Rivers Baptist Church - Christ alone - and Him crucified

Dear Praying Friends

In summary
- Praise God our Area Leader’s visit last week.
- Praise God that our Area Leader has approved our Proposed Team Strategy.
- Pray for my trip away to Columbia
- Pray for Marion & the kids while I’m away
- Continue to pray for our safety.
- Continue to pray for Jorge (car accident - March) and his wife (Natalie)
- Continue to praise God for all of us in good health.

Geof

The details

Last week’s visit from our Area Leader (Alicia Ingles) was fantastic. She is an MK who has lived most of her life in South America but yet her experience of Caracas was so different to that of other South American cities. She will never forget her introduction to Caracas’ horrific traffic queues and the adventure which our taxi driver took us. We can get from Caracas’ airport to our home in 30 minutes, but the day she arrived it had rained and to say the traffic was chaotic would be a gross understatement. The worst of the traffic was the last 10km as traffic on the freeway had literally come to a standstill. Our taxi driver decided to leave the freeway and take us through a maze of suburban streets… We held tightly to our seats as he negotiated barriers which had been erected to stop traffic going the direction he wanted to go and his decision proved to be the right one. On the outskirts of Caracas less than 30cm of water covered the freeway and because of potholes in that section 4-5 lanes of freeway were merging into one lane.
The backlog of traffic literally brought the traffic to a standstill on the freeway, and brought even more chaos to suburban streets as traffic left the freeway and clogged the cities main roads. We live on the road that became the main thoroughfare. One section of the trip took us over an hour – Marion, the kids & I regularly walk that exact route in around 25 minutes.
About an hour before we left the airport our friend Alex got caught in the freeway traffic and couldn’t leave until our exit. He made an unplanned stopover at our place and arrived within minutes of our arrival. The congestion on our road did not subside till after 10pm.

Alicia got to spend time encouraging Young Nam, Marion and myself as well as meeting some key Venezuelan church leaders. Her input into our proposed team strategy was also appreciated and I made some minor adjustments accordingly.
She explained that in November last year the international leadership of Pioneers decided to shift Pioneers’ focus a little and adopted the slogan “from the whole church to the whole church”. She then informed us that our proposed team strategy fitted in wonderfully with this new international focus of Pioneers. For us this was another confirmation that we are here in His absolute perfect timing. We praise God for this confirmation.

Tonight I have the opportunity to accompany our friend Alex on a trip to Columbia. Though he sees my primary purpose as seeing some Columbian churches, Marion & I see my primary purpose as being a tremendous opportunity to improve my Spanish and to deepen our mutual friendship and accountability. Alex is a fantastic language helper. He constantly but gently corrects my errors. I praise God for this next week in which I will be living and breathing Spanish 24/7. We expect to come back to Caracas Friday next week. Pray for us as we travel, and for Marion and the kids as they remain back in Caracas.

Continue to pray for Jorge in hospital. Although recently discharged from hospital he still is far from a complete recovery. Continue to pray for his wife and daughter. We are praising God for the way that this incident is really bringing about a unity at our church.

Geof