Cactus Flower

Since Byron and I returned to Brazil I've been busy in my spare time translating a little booklet called Umbrella Prayers.  It's the brainchild of Melody Hester of Community Baptist Church in Reidsville, North Carolina.  I had the opportunity to participate in a special review of her materials during a morning in her home for the wives of missionaries during their annual missionary conference earlier this spring.  One of the ladies thought she could use the booklets on a missions trip to Cuba translating the booklet into Spanish.  It sparked a little thought in my mind to do the same to use in Brazil in Portuguese.   My entire furlough was one wedding or missions conference after another.  I knew there was just no time to work on the project while in the States.  After we arrived back in Brazil I set up a work space and got busy. Whenever you set out to translate something, anything there are many things to consider - slang, local terms...

Seems dogs come and go around here these days.  Since we've been back from our furlough we've had quite the rotation of dogs coming and going.  When we first arrived there were five little puppies awaiting us. Quite as they were, we weren't too interested in keeping any of them. A neighbor's mother decided to take four, leaving us with Spunky, Wishbone and one little cream colored pup. Two's company, and three can be a crowd.  But seemed the puppy was here to stay.  Then one evening she didn't eat her supper and by the next day it was apparent something was wrong with the little thing.  I worked hard to force feed broth and give her lots of liquids as well as meds for diarrhea.  There is a vet who comes to town on the weekends.  I figured if we could nurse her through, I'd take her to the see the man.  Sadly, we woke up on the second morning to find she had passed away in the night.   Sadly, there are many little things that c...

Byron has been working on maps of the interior roads of our area for weeks.  One of the biggest problems we had on our road trip all around Northeast Bahia last fall was a lack of good maps.  There just are no maps for our area.  Yes, Google Maps can show you where any little trail goes, but it doesn't show you if it's dirt, rock, has locked gates, et cetera.  It also doesn't even indicate that some paths are real roads.   But there are many communities down these dirt roads without churches and easy access to the bigger cities that have them.   We always find interesting things down these sandy paths.  Today we found this old wind mill near a water desalination plant. We never were more than 50 miles from our house in Sobradinho today but going is slow when the roads are rough.  We left the house around 8 o'clock in the morning and got home around 3 in the afternoon with a brief stop for lunch near this very unusual creek with clear, flowi...