The Piranha Press Online: Sao Miguel

The first night of our trip we visited Costa do Tapará. This community is still close to the water’s edge. We arrived in time to make visits in the community, inviting people to the evening service. The local PAZ worker is a young, single man, who is desperate for more of Jesus in his life and the lives of people in the village. His mother is a pillar in the church and is helping him grow the church. Two pastors from Belo Horizonte (a large city in south central Brazil) had come to Santarem to learn how to set up a river ministry. They had heard so much about PAZ and our church planting that they wanted to learn from us as they start their own mission outreach. The pastor was invited to preach. Also on this trip was a young girl from Canada who is here for six weeks. In the evening service Melissa, the younger of the two visiting pastors and I did a puppet skit for all the kids between 2 and 150. They loved it and then the pastor preached. Three people accepted Jesus but we need to pray for effective follow-up as the local PAZ worker was so engrossed in praying for people to come to Jesus that he forgot to open his eyes to see who raised their hands!

The next day the Lord laid on my heart a middle-aged man whose wife died of uterine cancer last year. She was a faithful believer to the end. She left behind a family, including a little boy that was born shortly before she died. We had talked to this man and, because God was speaking to me to go talk with him again, I grabbed the mother of the local worker and went to visit him. Jorismo was just sitting there like he knew we were coming. As we chatted, I was impressed by his readiness and so I asked if he wanted to receive Jesus as his Savior. He did and we prayed with him. I sensed that he was angry with God for taking his wife. When I shared about the loss of our granddaughter, Anna Rebecca, in 2008, I emphasized that it was the enemy who came to kill, steal and destroy, and how we have a choice to be angry or not. He is now a believer in Christ. Where there was stagnant, contaminated life, there is now fresh water welling up into an everlasting stream. Pastor Nilton, our head river pastor, had taken the two pastors from Belo Horizonte to the site of our church building in the village. It is quite a distance from the believers in the community and they want it to be more centrally located. On their return, Nilton and the pastors stopped and visited with the same man. They saw the Bible we had given him and were excited about his commitment to the Lord. Pastor Nilton counseled him some more, not knowing what we had shared with him. Pastor Nilton told him that the best place to begin reading the Bible was in John. He grabbed the Bible to show the man where John was and, to his surprise, there was a tree leaf on the first page of John. I had told Jorismo the same thing and we didn’t have any way to mark the location other than a tree leaf. Praise the Lord, the local worker will follow-up with Jorismo and begin discipling him.