The Assurini

I just got back from another trip, this time to an area called the Assurini. It’s an area named after an Indian tribe that used to live there and is now mostly ranches and homesteads. Our church has been working in 3 locations for about 7 years. This was the first time we were putting on a weekend-long retreat. Read on if you’re interested in the details, otherwise you can just look at the pictures and I’ll never know…

The Location

The Assurini is a large area across the river from Altamira, accessible only by barge. There are several roads that provide mostly seasonal access to the many ranches that scatter the hilly region. A rancher named Orlando became a Christian some years ago and has been catalyst for our church work in that area. We stayed at his place and had meetings there on Sat. and Sun.

The TLC

The retreat we had, or TLC, is a leadership retreat that the churches in Altamira have at least a couple times a year. This was the first time it was done in the Assurini. It consists of large group meetings as well as small groups that discuss things like worship, cell groups and new beginner classes.

In one of the small groups my friend was teaching guitar lessons. He said it was hard because they couldn’t read, I said “You mean they couldn’t read music?”, he said, “No, they couldn’t read words”.

The Baptisms

Of all the bodies of waters that I’ve seen baptism take place, I think a jungle creek is my favorite. As I expected from Brazilians, it was a joyous and celebrated event. I really liked the way they sang praise songs during the baptisms. I hope their simple faith and joy comes through in these photos:

The Team

I traveled with a group of guys that I’ve been doing a lot with recently. A couple of them are old friends of mine (Beto, my language instructor and Alison, a buddy I had given a guitar to), but there are a few that I am just getting to know. One of the guys told me (using my loose translation skills) that he wanted me to “come into their group” (referring to his friends) and that when I’m not there they say to each other “so falta Josh” (which sort of means, we are just lacking Josh).

We did have many laughs together, including when I took them to the river to swim and some of the guys were riding on top of my truck, while driving on a jungle logging road I couldn’t resist to drive under some low hanging limbs, smacking them around a bit. They got a real kick out of it and declared that I was “brasilerio” now (brasilian). For those of you sitting their stunned that I was trying to knock some nice young men off my truck, don’t worry, it was just good ol’ fashion male bonding.

-JTP