Off to see the Wizard

It was six months ago this past weekend that the floods of February did so much damage here in Madeira. The casual visitor to Funchal would probably not be aware of the immensity of the tragedy; the fact that many businesses never reopened is not apparent at first sight. A trip to the mountains, however, reveals that much remains the same. Our church received around €7000 to help victims. Our thought was to help those who lost their furniture and appliances to replace them, but we discovered many of these people have not been able to repair their houses. Until they receive aid to rebuild, they have no place or need for appliances and furniture. We are following the developments in the case of a couple of families. (In our church, Sis. Fernanda benefited from €400 to do the repairs to her floor that she felt were necessary. We would have done more, but she insisted she didn't need further repairs.)

The storm was a severe blow to tourism, which was already suffering from the economic crisis. Many millions of euros been lost so far this year.

First the flood, then the fire...

The week of the 12th of August, the mountains of Madeira caught fire. Looking to the mountaintops now, above timberline what was green is black all around the skyline above Funchal. Lower down on the slopes, the trees still stand but there is a definite line where the green leaves become brown. It's too easy to see exactly how far down the fires came.

The local newspaper, the Diário de Notícias published a photo taken by NASA, showing the fires on August 13. To say things are looking black for Madeira this year is not just figurative.

Yesterday, over on the neighboring island of Porto Santo, during a political rally, a large palm tree fell, crushing some of those in the crowd. One lady died at the scene, several others were badly injured. The rally was canceled, of course. The island president, in his comments, said the following:

"2010 is a year in which we must see a witch. With everything that has happened to our archipelago in 2010, pray that this year is over soon."

While his reference to resorting to a witch can be taken as a common expression used in Portuguese when things go wrong, the truth is that witchcraft is not uncommon here. When we were remodeling our house, word got back to us that our neighbor had gone to a witch to have a spell put on our house "so that workers would get hurt and the work would never get finished". The workers were never injured, but I nearly broke my leg. By the grace of God, what could have been a major injury only hobbled me for a couple of months. And the house project did get finished. So much for witchcraft used against God's work.

...to see a witch... I know many people here would, many people do, and I'm confident many have.

Yes, another wedding!

That's right! Two weddings in one week. This time it was Débora and Gil who had a religious ceremony. They were married over a year ago in a civil ceremony, like Sandra and Humberto's at the beginning of the week. Débora had hoped to have the religious ceremony at her family's church in Brazil, but they saw that they could not afford the trip, so they took advantage of some of Gil's family being here on vacation from France and had the ceremony now.

The ceremony was held under a tent outside a hotel, part of the strategy being that if the service had been held at the church, many of Gil's family, who are staunch Catholics, would not have attended. As it was, Gil and Débora had some misgivings about how his family would react to an evangelical service. As we were leaving, Gil said that his family were all very impressed with the service. One lady told me this was the first time she had ever been in an evangelical service, and she really appreciated the message I gave. Pray for the continued witness of the Word among these people through the lives of Débora and Gil.

Music was provided by a violinist.

The end of the ceremony.

Débora and Gil with Kayla, who carried the rings.

Militina, Abbie and Olga

Latest news first--a wedding

This is not part of the news of the last couple of months I promised to catch up on. This wedding was this week. Sandra and Humberto got married in the civil registry on Monday. (Weddings performed in our church are not recognized by the civil authorities.) The ceremony in the church will be in December when her parents, who live in California, can be here. I understand that Sandra and Humberto will take their honeymoon trip at that time and go to Ecuador to visit his family.

What does this marriage mean? It means that two-thirds of our guitar ensemble at church are now husband and wife. We wish them many years of blessings in serving the Lord.

36 hours

...that's the time between take-off yesterday at Gatwick and our landing here at Funchal tonight at 10:00. (A direct flight between the two airports takes a little over 3 hours, so we must have taken the long route.) The landing was smooth and uneventful and all appears to be well here at the house. It's good to be home.

Didn't I tell you?

6:00PM---Just been informed that instead of our flight leaving at 6:40 and arriving at 8:00, it will only leave here at 8:00. (Or will it?) Of course, the flight scheduled for 7:00 is leaving on time. Reminds us of the "good old days" when we got caught in situations like this traveling from the island to the mainland.

4:30 PM

It was after 11:00 this morning when we got to the counter and were given boarding passes for the 6:40PM flight, which should arrive about 8:00 tonight in Funchal. We were given a meal voucher and after lunch we came to sit here in the waiting area. Two flights have left for Madeira in the meantime, both of them an hour late, so we can't really say that we'll be home before 9:00 tonight. We've sent out word to various members that it would be wise for them to plan to take the services tomorrow as if we weren't going to be there. Abbie may not be, actually. Exhaustion from the trip and a cough and sore throat picked up on the one rainy day in England may keep her home tomorrow. Even if we are there in body, I'm not certain that we'll be fully competent mentally. Some people probably think that of us under normal conditions, and believe me, these last couple of days have been anything but normal.

10:15

Only 4 or 5 parties ahead of us now, but the line has been moving more quickly in the last quarter of an hour. In another 30 minutes or so, we should know whether we will get home today or only tomorrow...surely tomorrow and not Monday.

Still waiting

It's 9:15 AM and we're sitting in the airport waiting for our turn to get to the counter and see when we'll go. The phone rang at 7:15, a little over 2 hours after I went to bed and we were told we had to get the bus in 20 minutes. We arrived here at 8:00 and the line has shortened only slightly. We calculate an average of 15 minutes minimum for each passenger/group and there are at least 10 parties still ahead of us. This could be a long morning...after a very short night.

Almost home...but not quite (by 600 miles)

e got up this morning (yesterday now) at 5 AM to get to Gatwick Airport to begin our trip home. Our schedule would take us from London to Madrid to Lisbon to Funchal, and although none of the flights was very long, there was a 5-hour layover in Madrid and another 4 in Lisbon, so we were to land in Funchal at a quarter past midnight, 19 hours after we got up.

After coming all the way from London, we got within 2000 feet or so of our house (the approach to the airport almost passes right over our house) but as we came in for the landing we had the ride of our lives. A lot of people on the plane were convinced it was the LAST ride of our lives. Fortunately we had seats right over the wings, not in the third-to-the-last row, like we did on the Madrid-Lisbon flight. There was a lot of screaming coming from the tail section, and the cabin staff had to rush to the back to help a passenger that was apparently overcome by the experience. You would have thought we were on a bucking bronco, and at the last second the pilot aborted the landing and announced he would circle briefly to see if the crosswinds would die down. If not, we would return to Lisbon. They didn't, so we did.

It is now 4 AM and we just got to a hotel. We landed back in Lisbon at about 1:45 AM and it has taken that long for the airline to get the situation worked out. When they can work out a flight to get us to Funchal, they'll call us. We hope it's not an early flight, because we just got here.

44 and counting

On this day 44 years ago, Abbie and I said "as long as we both shall live". Some of those 44 anniversaries are more memorable than others (for example, on our 25th we were being given a short tour through the Alps near Zurich; on our 40th, we were in Eureka Springs, Arkansas). We will remember this one, too.

Don't let anyone tell you the sun never shines in England. We've been here almost a week and although there have been some clouds on a couple of the days, it really rained on only one day. We have been blessed with bright sunshine, and this morning especially so. We're staying with Pastor Derek Martin and his wife, Margaret, who first came to our services in Madeira in about 1982. They live about an hour and a half SE of London in a country village. The picture above shows their backyard ("garden" to you British readers) and that is where we had breakfast this morning.



This week we've been to Hastings, where the Norman king William earned the added title "the Conqueror" in 1066 in his victory over the Anglo-Saxons. We've been down the Thames, and during our visit to London, had a chance to meet Pres. Obama. I asked him if he would like his picture taken with me, and he didn't say no.

                               (Photo taken at Madam Tussaud's wax museum.)


We travel home tomorrow, and although the word is that the weather has been a scorcher there, up around 40ºC (over a 100ºF), we're looking forward to getting back.

I have finally unloaded pictures that have been in my camera since May, and I intend to see that some of them are published here to give you an overview of the last couple of months. Of course, I have yet to see how high the pile of work is that awaits me when we get back. Will those pictures actually get put on the blog?

Not at home

This is just a quick note to let readers know that we're not at home, and we haven't been for a week. We've been on the mainland since last Friday and all week I've been giving the daily Bible studies to the adults at the Baptist family camp in central Portugal, about 1.5 hours north of Lisbon. I had hoped to have some time to post some messages and send some photos. Obviously that didn't happen.

It's almost midnight and we have to leave early in the morning to be at the airport in Lisbon by shortly after 8 AM, to begin our trip to the UK, where we will be spending the next week with a brother and sister who have visited us off and on in Madeira for almost 30 years.

Sooner or later, pictures will appear here. There will be news about the baptisms the week before we left Madeira, among other items. The key word in both previous sentences is "will". Until the "will" becomes reality, keep praying. We need it and we thank you.