Renascer…Revivial!

Well, my trip out to Renascer didn’t exactly go as planned, but that’s pretty normal here and I would say it turned out for the better.  The bus ride alone makes for an interesting story, most of which involves some cultural adaptation…

I knew where the bus would pick us up, but we had conflicting information as to what time the bus actually would leave Santarém.  Some people said 8 AM, some 8:30 AM, and yet others 10 AM!  So to be on the safe side, Becca and I got there at 7:45 and then would up waiting until 9:15 for the bus…not the time that anybody told us, but right  in the middle.  We quickly settled in for our 5 hour ride.

Once out of the city, the bus started making a few stops.  We would  stop at the various communities along the road to drop people off (the route is an out and back from Santarém).  On several occasions the driver would turn off the main road and drive several kilometers to somebody’s house and drop them off, turn around, and head back to the main road.  Now that’s customer service!  Then about 3.5 hours into the ride, we came to a little house and a woman and little boy got off the bus, but the so did the driver, and they all went running up to the house…I was a little confused at first, until as saw the boy and woman give the daddy a kiss and sent him off to finish the bus route :-)

The very next stop, every person on the bus except 3 or 4 got up without saying anything and got off.  I was thinking, wow, I guess this is the place to be.  I kept chatting with one of the older gentlemen that I had become acquainted to we went on down the road for another 10 minutes.  This gentleman got off, then we turned around and went back, stopped at the previous place and everybody got back on the bus!  I guess nobody bothered to let the gringos know that this was just a watering hole and rest stop…sure would have been nice to let our butts rest a bit…next time I’ll ask!

At 2 PM, we arrived in Renascer, exactly 3 minutes longer than the driver told me it would take.  I guess he’s made the trip before.  The whole 5 hour trip was only 13 Reis or about $7.20.  What a deal for such a long ride!  We were greeted by Silvia and Katie and had a joyous reunion.  In this community, God is building and strengthening his church!  The community even changed the name from Macaco (meaning monkey in  English) to Renascer which means revival!

That evening we traveled with the supervising pastor, Ronaldo and his wife, the local worker, Adilson and his wife, and the health team another village (I forget the name).  We made some house visits and then held a service in the local school.  There was a great turnout!  Praise God.  I was able to share my testimony, with the help of my beautiful fiancé, who translated for me.  The the pastor preached the Word and we had some awesome worship!

The next day I stayed with the team and we traveled to the village of  Nova Vitória.  We set up a clinic there and the ladies saw patients all morning and some of the afternoon.  This community already has three functioning cell groups. It was a blessing for them to have us and for us to be able to strengthen and encourage them that evening with another service.

I was planning to leave Renascer on the 4 AM bus yesterday, but instead I traveled with the team to the village of São Raimundo.  From there a blessed brother gave me a ride on his motorcycle to the village or Trevo, 10 km away so I could catch a bus back to Santarém from there.  A couple hours later, I was back home…

Last night I was blessed to have to opportunity to share the Word in my cell group.  Thanks to all of you who were praying!  I believe it went well and was definitely an encouragement to me.  I am seeing more and more fruit from my language studies and need more experiences like this to build confidence in using the language.  I keep trusting the God is being glorified by my language learning!

In Christ,

JAE