CARNIVAL
Once again this year I (Beckie) went to carnival alone, we discussed as to whether Dave should go or we should try to go as a family, but decided against it (which was probably wise as it is extremely tiring and this year we had constant rain, much more difficult to keep children entertained).
It was a great, exhausting and fulfilling experience. I was quite amazed at how much my confidence and ability in Portuguese has grown. It was great to be able to translate for other people and understand so much better what people were saying. We had a fairly full program, of prayer and worship in the mornings, parades in the afternoon and evangelism at night. The night-time evangelism was divided into 2 parts (10pm-2am or 2am-6am). I particularly liked to do the early morning shift, as some of the people had already dispersed and it made it easier to know who to speak to (rather than being overwhelmed by choice). Also, these people seemed more open to longer, deeper conversations.
I noticed that we had a few conversations that kept repeating themselves with a variety of people

• Catholics - usually they said how much they loved God, often spoke about other bizarre things they had been taught, but also felt that they could carry on living however they wanted (the catholic church here accepts many things that the evangelical church doesn't)
• "everybody can find God for themselves" - all believed in "God", but wanted to be able to find him in their own way, often they were disillusioned by hypocrisy in Christians and the Church
• Backslidden Christians - these people had left the church a while ago, but usually wanted to return, some were waiting for a better time, others were trying to follow Jesus but getting hung up on certain "rules"
• Teasers - who wanted to ridicule what we believed or make us feel uncomfortable by their lifestyle choices. After the initial confrontation they usually wanted to have a good chat and often asked deep questions
  

Although many of our conversations repeated themselves we needed to rely upon the Holy Spirit to really direct us to the real issue. One lady seemed like a typical backslidden Christian who wanted to have a bit more fun before returning to her heavenly Father, on talking more we discovered that she left the church when her husband was murdered and she just doesn't know how to find her way back to God.

Most people were very open to receive prayer in the street, some were hungry for someone to be interested in them. To be able to share with these people and offer them hope made the lack of sleep worthwhile.