Autor: eabrazil

We got back to Patos this afternoon all safe and sound. Tired but happy. Thankful to God for all His goodness. Some of the family were around to greet us!

On Saturday we had a lovely time at Liz’s nephew’s house in Calne, Wilts together with his family (Andrew, Holly, Poppy and Jacob) and his father David and his wife Tania. It is a very beautiful area that they live in. Andrew has a fascinating hobby of keeping a massive salt water aquarium which is absolutely beautiful.

Yesterday was our final Sunday of the tour and the service at Cefn Cribwr in Wales was great. Lovely praise and worship, the presentation went great and the warm welcome was lovely. This was followed by a beautiful lunch with Gail, Esther and David from the church who visited us in Brazil a couple of years back. 

Following this we headed for the Lawrence Weston Community Church in Bristol where the Lord blessed too. However the fog came down on the way and we almost arrived late. Then after the service the fog was even worse as we headed back to Basingstoke… but we made it.


Now today is a very very busy day prior to leaving for the airport at 4.15am tomorrow. Please pray that neither the fog or the NATO exercises over Portugal will hamper our flights. I have already returned our hired car which was a great car. I am now catching up with my communications, then going to see Mum for the last time, then meeting up with Mike Hollow (ex-Tearfund) and then meeting up with Ben & Miriam and David and Linda plus a lot more prior to hitting the hay by 9pm or there will be no point in going to bed as we will have to be up at 3am.


So thanks to the Lord and to everyone who contributed to this being the best tour of churches ever as far as we’re concerned. PTL!

I visited my dear Mother this morning again and she was in a very good mode with smiles, chat and singing! It was a lovely session with one to go on Monday prior to our return to Brazil. God is good.

Liz has packed our second case and we took it to Boots to weigh it and all is well and within limits. We bumped in to Phillip Dyer whilst in the shopping mall so that was nice.


I posted some photo’s of Jon & Eunice’s Christmas Cactus today on facebook and people are telling me they have this cactus in Patos! I now discover that its origins are south-east Brazil! There are a number of varieties of species of this cactus.

The Christmas cactus is well in keeping with the family meal Jean has organized for this evening which is a Christmas dinner!

Today we drove to Woking, on the way to Basingstoke from London, and spent a lovely time with the ex-chairman of the EAB Board Bob Dalton and his wife Jo. That is 2 ex-chairmans we’ve met in 5 days as on Sunday we shared fellowship with Ken White and his wife Pat at Danbury. We had a lovely chat about the work of EAB with Bob & Jo and they took us out for a wonderful lunch. We even managed this selfie! 

Once we arrived in Basingstoke we headed to see my Mum who was in a somewhat sleepy mode, but we managed a bit of conversation. I asked her if she remembered Bob Dalton and she replied straight away: “Of course”!


We had stayed longer in London than planned owing to my niece’s little girl’s funeral in north London which was yesterday afternoon. Our church in Patos has been praying for little Tilly and family over the past 3 years so it was significant how we were here in England at this sad moment. We continue to pray for the family.


This evening Ken & Marian Rashleigh have called in for a chat and kindly given us a suitcase to help our return to Brazil on Tuesday for which we are very grateful.

Yesterday we had a lovely day at the Danbury Mission in Essex. It was a really blessed day with services morning and evening and a church family lunch all together in between plus some nice fellowship with a fellow bird enthusiast and member of the DM Missionary Committee John Thompson. The church was knocked down and rebuilt since we were there last and it’s beautiful, seating 380 normally (was nearly full yesterday) and expandable for 500.

It was lovely to see EAB ex-chairman of the Board Ken White there and his wife Pat, sister Margaret, daughter Sarah & her family in the morning. In the evening ex-EAB Board member Peter White was there together with his wife Corrine.

We got back to London about an hour and a half ago after spending some lovely days in Rutland with Marian Rashleigh. The highlight for Liz was going to Sandringham yesterday where she had the joy of sitting in the exact seat that the Queen always sits in there in the church on the 8,000 hectares estate. Liz really loved it.

We also had great times in the beautiful little villages of the area, travelling on a Steam Train from Wansford to Peterborough and visiting the Snettisham Nature Reserve in the Wash. It was all wonderful!


Now we are down to polishing up our preparations for our penultimate Sunday in the UK on this visit at Danbury Mission in Essex (CM3 4QL) with services at 10am & 6.30pm. 


Sadly on the following Wednesday we will be going to the funeral of my niece Abigail and her husband Chris’s little 3 year old child Tilly at Cockfosters in north London. Please pray for this family who have been through an awful lot and now need your prayers even more so. Owing to this funeral we have cancelled the meeting at the Basingstoke Anglican Christ Church.


News from Brazil is good from the churches, but bad concerning the heat and the drought which are increasingly worse. We value your prayers for this and us returning to the intense November heat and drought on November 3rd.

We’re having a nice few days break in the tiny rural County of Rutland in the east midlands of England together with Marian Rashleigh. Today we walked 9 km round the Rutland Water Nature Reserve and saw some lovely villages too.

Philip led the service again this Sunday in Patos and the band played for the special singer and speaker from Rio de Janeiro. We are receiving rave reports of a fantastic service with tremendous blessing from God on all present. 

Liz and I are having a few days break this week walking in the County of Rutland with Marian Rashleigh. We are staying in a beautiful wooden lodge or chalet. This coming Sunday we will be ministering at Danbury Mission in Essex all day.

Today saw us in Verwood (am) and Winterslow (pm) in good services with lunch in between (with Liz’s Aunt Rosemary, brother David and his wife Tania) + tea (with Nat & Heidi Parsons and family). Photos below: 

The Lord really blessed this weekend with a lovely 77th EAB Celebration on the Saturday with a good crowd gathered in a wonderful spirit. See photos below:

We had a good time at the Dibden Methodist church on Wednesday. Then Thursday we went to London and had a great time covering the theatre, a meal out, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Picadilly Circus, The Thames and London Eye. It was lovely.

Today we have been working on our presentations for EAB’s 77th Celebration tomorrow and those for Verwood on Sunday morning and Winterslow on Sunday evening. All are completely different. On Monday we head for a 5-day break in the County of Rutland.

With great joy today, and much gratitude to God, we have celebrated my dear Mum’s 91st birthday. We had a little cake and candles and my sisters joined Liz and I in a lovely time with Mum. Mum was full of zest today, wide awake, smiling and talkative. It was wonderful. PTL!

From left to right: James, Luke, José and Steve Valentine, me, Liz, Angela, Mark and Emma Chafe

Our 7th Sunday in the UK was blessed and full (to put it mildly!). We left Basingstoke at 8.50am and headed for the Millbrook Christian Centre where we ministered in the 10am service.

We then headed for Hythe where we had a lovely family meal with Liz’s cousins Jose and Angela and families.

From Hythe we headed for West Wellow where we had tea at Gillian Parsons’ house prior to ministering at the West Wellow Canada Road Gospel Hall. As well as the folk from West Wellow others were present from Alderholt and some ex-MCC members. It was quite a gathering of the clans! We followed this service with more food at Neil and Naomi Parsons and then finally headed for Basingstoke praising God for a good full day!

I have already dispatched the latest EAB Diary Update this morning.


I am very pleased that Philip has been able to arrange a real bonus for the Patos church whilst we’re away and a week this Sunday (18th) he’s been able to agree a visit with a lovely Christian singer and speaker Carlinhos Felix. It’s a real scoop for Philip, bless his heart. The thing is that in Brazil’s evangelical mayhem (not revival as so many who don’t understand the scene call it) evangelical music is such a disgusting money making racket so you have to know who is who and carefully chose genuine Christians! Carlinhos Felix is one of these rare specimens! Please pray for this visit and for the Youth Conference at Green Pastures this weekend prior to it.

Here’s the leadership team for the EAB Youth Conference to be held at Green Pastures this weekend including Brazil’s bank holiday on the Monday. Please pray for Philip, his wife Gylmara and all the other members of the team that God will mightily bless this event. We trust God for great things!

EAB’s 77th Annual Celebration will not only have a fellowship tea and fun auction at 5.30pm prior to the service at 7pm – but will also hold a table top sale of items (not including clothes) in aid of EAB. Everyone is invited to bring items along to help with this initiative. The Celebration will be on Saturday, October 17th at the Lighthouse Community Church at Hardley Green near Southampton, SO45 3NZ. Please be there!


Today we spoke at the Verwood coffee morning which was really lovely.

We went to spend time with my dear Mum today and were overjoyed with how things have changed since last Wednesday when she was very seriously unwell. She has turned it around and was full of the joys of spring today, laughing, singing, and even quoting Scripture! We thank the Lord for his goodness in giving Mum some more time with us. PTL!

Tomorrow morning we’ll be speaking at Verwood and on Sunday we’ll be at Millbrook in the morning and at West Wellow at night. We value your prayers for all our travels and ministry.

After a wonderful weekend in Larbert, Falkirk, Scotland we got the train back south today and enjoyed a lovely relaxing journey. It was a really blessed weekend and below is a photo of the Larbert Churches Together Celebration we took part in last night.

Now this Wednesday morning we’ll be speaking at the Verwood Chapel at 10:30am and on Sunday we’ll be speaking at the Millbrook Christian Centre in Southampton in the morning and at the West Wellow Chapel at night.


Tomorrow we’ll be heading for Basingstoke to see my Mum who hasn’t been so well. She’ll be 91 next Monday!


News from Brazil is good and the Lord continues to bless the Patos church in our absence. PTL! Please continue to pray for Philip responsible for the leadership in our absence and for his leadership of the annual Youth Conference this coming weekend.

Liz and I spoke at a Couples meeting last night at Larbert Pentecostal Church and it went very well. Today we have had a lovely day too speaking at the church in the morning and at a united churches meeting tonight in Larbert.

We made the most of the lovely weather here in NE England yesterday and went to different beaches/nature reserves. It’s great to see how folk here are working hard at recuperating the damage done by this area’s coal mining days and other industrialization side-effects. Great to see and photograph Seals in the River Tees which had completely disappeared. 


As we were travelling around yesterday afternoon we received word from Jean that Mum was most unwell all of a sudden and this concerned us a lot. Thankfully she has got over it (whatever it was?) and has eaten and drunk again today so PTL!


Tonight we head for Sunderland to speak at the Hylton Castle Church and then tomorrow it’s back on the train to Scotland for a weekend of ministry. I am working on my accent and trying on my kilt!


Below are photos with my cousin Philip of his church and ‘Ark’ we spoke at on Tuesday.

Today we’ve had a very good day of ministry. We had a lovely service this morning at Great Lumley Evangelical Church (below) where we travelled from Horden with my cousin Philip and his wife Debbie. After the service we took part in a church fellowship lunch.

This evening we were in Bishop Auckland at the Wear Valley Christian Centre where the service was wonderful. PTL!

We  travelled from Basingstoke to London on Thursday afternoon and yesterday we made the most of the nice weather to first of all go to Kew Botanical Gardens which was absolutely great. After spending hours there, and doing lots of walking, we headed for North Kensington/Notting Hill where I was brought up. We visited my first house (where I was brought up and lived in childhood and youth). Not much appeared to have changed.

From there we went on to see my first school and my first church – Peniel Chapel. Then to QPR’s stadium etc. It was all lovely.


Now we are all set to leave for the train station to go to Co. Durham for a week’s ministry prior to going on to Scotland the following weekend for ministry there too. Your prayers are valued.

My laptop is now up and running to full capacity. A man at Fleet kindly worked over the weekend to get it working again and replaced the hard disk successfully copying all the data from the old one. However when I received the computer back from him there were still a few lesser, but important, problems to fix which he couldn’t do because of him not speaking Portuguese etc. So yesterday I contacted my technician in Patos who corrected the rest of the problems by remote control from Patos. The mind boggles!


I dispached the EAB Diary Update yesterday. I have also posted news from the 15th anniversary of EAB/ACEV’s 2nd church in Campina Grande which is really flourishing by the grace of God. See photo below from the celebrations.

I have been clearing up the backlog of emails and we are now about to go to the Lavender Farm near West Wellow to have a light lunch prior to going to speak at the Shirley Warren Baptist Church followed by a meal at Ken Rashleigh’s flat in Southampton. Tomorrow we head back to London prior to getting the train to Durham on Saturday for ministry in the north-east of England.

We had a nice walk back in the lovely Windsor Park today (photo below) on the way back to Basingstoke from Harrow. Enormous trees that were there when I was a kid are still there. In the morning I’ll see my Mum again which will be nice.


The photo album section of the EAB website has now been updated so that completes the entire site. http://www.eabrazil.com/

Liz is celebrating her birthday today and we are going up to Harrow on the Hill for lunch together with Liz’s sister Eunice. She already had a birthday cake at Thamesmead on Sunday! Happy Birthday Liz! Have a great and blessed day!

On Saturday Liz and I took a nice long walk at a Nature Reserve at Rickmansworth, not very far from the old London School of Theology. This was one photo I took there of a Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus).

Yesterday we headed early for the other side of the Thames, going through the Blackwall Tunnel, and arriving 45 minutes early for the lovely service at the Emmanuel Baptist Church in South Thamesmead, London, where we were warmly received by Pastors Vic and Lona Lambert and all the church. It was a great time together in church followed by a lovely Caribbean style lunch.

Late afternoon we took the Woolwich Ferry to get north of the Thames again and head for Enfield where we spent a beautiful evening with my niece Emily, her husband Jon and their gorgeous little boy Raphael. We got home fairly late but it had been a great day. PTL!

Today we spent a large part of the day in the Borough of Acton – first of all visiting our darling son’s grave at the cemetery who died as a little baby back in 1975 – our second child. From there we went next door to Gunnersbury Park where we had a very nice long walk.

We arrived in my city of birth yesterday afternoon. It only took an hour travelling from Basingstoke to Harrow. I immediately took photographs in John & Eunice’s beautiful garden which is absolutely lovely! Here are 25 photos I took of the fantastic colour display available.

This Sunday we will be speaking at the Emmanuel Baptist Church – Yarnton Way, South Thamesmead, London DA18 4DR (Phone:+44 20 8311 3976) at 11am. Please be there if you can.

We spent a pleasant evening with Ben and Mirian Price who work with EAB/ACEV in Brazil, but who are having a break in the UK for a year or so. We had a good old chat around a cup of tea. Their kids are growing up fast!

We’re off to London today and will be speaking at the Emmanuel Baptist Church at Thamesmead in Greater London on Sunday morning.