On the 28th of February 2001, Buck and Luciene moved to the Amazon Basin of Brazil. We lived in Macapá, right on the equator. Why would a web designer give up his career and take his family from their comfortable life in Columbus, Ohio, USA, to live on the Amazon River? We came with a vision to save the Amazon, to tell people about Jesus, and plant a Vineyard church. We have planted a church, and we are turning it over to the national leaders, heading back to the States in Sept. 2009.

 
24 April 2003
I haven’t been able to get online all day. Very frustrating.

I finally got the thank you’s mailed today. What a relief. Very late, almost time to start the ones for April.

I have been working on an online photo album. I was working on it last night at about 1 am, had it almost done, tweaked it a little bit and wiped out all the work I had just done, had to redo it today. That was a real bummer. It turned out better though, I think. I just wish I could get online to upload it.

I am so grateful to C & E, who made it possible for us to have a good digital camera, and have these digital images to share with everyone. I am starting to get the hang of the digital world. I have lost some images, I guess in the transfer they got truncated or something, and I am still playing around with the image size, etc. It is fun though, I have started taking more photos again. C & E, you glacier loving snowbirds, thank you from the hot tropical Amazon, and God bless!


23 April 2003

It rained today, like it can only rain in a tropical rainforest area. Buckets, like three gallons to the square inch per minute it seems like sometimes. Makes it hard to drive, or to walk, because with that much water laying everywhere, you can’t tell where the potholes are, or how deep they are. I saw a man almost fall down, fell into a hole, he was just walking along the side of the street, and it looked like a shallow puddle, then boom, he’s going in, and stumbling.

My brother-in-law was riding his motorcycle one time, right after a hard rain, and right at an intersection, as he was slowing almost to a stop, going through a big puddle, bang, he and the bike are in the hole, literally, the hole was that big. It was very fortunate that he was going slow, or it could have been fatal. We all laugh about it now, but if he had been going fast, the story may have ended much differently.

I worked hard on doing thank you’s for our supporters the last couple of days, and was very happy that they were done, so I could take them to the post office and get them sent out. I also had two bills that had to be paid at different banks.

Here, a wait in a line at the bank can mean hours. The girls were in school so Luciene, Josiah, and I, as well as a friend named Luciana, went so that she could wait in one line at one bank, and Luciene and I could wait in the other. We were so fortunate, because of the hard rain people didn’t go out, so the wait was only about 15 minutes. That is really unusual, really a blessing.

Afterward we went to the post office to mail the thank you’s, only to be told that they couldn’t accept them, because they were too small. I had brought some boxes of thank you’s from the States, but they don’t meet Brazilian postal code. So, we had to do all the addresses again, and I went and ordered a rubber stamp, so I don’t have to hand write our return address on all of them again. It will be handy in the future also. So it will be another day or two until the thank you’s go out. Then another two weeks until people get them.

Xexel is still telling people that he plans to steal our dog. I found myself getting very angry at him, very frustrated that there was nothing that I can do. I started thinking about giving him a good butt whooping, but then caught myself. I mean, that is not usually the best way to win someone to the Lord J I plan to go to his house, and talk to his parents. I talked to someone today that said that they would take me there, and show me where he lives. I have tried to reach out to him, but he takes it as further weakness. He feels like he can get away with anything now, since I didn’t call the police, or beat him up. He said that his dream, what he wants to be when he grows up is a policeman.




posted by Eduardo Buck at Thursday, April 24, 2003