Friday, March 31, 2006
Cauane
You will remember our various requests for prayer for Cauane, only child of Caramuru and Alessandra, over at the military base. Caramuru had attended our church for a period (brown shirt, well lit in the centre of the photo here) but we had urged him to go to the local Baptist Church when his wife started attending there. Over the last months they have had precious little chance to be in the church anyway.
The news is very sad. In the small hours of last Monday morning, Cauane died. The last weeks had been a story of steadily deteriorating health, with Cauane suffering terribly from the effects of very strong doses of chemotherapy, and yet the end was still a shock.
We got back to Floripa at 14.30 on Monday, went home by taxi, had a quick shower and returned to the airport area for the funeral at 16.00. Afterwards, Cora went on to the interment, while Andrew went directly to IBE, to try and gather his thoughts prior to teaching the Monday Introduction to Theology Group.
Pastor Jacques, from Carianos Baptist, spoke, and spoke very well. The scene was very much as described at other funerals, although the congregation was overwhelmingly Christian. Throughout the service mother and aunt sat on the floor beside the little body in the white coffin, hands clasped on her forehead, the rest of the family in a constant chain of human contact. How important is touch! And how desperate the moment of letting go, and of positioning the lid and screwing it down.
Caramuru is wonderfully firm and secure in his faith – the love of a Sovereign God buoys him up, even in the midst of terrible grief. Regarding Alessandra’s faith we are not so sure – there has been pressure from family and friends to believe that God would cure Cauane, and also to take her to a spiritist healer because a neighbour was cured of cancer by one – so please pray for her very much at this time of confusion. And that, in his mercy and his justice, God would put an end to this sort of false teaching in Brazil.
Andrew was not in the best state of mind and body for a three hour class on Monday night, but it went very well. But there was a kind of postcript to a sad day. One of our students, Jacina, a very keen Christian girl from the PIB (First Baptist) seemed rather down in class. She wasn't very well, but there was something else. Andrew asked her afterwards. Her boyfriends' brother had been killed in a motorbike crash on the Sunday. He was a backslidden Christian. Jacina was using a Bible in classs that used to be his: at times we touched on a passage where, in happier days, he had made notes in the margin. Hence the sadness.
Jacina made one comment that sunk deep, at the end of such a day; "There is so little time." May God give us grace to use it well.
You will remember our various requests for prayer for Cauane, only child of Caramuru and Alessandra, over at the military base. Caramuru had attended our church for a period (brown shirt, well lit in the centre of the photo here) but we had urged him to go to the local Baptist Church when his wife started attending there. Over the last months they have had precious little chance to be in the church anyway.
The news is very sad. In the small hours of last Monday morning, Cauane died. The last weeks had been a story of steadily deteriorating health, with Cauane suffering terribly from the effects of very strong doses of chemotherapy, and yet the end was still a shock.
We got back to Floripa at 14.30 on Monday, went home by taxi, had a quick shower and returned to the airport area for the funeral at 16.00. Afterwards, Cora went on to the interment, while Andrew went directly to IBE, to try and gather his thoughts prior to teaching the Monday Introduction to Theology Group.
Pastor Jacques, from Carianos Baptist, spoke, and spoke very well. The scene was very much as described at other funerals, although the congregation was overwhelmingly Christian. Throughout the service mother and aunt sat on the floor beside the little body in the white coffin, hands clasped on her forehead, the rest of the family in a constant chain of human contact. How important is touch! And how desperate the moment of letting go, and of positioning the lid and screwing it down.
Caramuru is wonderfully firm and secure in his faith – the love of a Sovereign God buoys him up, even in the midst of terrible grief. Regarding Alessandra’s faith we are not so sure – there has been pressure from family and friends to believe that God would cure Cauane, and also to take her to a spiritist healer because a neighbour was cured of cancer by one – so please pray for her very much at this time of confusion. And that, in his mercy and his justice, God would put an end to this sort of false teaching in Brazil.
Andrew was not in the best state of mind and body for a three hour class on Monday night, but it went very well. But there was a kind of postcript to a sad day. One of our students, Jacina, a very keen Christian girl from the PIB (First Baptist) seemed rather down in class. She wasn't very well, but there was something else. Andrew asked her afterwards. Her boyfriends' brother had been killed in a motorbike crash on the Sunday. He was a backslidden Christian. Jacina was using a Bible in classs that used to be his: at times we touched on a passage where, in happier days, he had made notes in the margin. Hence the sadness.
Jacina made one comment that sunk deep, at the end of such a day; "There is so little time." May God give us grace to use it well.
# posted by Andrew and Cora @ 11:04:00 am 
