Cactus Flower

Brazil Road Trip: Interior Evangelism : Imagine you want to take a survey of the counties nearest to where you live.  You're looking to see what churches have works in which city... Click on the blue link to read more about our most recent trip interior.

I had a silly thought while talking to my dog the other day to import all my story posts from my Missionary Mama Stories blog to have everything in one spot.  Then my plan was to delete the other blog.  I had a whole list of good reasons...  I don't post there every week as I had been. Chase and Mariyah are too little to read.  My three nephews are big and most likely past the read a story from auntie missionary stage. Alas, I followed all the steps and bingo!  All my posts from one blog went to the other.  And apparently the few who follow my blog by email received a hundred email alerts in the process!  Please, forgive me for spamming your inbox!  It with totally unintentional!  I only realized that's what was happening when my mother starting commenting on old posts and then... Poof!  All those imported/exported story posts were gone!  I'm imagining Blogger decided it was a spam game on the part of some Brazilian mafia u...

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...

Remember our pal, Nicolas?  Before our furlough the little guy spent a lot of time in our house.  We hadn't gotten to see him since we'd arrived until this weekend.  But when we did it was just as if we'd never been gone!   Seems our little buddy talks a lot about us to his grandmother.  Made me think of the impact adults have on children.  The little time that Mr. Nic spent in our house had a big impression on his life. We had rules and some consequences and there was lots of patience and love.  We spent lots of time playing games together, digging in the dirt together, and reading books.  There was also lots of time to talk about God. I'm praying for my little pal this week as some big changes are taking place in his life over the next few weeks.  I'm praying and planning on how to continue to make an impact in his life even from far away. In much the same way, I'm working to stay involved in our three boys' lives and in those o...

That seems to be the question every one asks us these days since we've arrived back in Sobradinho.  What's next?  What are you going to do now?  Where are you going?   A few people ask about how the boys are or things about my grandbabies or parents.  But not too many.  This week three people asked when I could start teaching English to their children again! First year in Brazil, 1994 So what is next for The Athas in Brazil?  If you were able to attend one of our furlough meetings, hopefully you have some sort of idea.  If not, I'll try to give a brief answer to the big question. Remember that trip we took all over interior Bahia back in the fall of 2017?  We visited over 200 communities over the course of about two weeks all within a few hours of where we live.  You can back to my post about it and review some of the details here... Bahia Road Trip Byron and I plan to begin evangelizing some of the nearest and needie...