The last few months have been an exciting and challenging time for Ray of Hope, with much work, many problems, but God continually challenging us to continue in our work and seek new ways to help the people in the jungle.

In the beginning of February we had a great opportunity to continue the work with Kingsway kids to help train adults about how to affectively engage and teach their children, to walk in a relationship with God. We travelled on 2 trips down the Solomoes and Negro River giving seminars for adults and doing camps for the kids. It has been exciting to see that not only Christians are finding these seminars helpful but also Non Christians are relating to the lessons that can be learnt with regards to how to teach morality and education to their children.

Ray of Hope working with our foreign donators has been undertaking an exciting project to build new houses for many of our children with special needs. These families with special needs kids endure many difficulties in most cases without any help from their communities or government. Their communities often consider them outcasts and believe God has cursed them. Most recently when a group of Ray of Hope volunteers travelled to paint the new house of one of our special needs kid Debora, the other villagers were shocked. One neighbour of theirs asked, “Why would all of you come all this way to help this family?” So it has been exciting to have the opportunity to bless these families, help give them a fresh sense of hope for the future and demonstrate God’s love for them. This work is currently continuing as work starts to build a new house for triplets with special needs.

The Amazon Rivers are currently extremely high for this time of year and they are expected to rise further over the next couple of months. Consequently many communities and families face the prospect of their houses, schools and churches being flooded and having to search for alternative housing for a considerable amount of time until the waters withdraw. Many families on the river also face the threat of becoming increasingly isolated without canoes to get basic help, food and clean water. Health care is extremely important when the river is so high, as the likelihood of diseases such as malaria increase as the river rises. With the needs of such families increasing, the work of the pastors becomes increasingly important in helping their communities. We recently, due to a donation by an American pastor, had the great joy of donating a speedboat to one of the pastors Ray of Hope supports; his work had become increasingly difficult as his speed boat was stolen.

“Terra da Paz” the community centre we are constructing in the jungle is fast developing, although exciting to see, it has also brought with it much work and many problems. The main structure of the building however is now complete, and work is now progressing quickly inside the main building. We are excited by the prospect of seeing how God will use this great resource he has given to us to help meet the needs of the jungle people for many years to come. Please pray that God would continue to protect the workers there, as their work can often be extremely difficult and exhausting in the climate of the Amazon.

Please pray for wisdom and favour as we take the message of God’s hope and salvation to the communities and try to actively seek ways to improve their lives and give them a sense of hope for the future. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support, without you none of the work we undertake would be possible.

With love
The Ray of Hope team

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