Our dear friends from Texas returned to the States, and we immediately hit the ground running. We had Easter, the Lord’s Supper, our Mothers’ day event, and many other preparations this month! Easter is naturally one of the busiest times in a church year. We had choir preparations and an early church potluck on easter morning. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work for us. We have really been blessed with our wonderful church and love what we have been able to do so far this year. It almost feels like me sitting here writing this blog is the first time I’ve gotten to sit down this month (exaggerating only a little)! The life God has given us is challenging, but very rewarding.

We learned that April is the season when the big spiders come out. This last month, we encountered 5 large, VERY venomous spiders! They are called Armadeiras, the Armed Spider (as in Armed with Armor), or the Brazilian Wandering Spider. Their venom is a neurotoxin that will send you to the hospital! Both Joneia and I came within INCHES of touching a couple with our hand as we worked on our daily chores. We are grateful for God’s perfection and the reflexes He gave us to withdraw our hand in time.

Like I said, we had the Lord’s Supper and Easter this month. Our choir did a marvelous job! This is the fourth time our choir has sung since we arrive two years ago. Mind you, the people of Brazil have VERY LIMITED musical understanding in our city. They don’t provide any musical training in school unlike in many parts of the United States, and private music lessons are too expensive for our people to afford! We have been giving them some music classes and singing lessons to help them learn how to sing as a unified choir, and we have all been amazed at their progress! They are becoming more confident every time they sing. Our Easter services were very blessed. We had 3 visitors, and we had a wonderful time with our members.

We prepared for our Mothers Day Tea event, which I will write more about in our blog for May. Let’s just say, Joneia is VERY ambitious when it comes to our events! AND FOR GOOD REASON! For our Mother’s day tea we had 11 VISITORS who all heard the gospel! Events are often what bring the most people into our church here! So we invest a lot of time and effort into making them incredible. But I digress…more details coming next month.

This month was very taxing (no pun intended for tax season) and draining. We are finally figuring out our routine, and finding areas that we can improve. Pray for our health if you think about us, especially our allergies. These last few mornings, the car has been blanketed with pollen, and we can feel it in our sinuses. I have been dealing with a headache (migraine) for the past few days because of it. Please pray that God will strengthen our bodies through these allergies. Please pray also for our church. We have seen our members strengthened this year, but in the past two weeks, there seems to be a heaviness on our congregation. The people are tired, and it seems that the devil is attacking everyone with discouragement. Please be praying for God’s protection over our members in a very oppressive city.

Thank you so much for your prayers and God bless you all!