…knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. In last week’s installment of our verse-by-verse examination of the book of James, we noted that the author gives us a somewhat counter-intuitive instruction. In the face of trials, we are to “consider it joy”. Consider is a mind word, not a emotion word. James is…
As I’ve mentioned before, I see it as one of my duties to inform the rest of the world about one of Brazil’s best-kept secrets – the city of São Luís. Recently this promotional video from 1999 has surfaced, showing our lovely city as it looked back then. It appears to have been aimed at…
When I was a teenager I got a job at a local fast-food restaurant. As we lived out in the country, my parents graciously (perhaps a tad naively) allowed me to use the family car to make the communte. To get to work, I had to navigate a particularly curvy stretch of asphalt known as…
Here, once again, are some random snapshots of our life here in Brazil. These and others can be found on our Instagram feed. Itacyara’s unfailing artistic eye… View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andrew Comings (@andrewcomings) While we were on lockdown, this was a new reality. View this post on Instagram…
The following is the first in a series of devotionals I have given at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on Wednesday evenings. I will be posting new installments every Monday. Introduction In order to fully understand a book, it helps to know at least a little about the author. What James tells us about himself in…
I thought quarantine would mean that I got to read more books. Silly me. Still, I did manage to get some reading in. Here’s the list for May. And, if you’re interested, here’s my running tally for 2020. Beren and Lúthien by J.R.R. Tolkein, complied and edited by Christopher Tolkein I’m doing some reading into…
Our church has always been a singing church. Since the pandemic hit several weeks ago, we have been having our services online, and whatever its strengths, Zoom is not conducive to congregational music. That hasn’t stopped us from singing, however. Here is a video of four young ladies from our church, ministering to an online…
We’ll start out with this blast from the past. A colleague found one of these at a conference, and sent me this picture. We made a great team, Norman and I! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andrew Comings (@andrewcomings) We had an unexpected visitor at camp recently… View this post…
I thought I was going to finish more books this month. Still, I guess seven isn’t bad when one of them was The Iliad The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis In our lunchtime reading around the table we finally finished “Voyage of the Dawn Treader”. I enjoyed it more this time around,…
Franciélio, one of the members of our camp development team, and I went to camp on Tuesday and returned on Thursday. We needed to purchase some more materials for our builders, and shop around for contractors for the next phase of the project. Here are some pictures of some of our activities. One of our…