Church in the Castle

Mourão's main church forms part of the castle walls; it was moved up here when the castle needed larger ramparts, you can still see where it was before. On tiled pictures of the castle that decorate some of the houses, you can see two other buildings on the walls to the right of this photo - one was the jail and the other, right next to it, was the primary school. The school is now down in the town, and the closest jail is in Évora, 64km away. As is the closest hospital.

Lent verse today is from apocryphal additions to the text of Esther (in the original text, God is never mentioned), 4v17, where she pleads:
O my Lord, thou alone art our king: help me for I am destitute, and have no helper but thee.
This is why we pray daily for the situation in Ukraine... wonder whether President Zelenskiy, being Jewish, thinks of this story...


Gratefuls:
- Paul joining us as we walked round Mourão, praying blessings on the town
- talking to Kasia and Mira, back from Poland and France
- coffee with Steph, and then going to her house and meeting Theo from Holland, and his three cats