Maribel Part 2 of 3

Part 2 of Ministry on the Iriri

We headed up river and didn’t quite make it to the village we had planned. Instead we stayed at the village below it by 3 hours called Boa Esperanca(Good Hope). We are becoming better friends with this village. A few have come to the Lord in the past few years. But this village has been more of a challenge because of their lack of hunger. The highlight for me was seeing the teacher who just transferred there in January. We met her at the village above. She is a sweet young woman who has a heart for God but was very confused when we first met her between legalism and traditions in the churches. Mainly 7th Day Adventists and Catholicism as her parents were of both churches. After a long afternoon of encouraging her, we felt a nice bond with her.

She has been a blessings as a teacher to Boa Esperanca and is very content in the new village. This time we brought a gift to her. “Purpose Driven Life” in Portuguese! She was so excited! The people in the village participated in our worship and testimony time in the new school house. This is the first time they have had a school in their village. I’m not sure how long the village has been established, but I can imagine it’s been a long time. We worshiped and shared songs for all ages by candle light. It was sweet, simple and most of all wonderful to see their participation.

We invited our dear friend, Carla Andresa to travel with us to Maribel for this ministry trip. Carla is 20 yrs old and has been walking with Jesus whole heartedly for a little over a year. She came into our lives last year in Altamira. God crossed our paths devinely again when we moved to Uruara’. She has been a major blessing to our church plant efforts in Uruara’. Her father died when she was a very little girl. She doesn’t even remember him, but has one bad photo of him she says. His roots were in the Maribel region and she had never met any of his family. So this trip was special for her and her quest to learn more about her father. God met her in a special way. Many people knew her father and had stories of him and she enjoyed hearing them and learning of his ways and nature. The trip was also an adventure for the city girl who doesn’t know how to swim and had never seen river life. She loved every moment of the trip and every person she met. She is next in line for the next possible trip!

We cruised up to Zezinho and had a wonderful time. The family we initially met last year on our first trip there was warm and welcomed us as if we were family. Laura and her husband were great hosts to our team. The message Clyde sent by radio didn’t get out of the radio house for some reason so the entire village had no idea we were coming to do a fellowship time with them. We arrived late afternoon and had enough time to meet the new teacher and visit one neighbor. Pataca and Paulo, from our team, went to invite the other side of the village. A few came and all the school chairs were filled. It was a special night of teaching them some fun kid songs and singing some they had never heard!

We had a great sleep and the next morning we pushed off after lunch!

We headed straight for the last village, heading down river back to Maribel to New River. There we have established great friends and they too consider us and treat us like family. This day we arrived also a bit unannounced and upon a Acai party.

Family from Boa Esperanca had come down to pick Acai and make it.

They had arrived from the jungle with the berries and the ladies were preparing it for the process to make it into the extract.

The water was boiling in huge metal pots on the kindling stove. In the end, Makenna pushed up her sleeves and helped 3 other women who were smashing the berries and getting all the skins off the pit. 82 liters later, everyone had their fair share of acai with farinha and sugar!!! Oh, I’ll always love acai and will miss it terribly while gone from Brazil!

The crowd was fixed on acai, so we understood that we were to be friends and not push on having a service with them. Instead, we hung out, watched them play soccer and at the end we gathered the immediate family together after their family left to go home. We prayed for them and encouraged them in the Lord. Many of the womenfolk have accepted Christ. We’re praying for the menfolk there!

It was a late start home in the dark and very dangerous for hitting rocks or sand bars. But God was faithful and we only jumped on a sand bar 2 times. No rocks!!! A beautiful night starry sky where we sang songs and the little ones slept all the way home some 2 hours.