Christmas is an entirely different experience here in Brazil, everyhthing happens on the 24th of Dec, and then they just return to a normal ish life on the 25th. How ever they are usually very tired on the 25th as they party all the way through the night! I beleive that we retunred home at 5am on Christas day! it was a great night though and a great time of year to experience here!
New year is also celebrated very largely here, everything stops so that everyone can have a party! we went to the church from 7pm-1am, and then after that we went to a friend from churches house with all of the youth to party through the night, we didn´t get home until 12pm the next day, at which point it was time for sleep! So similiar to the UK then.
After this we then had a few things on we had a camp at the churhc for 3 days preparing us for mission, it was amazing to see the youth of the church all come together with their passion and to then go envangelising on the streets of Sao Luis inviting everyone to come to the church for a massive worship session, it was amazing.
We then went on a mission trip and then holiday and the PEPE trainign for the teachers... here is how that went:
So we have now finished galavanting around Maranhao, for the time being, and are now officially back at home in Sao Luis. Starting on Tuesday Tim and Sophie will be going back to PEPE and I don´t know what I will be doing... maybe have a sleep or something very exciting, however my PEPE will start the week after i think and so i will be joing the other two in the early morning to make it to the bus station for 6am . As of yet i don´t know what exactly i will be doing there... Julia is hoping to get me teaching English to the children, which could be quite a difficult thing to do, given that i am now the only person there that speaks any English at all.
We had a great time on the mission trip with the church, there were about 150 people there, and over the 4 days there were 300 conversions to Christ, which is absoloutley fantastic. We did activities like walking through the streets and praying for the city, and then going around the same streets knocking on the doors of the houses and asking the peopel if we could talk to them about Jesus. Everybody here is so accepting and we only had one or two people that wouldn´t let us talk to them. We also did street theatre, which is where we were mainly involved we performed in many different dramas, all of which told of the story of Gods unfailing love for us! according to Samily, the people who were watyching were very moved, and especially the children who we built up friendships with, it was amazing to see the work being done! We also had events called "louvão" which means "big worship" which is exactly what it says, and the passion of the people there is amazing, you experience nothing like it in England ... soul survivor comes close... but not massively. The prayer here is another thing that has inspired all of us, they pray for everything and anything, and the passion that they put behind that prayer is astounding!
We then went on holiday which was nice and relaxing, we didn´t really do alot, we just sat by the pool and relaxed and wrote our journals and a few letters. We did go on two trips out. One was on a boat where we went down this river and saw flying fish, and amazing landscape, totally covered in jungle apart fromt he stretch of water that rolls out infront of the boat! absoloutley amazing! The other was walking through perfectly crystal clear lakes, so clear you can see your toes dissappear into the sand beneath. Although it it did rain for 4 of the 5 days we were there, this was very welcome it reduced the heat down and so we felt slightly more comfortable, and a little bit more like England! We had 1 day of brilliant sun,which we made the most of, and turned a nice shade of red, which on all of us has now changed nicely into brown!
We then had the PEPE training 3 days which was good to go to, we saw lots of the teachers of pepe from all over maranhao. Although we weren´t actually doing any of the teaching we were still really involved with helping with the kids and and playing music for them and then they had a question session with us on one night, which was all really fun. I even had the oppurtunity to do some first aid, as Tim managed to cut his foot in the swimming pool "Silly Tim!".
So that has been my life here for the last 21 days! We are now looking forward to what is going to happen in the near future.
I hope this finds all of the you well and safe!
God Bless,
Ben
