Cactus Flower

This Sunday, July 19, marks four months of quarantines and lockdowns, travel restrictions and regulations that have kept us mostly at home, and hesitant to visit our interior Bible study students. Intermittent internet hasn't helped much with keeping in touch with our interior friends, but we are exchanging regular messages.   This week we decided to check out another nearby dirt path not too far from home.  Our county's regulations are opening up.  Sadly several of the county's on our old route are still closed. So Sunday afternoon we went off to find the petroglyphs or ancient wall drawings of São Gonçalo da Serra.   There are not a lot of signs!  You can't find it on Google Maps doesn't tell you everything. But for the persistent, there is success. We had to turn around a few times.  We had to stop and ask a few times.  We just had to keep moving along and hoping. Even after we found the entrance of this mountain pas...

Ice, it's something, that when we were running out to The Island for retreats, was a necessity.  I had more than ten ice cube trays ready and waiting to go at a moment's notice to fill our trusty red water jug.  Going out to the island meant taking everything we needed - including cool, clean drinking water.  Before big retreats I would make enough blocks of ice to fill a clean cooler.  When we would arrive on the island one of the first items at hand was to get clean drinking water running into the big refrigerated drinking fountain.  To hurry up the process we would dump ice into the water box. Making ice was a necessity in a hot, dry place with no fancy ice making refrigerator or easy to buy bags of clean ice. Every normal morning I would boil water to brew tea to have sweet tea for our lunch.  Even after several hours of sitting the water would still be fairly warm by the time I mixed up the tea at noon.  I needed cold water and ice ever...

Recently I asked the Lord for a sign.  You know, a little Gideon's fleece.  Some important events are coming up in my life and I wished for some signal of approval, some indication that I was proceeding in the right direction. This past weekend, God gave me not just one, but 3 little banners to show His love for me. 1.  A Falling Star.  Byron and I went in together from the island Sunday night to lead the services at our church work in Sobradinho.  This was a first for me.  Usually one of the boys goes along to keep Byron company.  I piloted the boat on the coming in and on the way back he did.  As we pulled out of the canal, I saw a falling star.  Byron and I had the best time on our trip back in and the time was well spent. 2.  A Good Read.  This weekend I reread  Tramp for the Lord by Corrie Ten Boom and was reminded of how much I have for which to be thankful and what a great task we have to share God's love every...