Railson & Heidi Gil
Porto de Moz, Pará, Brazil
News from the Field
January/February 2003
This month’s news comes later than usual due to our holiday and travel schedules. But before February comes to an end, we’ll give you a brief overview of what’s been happening in ministry during this busy time.
First, it’s worthwhile to mention that our Christmas celebration was a success. The church barbeque that we had anticipated turned into a potluck in the end, but what a potluck it was! Church members brought various regional dishes, rice and beans in abundance. After a short kids’ program we got down to eating. As we had hoped, there were a lot of guests (bringing our headcount up to around 180), so we took advantage of the event to develop new relationships.
For the New Year’s holiday we headed to Altamira to catch some R&R with the pastor of the Vinha church there. It was a special opportunity to rekindle relationships with church members and enjoy our camaraderie with the pastor and his family. Unfortunately, Tim came down with a throat infection, but after a quick trip to the pediatrician and a round of antibiotics he was back to his perky self.
In January, we paid a visit to our new friends in
Almeirim, where, as you remember, we are in the process of helping plant a church. During a two-day visit, we held three home meetings in different locations around the city, and in one, a young mother received Jesus. In all, there are about 15 adults serving as the nucleus of this church plant. We have a special place in our hearts for the people of
Almeirim and there is a good chance that we will move there to pastor full-time by the end of the year. For now, Railson is supporting the development of a home-group based church through monthly visits and telephone contact. Please pray with us that we will soon find a building to rent in
Almeirim for holding weekly meetings. Also, we are looking at the prospect of buying a motorboat to facilitate the monthly trips. Please pray with us for direction concerning this decision, as it would be a sizeable expenditure for us.
After our stay in Almeirim, we continued 19 hours by boat up the Amazon River to the city of Santarem where Heidi re-petitioned for permanent residency (the old petition was canceled due to a faux pas of the Immigration Department). Unfortunately, the application process has become rather complicated and will not be able to be reinitiated until mid-February, but we took advantage of the obligatory vacation in Santarem to get in touch with special friends. It felt good to stretch our legs outside of Porto de Moz for a bit, but it also felt good to get back home after a week on the road, er, river, that is!
---Tim turned two in January. "World Cup" (what else?) was the party
theme.
Check out our web page at http://home.attbi.com/~krlim/brazil. We would like to express our apologies that our page has not yet been updated with photos. We have had considerable difficulty in sending images over the Internet for the past two months due to inadequate phone lines, but we hope to have things in working order soon. The Xingu Mission page can be accessed on
www.xingu.org.
Love in Him, Railson & Heidi
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