Recent Trip to Campo Belo
A few weeks ago, John and I took a trip up to Campo Belo, Minas Gerais. There we met with the three pastors in the last photo below, Jim King, Cleber Rodarte Neves, and Anderson Dantas. The trip was not stressful at all for us being most of the time we were sitting in our hotel room working and doing research on the projects we were talking about. However, I do believe the trip was of great benefit to all of us. Not only did it help us build a stronger relationship with some national pastors, but it also proved fruitful to the ministry of Editora Maranata.
We arrived on Tuesday and left Thursday giving us a few days to talk and work together. On Tuesday we met with these pastors and talked for a while about the future of the ministry. The Lord blessed in the conversation. We pointed out some basic needs the ministry had in order to survive and then began acting upon those things.
On Wednesday, we began by visiting a couple banks to inquire about any regulations they might have regarding online businesses and money transfers. We quickly found out that nobody had ever dealt with this before and they had absolutely no idea how things worked.
In the afternoon we drove over to Pastor Anderson’s city of Boticão. He showed us his church, future home, and some of the beautiful scenery around that city. The trip became a little more eventful when he took us around in his little VW Bug. Though we were aware of the fact that the car was not in perfect condition, we were quite surprised by the large piece of the floorboard began scraping and soon fell of. I could easily feel the road by just allowing my feet to rest on the floor mat.
Later in the afternoon we drove back to Campo Belo in the pouring down rain. As you can see in the pictures below, we were slowed down by traffic. Several of the bridges around the area were closed and we were forced to take the only road open. This road is the one you see in the pictures. When a car would muster up the courage to go through the muddy trenches, the crowd that had gathered around the area would cheer. As the car would go through it would slide around and throw mud and water up in the air making it quite an entertaining scene.
We made it back in town in time to get part of the midweek service at Pastor Cleber’s church. It was refreshing and enjoyable to spend a little time in a church that seemed to be enjoying the Christian life.
Below you will find pictures from all these different events on our trip. To view the entire album, please click visit THIS PAGE.
–Jeremy
