December 15, 2006
Picos Survey
Other duties have kept me from blogging recently. Duties such as preparing three sermons for this weekend, updating our family finances, writing a puppet script for filming on Friday, and editing a puppet program to be aired on TV tomorrow.
Finally, however, I am able to sit down and give a little update about our survey trip to the city of Picos last weekend.
Marcelo (a seminary student who has a great burden for the city of Picos) and I left our house early Saturday morning. The wooden parrot stayed home.
On the road again! To get to Picos from Juazeiro, one drives through some pretty remote territory.
This is the bus station in Picos. I have "fond" memories of spending the night in this building back in 1994.
The interior of the Picos bus station.
Picos is situated amids varioius small, irregular mountains the crop up around and throughout the city. The name "Picos" means "peaks". Here Marcelo stands on a ledge that overlooks the downtown area of Picos.
This is a picture taken from more-or-less the same spot in the daytime. In the distance the main Catholic church can be seen.
On Sunday we visited two Baptist chruches in Picos. Both are part of the Brazilian Baptist Convention. They are called (respectively) the First Baptist Church and the Second Baptist Church. The Brazilian Baptist Convention is not very creative when it comes to naming churches.
After the evening service, the young people from the Second Baptist Church invited us out for Pizza. There they peppered us with questions about the seminary. Marcelo and I were very impressed with this group.
In the above picture, the man standing with his wife next to the guy in the white shirt (next to me) was our host for the week. He is a member of the Brazilian army, and lives on the base there in Picos. He and his wife are from one of our Regular Baptist Churches here in Juazeiro. They are our contacts for future church planting ministry in Picos.
My pastor would have been in paradise during this trip. Our host's back yard was inhabited by these sagui monkeys.
The monkeys were very friendly. The hand in this picture is mine.
Picos is an interesting city. Traffic is tumultuous. The city seems to function on the principle of making due with what you can get. This little homemade handcart fascinated me. I took pictures of it, marvelling at the creativity of it's builder.
Then I turned the corner and saw this entire fleet of hand carts. All made out of scrap material. All with the same basic design.
By the way, if the above pictures look a little pink to you, it is not your computer screen. For some reason our digital camera started taking pink pictures on this trip. There are several pictures I could not post because they were too...well...pink.
Conclusions
1. There is a tremendous need in Picos. It is a city of 75,000 people, and many neighborhoods with absolutely no gospel witness whatsoever. The state of Piaui has one of the lowest percentages of evangelicals (which is a wide group) in all of Brazil. The pastor of the First Baptist Church there gave me a map that showed all the municipalities where there is no Baptist ministry. There are alot.
2. The time does not appear ripe to begin a work with seminary students in Picos. Our survey yielded no possibilities of a place where we could begin a work. Given the distance (about four hours), we would definitely need somebody there 24/7 to maintain the ministry, with the seminary students arriving on weekends to help.
Prayer Requests
1. Pray that God would provide someone to go to Picos on a full time basis.
2. Pray that God would provide the finances to maintain a work there.
3. Pray that God would strengthen the ministries of the churches already in Picos--especially doctrinally.
My burden for that part of Brazil has only increased as a result of this trip. As I mentioned before, I am doubtful that we will be able to put seminary students there this year. But something must be done.
Posted by Andrew on December 15, 2006 3:07 PM.
Comments
Posted by: GoTennis at December 22, 2006 9:16 AM
I do remember you mentioning that. I found Picos to be quite an interesting little town...even more so after this last visit.
And your right, that is a Toucan--albeit a wooden one. They are the cheapest kind to maintain.
Posted by: Andrew at December 24, 2006 2:14 PM
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I am excited about the possibilities of Picos. I remember thinking to myself when we were there (did I mention it to you) that if I were a younger man and looking at Brazil as a place of ministry I would be really interested in Picos. Something about the place captured my imagination. Praying for God to speak well about the prospects of Marcos and others being able to advance the Gospel there.
And...I think that's a Toucan...not a parrot...right?
:-)