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"Beeing" Used By God

A report from Phelipe Marques Reis

It's almost 10 hours of travel The current was too strong and the river was getting deeper and deeper. Some sections were hard to pass because of fallen trees and many submerged trunks in that dark, freezing Andirá waters.

The smell of bush gave us the feeling of breathing an ever cleaner air. We were a team of 8 people destined for the Livramento e Conceição communities, the farthest in the high Andirá River.

The long distance, delay, and discomfort of the journey have been mitigated by the euphoria and excitement of entering an unknown region, like one beholds a sanctuary. Our mission was to attend an invitation from Satere leaders to participate in the anniversary celebration of two small churches in those communities.

It was getting dark when we got to Deliverance. We were received with great affection and offered acai with cassava flour. There's no denying it! The hosts seem excited about our presence. We made a fire with wood, prepared dinner and participated in the first worship, with lots of singing, all in Sateré.

The very next day, we participated ministering some Bible studies. What marked everyone there a lot was the illustration of the fruit and the bee that brother Alexander, a zootechnist and member of our team, used to teach some biblical principles. This illustration stuck in the minds of many of them and was commented a lot.

In Livramento, a shocking moment was our farewell. They called us to the front, sang a song in Satere and all the church brethren formed an Indian line in the small church hallway. As the music played, one by one came to greet us and deliver a gift as a way of thanking us for our visit.

I received coconut, orange, tapioca, flour and five reais in cash (two notes of two reais and a coin of 1 reais, from different people). I was appalled and shocked. A simple church not rich but extremely generous. This can only be God's thing, really!

Still in this community, we attended the baptism of a young man. Even with the very cold water, it was a very beautiful moment. Coming out of the water, the boy was greeted by every person present. A woman,. one of the last in line, hugged him, cried and began to pray for the boy. I didn't understand a word because it was in Satere but it was emotional to watch.

Aww, our team was given a fond nickname before we left for the other community. The leader of the small church, thanking us for our presence, said we would be called BEES, because as they learned about the importance of bees to pollinating plants, he said we were doing an important work by spreading the gospel community to community.

I thought the comparison and sensitivity of that brother incredible. Once again i'm impacted and blessed After, we left Liberation and went to Conceição, the last community of the high Andirá river. Like "bees", we went to take the honey from the Word of God.

We met other brothers and I had the privilege of meeting and chatting with the community leader Daniel Tuiss. An eighty-few-year-old elder, the second Satereh to surrender to Jesus, after the servant Mikiles. It was a great conversation, but that's what I'll tell about another day.