The Tufty Club (by Raymond Elliott)

Thankfully, the fact that I’m only 21 means my brain still has the capacity to remember even the earliest reaches of my youth. One such memory that I share with many of my own generation and the ones that came before me is my afternoons spent being educated in the rules of the road by everyone’s favourite member of the vermin community...Tufty the squirrel.

Since those lessons (along with witnessing what happens to squirrels that don’t quite have the same wisdom as our dear friend Tufty) I, along with everyone around me, have had a healthy respect for the road and traffic.

Despite what the paintings in the Manaus theatre suggest it seems that Tufty never made it to the Amazon. 

Every second spent on the roads, which seem to have been modelled after the Grand Canyon, is a cacophonous mix of tooting horns, shouting people, dodgy engines and squealing brakes. I half expect that at any moment I’ll see Dick Dastardly and all his bandits from wacky races to come ploughing down the street (not that I would even notice because it seems everyone here got their driving license from cartoon network).

   

It is the only place in the world I have ever heard someone casually use the line “it’s safer to just pull out whether someone is coming or not because if you pause to avoid a side on collision you will just get hit from the back”. The government have been kind enough to put stop signs anywhere they deem necessary but believe me when I say they may as well have saved their money and not bothered.

Maybe I’m making it sound worse than it is but to the uninitiated its best just to do exactly what you see the locals do when it comes to crossing the road; wait when they wait, walk when they walk and when they run, pray!

Driving around town on the back of Marty’s motorbike has certainly been an experience and it’s a great way to get around but Tufty, if you are reading this, perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming out of retirement for a while?

A Heart Issue (by Raymond Elliott)

It seems like a long time has passed since I decided that taking a trip away was exactly what God wanted for me at the end of my university life but in reality it has only been a few months. When I signed on the dotted line that ensured I would be spending two months in Brazil I had a fairly strong idea as to what it would be like. When I told people that I would be living in an area 24 hours up the Amazon river from the nearest city the image people created of what this place is like was fairly similar to my own...

Many envisioned me trawling up the river in some kind of canoe for 24 hours dodging overgrown trees, avoiding 10 foot snakes and wrestling with any monkeys who tried to plunder our ship. While I knew this wouldn’t quite be the case I couldn’t help but think the truth may not be quite so different. After all, I was going to the Amazon Rainforest.

After several weeks of imagining myself sleeping in a hammock every night surrounded by people with piercings made of bone poking out of their faces I decided I needed to do a bit of self educating on what life is like in Maues. So, in true western world fashion, I turned to the font of knowledge...Google. Unsurprisingly however, even Google doesn’t know much about this corner of God’s green earth but I had seen enough to know that when I arrived I wouldn’t be greeted by a tribe of people who throw spears at passing planes.

The first few weeks here were an education of the highest degree; I couldn’t have pictured this place if I tried. The differences between Maues and sunny Belfast couldn’t be much greater and yet still the similarities are equally astounding. Praise the Lord for their equal interest in flushing toilets, spuds and houses made of brick. All these little things made settling in much easier than I had imagined but the incongruity between how I pictured Maues and what it actually is has taught me a lesson... How I see something and how it actually is are two totally different things.

I’m not surprised by this though because it is something about our human nature that we all know so well. We are quick to think we know all about something or someone, we are quick to give our own evaluations and we are quick to assume we are right. It seems the only thing in this area of our nature that we aren’t quick at is realising that our judgements are incorrect at best and sinful at worst.

Throughout my time here I have come into contact with all sorts of people, drug addicts and traffickers, the poor and the rich, the honest and the corrupt but I have also met a fair few Christians who have a past that was more than questionable. Thankfully though we have a God whose ways are higher than our ways and whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Those who I would have written off due to their outward appearance and lifestyles God has chosen to help build his kingdom in Maues. There is no denying that these people come to God with a lot of baggage and they don’t get everything right from the word go but 1^st Samuel  16:7 says “man judges by outward appearance but God sees the heart”.

Now that I have seen the heart of Maues I know what it is like, it’s not all spiders the size of dogs and crazy looking tribes who eat monkey brains through a straw. It is a city of people who need the love and power of Jesus. It is far from perfect and it is undeniably in need of God’s restoration but I have come to love it, flaws and all. This is what happens when God helps us see the heart; we are moved to love, even in spite of imperfection.

My Brothers and sisters here have an incredible heart for God and a passion to see Jesus worshipped and glorified. They have been blessed with great leaders who in turn have been blessed with vision and purpose from God. It’s great to know that even if the world doesn’t see what the servants of Christ are doing here God does and He is pleased. It is even better to know that when we are in Christ we have the capacity to see as He sees. Through my experiences here God has helped me look past outward appearances, look past people’s issues, look past my own judgements and see the heart.