Rivers Baptist Church - Christ alone - and Him crucified

Dear Praying friends

In summary
- Pray for our trip to the Columbian border this weekend.
- Pray for Michael & Segana as they make up for losing a day at school. - Pray for Young Nam who had her passport stolen.
- Pray that the contract on our apartment can be renewed at the same cost.
- Pray for Ps Carlos awaiting a visa to share at a Cuban youth camp. - Continue to pray for Jorge (car accident - March), Natalie and their daughter
- Continue to praise God for all of us in relatively good health.

Geof

The details

Last night I went to the kids’ school for a Parents’ (P&C) Meeting. It was supposed to start at 6:30pm but just before 9:00pm the organisers decided to abandon the idea of having the meeting as they were 23 people short of having a quorum. Cries went out to the organisers… “Have patience… More parents will arrive soon… “ It was another reminder that life is so different here. Legally the meeting could not start until they have a quorum of 50% of parents in attendance. If I understood it correctly they could not even start discussing the issues if we were to vote on them last night, as a breach of procedure nullifies the entire meeting. If I were running the meeting I would have spent time last night raising the issues and encouraging full discussion of the issues, but then arrange a second meeting to present the issues again (and allow for brief discussion) before parents vote on the issues. It is really hard for the school as they are required by law to have a quorum of 50% of parents there (not 50% of the families represented). This means that if every family sent 1 representative they would only just make the required 50% quorum. Marion didn’t go as she was feeding the kids and putting them to bed. I know another dad who wasn’t there because he works in Canada. There are parents who do not finish work until 7pm and have to battle up to 2 hours of traffic before they can get there. I know of other parents who couldn’t go because of prearranged commitments. From the meeting’s perspective it was a waste of time. From my perspective it was a good opportunity to meet some of the parents and to converse in Spanish.

In light of Marion and the kids needed to leave Venezuela my friend Alex offered to drive us all to Cucutta (a Columbian city on the Venezuelan
border) where his wife is currently living. It’s about a 14 hour drive. We leave on Friday when the kids finish school and get back on Tuesday.
Please pray for us, for safety on the roads and that we will have a good trip.

Tuesday is a public holiday so the kids will only miss one day of school.
Here in Venezuela they take school extremely seriously and absenteeism is frowned upon. All kids need to make up any work they miss for whatever reason including illness, and homework submitted late loses a mark for every day that it’s late. (An assignment which would usually receive an A+ result gets recorded as a ‘Fail’ if it is submitted 9 days late). Please pray for the kids as they make up the lost day and the homework from that day.

Young Nam is still waiting for word on her passport. It takes time for the funds to get to the Australian Embassy in Brazil and they are waiting for the payment before they start processing her application. Pray that her passport will be available soon as she also needs to renew her visa by leaving Venezuela by the first weekend in July.

The owner of our apartment is currently in Spain, so we are still waiting to hear as to whether we can continue renting it.

Please pray for Ps Carlos. He is a pastor whom I regularly meet with. He has been invited to share at a youth conference in Cuba next month. He is still waiting for his visa. Please pray that this week he will get news of the visa being granted.

Geof