great to get a new edition out and as soon as possible I will put the online version on the EAB website. Everyone should get their hard copies in the post early in March.


With the new system us ‘3 musketeers’ have worked out I think we can now go back to thinking of two editions a year as in the old days. PTL! Whilst we are hot with our online news via this blog, email nutshell & dairy updates, website and facebook it still is important to have a paper magazine once in a while to back communications up which covers non-internet people, as do the monthly postal updates.

Last Thursday’s Bible study went well with Sacha leading the P&W. Last night’s Sunday service went great too with a packed church and Sacha also leading the P&W. She’ll be leading the whole service this Thursday as I will be going to São Paulo tomorrow and only getting back on Thursday night. Pastor Sílvio from our Portelo church will be coming to give the Bible study.


I leave at 10am tomorrow for Recife airport which is a 6 hour drive. I could have got a flight to the Campinas, São Paulo airport from João Pessoa which would only have taken me 4 hours to get to by road, but the flight was 50% more expensive which is ridiculous. My 3 hour flight is due to arrive about 9pm and from the airport I will head for my usual Ibis hotel to sleep. Early on Wednesday I will head to the venue where there will be a gathering of the Brazilian Evangelical Alliance with denominational leaders from the 4 corners of the country. The meetings will go on right through the day. I am looking forward to representing EAB/ACEV at the event to which I was very warmly invited and to meet some pastors I haven’t seen in decades. I should be back in Patos on Thursday night.


Philip is steadily recovering from his appendicitis operation last Wednesday. They removed his appendix in the nick of time as it burst immediately it was removed. These details we get to know in Brazil! Also the fact that the surgeon and team are all Philip’s friends helps!


I am doing a lot of work in preparation for the annual EAB/ACEV Field Conference in May. This is the most important meeting of the year for all our leaders so please pray for all the work that goes in to the build up to it. We will have an ACEV Board meeting in April a month ahead of the Conference. At the Conference the new Board will be elected for the coming 4 years from 2016-2020. Time flies!

Philip is about to be operated on for acute appendicitis. He became ill during the night. We value your prayers.

Thursday night’s service was good with many testimonies from people blessed at the Camp. This was very encouraging.


Yesterday we received the visit of Pastor Wostenes and his wife Gleydice in Patos. Wostenes is the vice-chairman of ACEV and the couple have meetings with Liz and I from time to time to discuss details concerning the work. It was a very good day with lots of short and medium term decisions taken. We had a working lunch in the middle at a restaurant which was hopeless, but we survived! As they went to return to Campina Grande their car would not start so they took ours whilst we get theirs fixed hopefully tomorrow. It’s probably the fuel pump which has broken.


I have managed to prepare my sermon for tonight amidst everything else and am ready to roll. I will also be dedicating a baby tonight.

I have just got back to Patos after a great 4th day of Camp yesterday – the best day of them all this time round. Pastor Max of the Independent Presbyterian Church preached on prayer in the morning and it was for me the sermon of the Camp! Superb! I preached at night on evangelism and we ended up round the Lord’s Table together about 9.30pm last night. 


The kids insisted that they had a little bomfire after the final service as we always used to. We let them have a mini-bonfire led by grandson Lucas! It was very touching to see the kids give their testimonies round the bomfire.


This Camp has not been entirely easy because of one or two internal problems within in the team. It caused Liz and I a lot of stress and heartache but we managed to keep this secret from nearly all at the Camp so as not to hinder God’s blessings on people’s lives. Gratefully many came to us telling them how their lives had been touched during the event so PTL!


We are now very tired and have photos to sort out and lots of emails to answer. I managed to post something here on the blog during the Camp and on facebook. Unfortunately I still haven’t managed to get an Internet signal working at Green Pastures but I am slowly eliminating possible options and hope I will soon have this fixed. To be able to post during the Camp I had to drive back to the outskirts of Patos to get a signal. Now I will, however, work on the Camp photos taken on my Nikon camera and put together an album or albums with better and more photos. All the photos posted on facebook thus far were taken on my mobile phone.


Thanks very much to those who prayed for this Camp. We sure needed it. It was a spiritual battle from well before it started and became increasingly so whilst there. However we feel God gave the victory and touched many lives powerfully. Liz and I just have a few “gunshot” wounds to take care of as a result of the battles!

The kitchen team has been in place and working since Friday afternoon and they are now preparing lunch for early arrivals. I will be moving out to Green Pastures in the next hour. We look to God for mighty blessing throughout the Camp and value your prayers. The opening service is this Saturday night.

Carnival Camp, so called because we have been running it every year since 1979 throughout the Brazilian Carnival period from Saturday to Ash Wednesday, when people rush to the mass to get an ash charcoal cross put on their forehead to represent forgiveness for all the drugs, booze and promiscuity practiced over the previous 4 days. It just doesn’t fit with Christian principles so we get our youth out of it and make great healthy use of the days at Green Pastures which is a luscious green this year a result of the rain we’ve had.


This years theme is developing a Christian character. I will be preaching in the opening and closing services with other leaders speaking at the 5 others in between. I had said yesterday that my sermons were ready, but I didn’t feel right with the second one and have worked more on it today and now feel good. It’s now a bit longer and clearer I believe. 


I feel 90% better as I was a bit queezy yesterday. I had a good walk at Green Pastures this morning and helped with a few final touches for the Camp. Liz has been there again this afternoon. Now the band is back out there practicing. They are a dedicated bunch. PTL!


Please pray for us over the coming days from Saturday (Feb. 6th) to Wednesday (Feb. 10th). I will get what information I can to you via this blog and/or facebook depending on what internet signal I can get at Green Pastures.

I spent most of Tuesday morning at the Patos General Hospital helping my friend and Baptist pastor Fred. First of all the problem was to find him as I went where he ought to have been according to my information received. But he wasn’t there! Fortunately being well known and a pastor I have a free run of the hospital at any time, and nurses and a doctor soon came to my aid to track down my friend who I eventually found still on a stretcher in the admittance section of emergency care where he had spent the night. He looked pretty pale and quite ghastly but thankfully he started brightening up as I chatted and supported him. Fortunately he had not got an exposed leg fracture as thought, but an exposed dislocated knee and quite a few other gashes needing stitches on his legs. Eventually he was put in a plaster, given a whole load of injections (one of which I was asked to help with!) and so I brought him home to rest for a few hours prior to a vehicle, which came from Conceição where he lives, arrived to take him home. He is going to sell his motorbike which could have cost him his life together with his wife and daughter who were all on it!


After this I started work on preparing my sermon for the opening night of the Camp on Saturday. I start and finish the Camp with sermons and I have now finished the opening sermon and now started on the closing one. I have also had a lot on with a number of church issues.


Liz went to Green Pastures with more supplies today. She never stops either. We had a good rain in Patos last night but none at Green Pastures unfortunately.

I took part in a good EAB Board meeting this morning at 7am via Skype. We discussed in some depth some important matters and there was a good participation from everyone. The meeting was positive, productive and helpful. I can now see a way ahead on some important Mission issues now.


The service in which a couple are going to get engaged has been delayed by an hour so I am getting on with other things in the meantime, like working further on tomorrow night’s sermon.

Just in from a good Bible study night with 50 present, which isn’t bad is it for mid-week? PTL! We went through Matthew 15:10-20 as we press on, in chronological order, through the Gospels. Really good!


Off to Green Pastures early in the morning as lots to prepare for the Carnival Camp just 10 days away. Please pray!

EAB Board meeting on Saturday morning and I have a young couple’s engagement service at night.

The good is that our service on Sunday night was really good despite numbers being down owing to the rain. We have now had about 10 and one third inches but none yesterday and no signs today, so perhaps we will have a break from the rain for a bit.


I took lots of lovely green photos at Green Pastures yesterday morning. We are busy preparing for the Carnival Camp which starts a week on Saturday (Feb. 6th).


A very complex incident happened in the Patos 1st Baptist Church at the funeral of a mother I guess in her 40s who had a stroke. She was a Catholic but her husband an evangelical. He decided to hold the wake and the funeral service in his church and all was well until the funeral service when her priest requested to do some sort of committal proceeding during the service and was turned down by the pastor. Catholics on social media exagerated the incident and started spreading that the priest had been kicked out of the Baptist church and lots of very un-Christian comments were made about the pastor and evangelical Christians in general. The whole incident and subsequent comments on social media created an extremely volatile and unpleasant climate in Patos so we pray that things will calm down now that the priest is said to have said in a mass that the story of him being kicked out is not true.


I am now preparing for this week’s Bible Study, a little service for a couple getting engaged on Saturday, and my Sunday sermon too.

Now you can see the TV report on Green Pastures in an edited report cutting out all the other news and adverts which was broadcast with the original report. Now it’s much simpler to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-Ur52uOcwQ&feature=youtu.be

Well I’ll go to sea in a rowing boat! The bride actually turned up 5 minutes early last night! Can you believe it! Amazing! Hence we kicked off bang on time and all went off beautifully. First came up the nicely decorated aisle 6 couples as witnesses, followed by the groom with his Mum and then the bride with her Dad accompanied by little bridesmaids and pageboys.


My part – the ceremony itself – was timed at 43 minutes 20 seconds from the first words: “We are gathered here today…” to the final blessing! This is my average time. Hence having started at 8pm sharp we were leaving the church a for the reception at 9.30pm. I finally got to bed half an hour after midnight!

Tonight is going to be a late one as I am to conduct a wedding at 8pm, but what time will the bride actually turn up? She says she’ll be on time but so do they all! I am not long-winded with my wedding cermonies, but I can’t see us getting away from the church before 10pm allowing for bride’s delay, about an hour’s ceremony and then photos afterwards. Then we still have to go to the reception for a meal. Help!


My sermon is ready for tomorrow night on Acts 14 and the second part of Paul’s 1st Missionary journey focusing on courage in preaching the Gospel, giving all glory to God and establishing local leadership. If you read Acts 14 you will see why these points will be stressed (I hope!). 


QPR drew this afternoon 1 x 1. I forecast we would win 2 x 1 so wasn’t far off. I forecast the scorer correctly. This season I am in 6th place in the prediction league. They changed the rules this time round and you get most points if you guess exactly the correct score which is a bit crazy and like doing the lottery!


The rainy season continues well here and hopefully we will get more rain at Green Pastures tonight. We are just half a millimetre short of a total of 200mm this rainy season. May it long continue!

Thanks to one and all for a whole load of Christmas cards which have now arrived! Thank you to:


Joyce & Alec (Verwood), Neil & Naomi (West Wellow), Liz’s Aunt Rosemary (Verwood), Dewi (South Wales), Gill (West Wellow), Deryk Scard (Poole), My cousin Faith (Ledbury), Ada & Willem (Danbury), Ledbury Baptist Church, my sister Jean (Basingstoke), Sam & Gerti (Switzerland) and a couple of others whose signatures we can’t decifer.

Late yesterday afternoon I was here in my office preparing for the evening service when I heard lots of police and ambulance sirens. Sadly this if often what I hear on Sundays owing to drivers worse for a day of drinking. I do not know if this was the cause of yesterday’s tragedy but it usually is. A fine rain was also falling which complicates things as drivers aren’t used to rain here.


When I got to church a policeman from our church phoned Liz to ask for prayer as he was on duty and at the horrific scene of the accident involving 2 cars on the road which goes in the direction of Green Pastures. Of the 8 people in the vehicles 7 were killed including 2 children. 1 young man (not a driver) will survive. One family was from Sousa and the other from Natal. So very sad.


I drove past the location of the accident this morning on the way to Green Pastures. The vehicles have been removed but there is still a lot of debris and mess there.

Oh boy! It’s all happening! We got back from João Pessoa yesterday evening and Alice went down ill vomitting. The poor kid is really knocked out and missed her sister Bia’s birthday as a consequence.


We had a little lunch for Bia’s 6th birthday for her friends and when her Dad came from work he complained of pain when chewing. He has already been diagnosed with Mumps this afternoon! Then her Mum Sacha went down with a virus so only the birthday girl out of 4 is well. It never rains but it pours! 


This messed up our planned leaving for the Ceará Outreach straight after lunch and now Liz is staying to look after the sick whilst a man is going to travel with me leaving Patos at 4am tomorrow. I hopefully will only arrive a bit later than originally planned and should be able to do all my visits prior to preaching at night in the Outreach. Your prayers are valued for the sick and for my journey.

Liz and I are in João Pessoa with Sacha and her daughters. I had my medical check up and all was well. PTL! The ladies have got a bit of beach in and I have done some walking and had a good meeting with a chief environmental government man. We also saw Liz’s niece Natasha who is in Brazil at the moment. We hadn’t seen her since 2008.


Tomorrow we head back to Patos and on Friday we go to Ceará to minister at the Outreach. The Outreach is going well and two have come to Christ thus far. PTL!

God has blessed us this weekend. The Patos church band led by Philip and with Sacha, Louisa and Sacha’s husband Biba in it – travelled to Ceará and back safely and the service went off great despite it having to be held indoors owing to the rain!


Tonight’s service went well too and the sermon on Paul’s 1st Missionary journey part 1 flowed beautifully.


At Green Pastures this week we’ve had 24.5mm of rain (an inch) so that is good – though we still need so much more – but we have started and things are green again for Carnival Camp less than 4 weeks away.


This week I’ll be going for a routine check-up at the doctor’s in João Pessoa and after that I’ll be going to preach at the Outreach in Ceará State.

It is raining hard right now at 11pm. PTL! This is in Patos. We will know about Green Pastures in the morning.


Had a good Bible study tonight. 40 there. We had a bit of a problem to solve after the meeting. Such is the life of a pastor!


Last night we had 9mm of rain (1/3rd of an inch) at Green Pastures. Things are starting to improve a bit.

We had 32 mm of rain last night at Green Pastures. PTL! This takes us up to a total of 57 mm this month after months without a drop.