ARRIVAL & SURPRISE

We arrived at Sao Joao (the community Saint John) to meet up with one of our church contacts, Rui. Rui is a school teacher and has been teaching at this community for a few years. Our desire was to see the possibility of witnessing to the family who had invited us to their homes in the interior and then see if they would accept Rui as someone who could disciple and mentor on a weekly bases. We met Rui and arranged to meet him further up river at the family’s house for a ‘meeting’.
We sent on again continuing further up river to Robson’s uncle Eder’s house. Robson’s uncle had pasted a few months in the city and during that time had frequented the ‘cell’ group that Robson leads and gave his life to the Lord at the ‘cell’ group. It was Robson’s uncle who had asked that we might bring the word of God to his family and relatives.
As we arrived we were greeted by two familiar faces Lucas and Luan (these two brothers are twins!) who had gone to the Living Word School over 7 years ago. At that stage I had permission to treat patients voluntarily at a dental clinic and had treated them too! It was great to see them and immediately there was a great sense of welcome and warmth. Their mum, Robson’s aunt (Ruth) who was still an unbeliever took great joy to show us around their area, with guarana being planted and manjuca too. Her mum and brother and sister-in-law also have house close by and we were introduced to them also, taking the opportunity to invite them to the ‘meeting’ that night. We got to meet Ruth’s mum and hear a little of how she had ended up living in this part of the Amazon.
Robson’s aunt Ruth is the Headmistress at the Municipal School in Saint John and was able to tell us about the community and also the other communities along the river (Maues Miri). The Municpal School caters for over 170 students and many of them are brought to school by the school taxi boat! There is also approximately 1000 people living along this river in different communities.
The ‘meeting’ was very relaxed as all the families came together and Rui brought 3 youth from Saint John too. The little generator was cranked up and the ‘farinha baraca’ became dimly lit as it coughed and droned the duration of the evening.
We sang, prayed and shared the gospel through personal testimonies. It was a wonderful atmosphere as we saw the hunger of their hearts and realized that truly in this place the fields were white for harvest. Many gave their lives to the Lord, especially impacting for me was Lucas and Luan at the age of thirteen accepting Jesus as their saviour. Ruth too accepted Jesus into her heart and treated us to a cake she had made for our visit and a saucepan of boiled fish, farinha and rice came later.
We said good night to our hosts as they went off to their respective homes and we put up our hammocks in the farinha hut. The brilliant thing about the jungle is that the temperatures drop to about 20 degrees at night (trust me that is cold, compared to 40-45+) and as we hopped into our hammocks apart from the canopy of palm leaves over our heads the stars could be seen so clearly. We were far from our families but we slept content knowing that HIS hand was over this encounter.