We'll get this right yet

Call me a glutton for punishment, but we went camping again this weekend. I’m glad we didn’t give up on it after our last experience. This time was much more pleasant. Our group was the only one there this time, and they didn’t have an obnoxious sound system. We were also able to pitch our tent away from the group, adding to our peace and quiet. Here were some highlights to our trip:

• I’m not sure of the science behind it, but I’m sure a full moon 3 degrees from the equator is brighter than back home.

• Ava saying to Brin, “Mom, look at this behind!” while pointing at a beehive. Brin, alone with a group of Brazilians was the only one that could enjoy the moment. She didn’t think it would translate very well.

• Listening to fish splash around in a container, only yards away from our tent, as we fell asleep. They were awaiting their destiny of becoming lunch the next day.

• Watching some guys prepare those same fish the next day by cutting off their fins and gutting them (and then cooking them whole in a sort of soup).

• • 

This is Camping?

Loading the essentials

Lesson #153: camping in Brazil is not like camping back home.

I took Ella and Ava on what I thought would be a relaxing camping trip to the beach. We went with a group from a church here in Altamira. I should have known when a large (I stress “large”) speaker box showed up to be loaded onto the boat (it was brought on a horse drawn cart along with a car battery to power it).

Once at the beach (after an hour long boat ride with music blaring at one end and the monotonous sound of an unmuffled, single cylinder diesel motor banging at the other), I began putting up my tent. As I did so, I noticed the arrival of two other large boats with enough people crammed on board to make the coast guard flip out. By evening the crowd had grown enough that I soon realized this was going to be no quiet getaway.

That evening, I lay in my tent reading a book titled “On Being a Missionary”. The chapter I was ironically reading was talking about how all new missionaries inevitably struggle with some aspect of the culture that just annoys them. As I read, the group next to ours was having a fullblown party. The sound system was cranking and they even had a microphone that someone randomly yelled into. Our group’s sound system was cranked all the more in defiance of our neighbor’s (not unlike some giant, twisted version of dueling banjos). Just outside my tent a crowd had gathered, I’m not sure what they were doing but whatever it was it must have been hilarious. Over all this, I was able to hear some wailing – there was a group of young people singing worship songs and someone was really getting into it. This, or some amalgam thereof, went on pretty much all night.

In spite of this foreign and uncomfortable world, I was able to have a conversation with the pastor. He shared with me about how his father drowned on the river, not that far from where we were. He was a fisherman and he was out by himself. They looked for him for 3 days before they found his body. Through my partial understanding of Portuguese I was able to understand the pain he was sharing with me, and as a result, made a real connection with him.

I’ll never understand the Brazilians’ affection for loud and obnoxious music. But I know that deep down they are the same as me. And I guess that’s why cross-cultural missions works, not because of the differences, but because of the similarities.

Our group's arrival at the beach

I See London, I See France...

Ella has a book that highlights children from around the world and their lifestyles. As Brin and she were reading through it they laughed when they saw the girl from Brazil. For some reason she wore only underwear in the picture. While this was mildly offensive to me since no other child from any country was clothed like that, I have to admit that it is a fairly accurate portrayal of kids in our neighborhood. Brin was amused by how it reminded her of Mia and how easily she has embraced this practice. She prefers her skivvies to just about any other outfit. We usually don’t mind, it just means fewer clothes that need to be washed. If it persists though, it may become a problem as she gets older, but if we’re lucky she’ll end up being highlighted in a book about needy children.

Life moves on...

The last few days we have been able to rest and get caught up on few things. While we enjoyed playing host to several people for the last month or so, it’s been nice to be able to get back into a more normal routine. Here are some of the events we have experienced recently, or will be soon:

• We said goodbye to my parents and sister who have been living with us for the last month.
• We saw Bud and Suzanne add a fourth child to their family (we didn’t literally “see” the event)
• Ava, Ella and I (Josh) will be leaving for an overnight camping at a beach with a youth group from a church here in town. We are praying about getting involved with leading this group as the missionaries (the Hansens) that work with this church are on their way home for furlough.
• Next week we’ll be moving into another family’s home (the Bergens) while they are home on furlough for 3 months.

The Muturao

The Muturao church is the youngest of our churches here in Altamira. Only a few years old, they still don’t have a building, meeting instead in the pastors garage. We visited the church a few weeks ago with my parents. The pastor, after learning that my dad used to be a minister, asked if he wanted to preach. Last night he did just that. And Cleide, who continues to improve her English, translated for the first time. His message was well received and Cleide did a great job translating.

Tomorrow we take my Mom and Dad and Ro to the airport. We’ve had a great time with them for the past month and it will be sad to see them go.

River Stories

Guest blog by Tom Pflederer

Porto De Moz
Porto De Moz is a small city about ten hours by boat north of Altamira, and Josh and I joined a group last week who were going down to visit there. It’s another weird thing to talk about going down to a place that is north, but around here the direction of the river trumps the directions of the rest of the world.

I take a travel book about Brazil with me to read, and I learn about who the bandierantes were before Toyota named Josh’s truck after them. They were Brazil’s first real adventurers, responsible for exploring Brazil’s interior, raping, pillaging, murdering and enslaving most of this country's Indian population and for extending Brazil’s border deep into the territories of the Spanish-speaking countries that now ring the continent to the north and west.

The jungle and forest that line the river are dense and intriguing, full of life, unfamiliar to us, but every landmark along the way long since memorized by the missionaries who travel with us. Indeed, my friend Luke Huber, who first dreamed 30 years ago of taking the Gospel to the 40,000 villages in the Amazon Basin and was known to some of the missionaries on this trip, has also been on this river.

The Amazon Basin covers some 3.6 million square miles, and every missionary down here is full of stories about exploring and surveying and assessing the needs and resources of this immense area. Bud tells me one day of trying to drive six years ago from Altamira to Porto De Moz on a road that runs parallel to the river. He and three friends take off on motorcycles on a trip that should take about six hours if the road really exists.

Six hours brings them to the middle of nowhere. The road has narrowed to a path and finally disappeared to nothing. They are no longer driving their bikes, but lifting them over and through fallen trees and hacking their way through dense jungle. They estimate they are about halfway between the two cities, they have no food or water, and night is falling. They clear a place to sleep and hang hammocks. In the middle of the night, it rains for three hours, and they huddle under a small plastic tarp. They see the eyes of animals peering at them from the woods around them.

They continue the next day, hacking and heaving and hoping, until they finally find a path again. Eventually they come to a house and beg for water, and then a village, where they are invited in and fed. The village has a generator and someone has a TV. They are asked to explain the news that has broken into the regular soap operas that everyone watches. Airplanes are flying into buildings. Why? Bud thinks at first he’s watching some kind of science fiction movie. But the date is September 11, 2001, and Bud has to explain through his own shock that it’s not a movie.

We visit a swamp village, eight or ten houses built on posts above the water, with a boardwalk in front. Families here live their entire lives surrounded by water, fishing, swimming, raising water buffalo, traveling everywhere by canoe. One of the oldest churches our friends have planted is here, built solidly into the row of houses.

I visit the patriarch of this village with three other men. I am introduced as the guy who knew Luke when he was a teenager. The patriarch, Joao Paulo, brightens immediately. It was Luke who first talked to him about Jesus and who brought him a VHF radio from the US that enabled him for the first time in his life to communicate with people in town in an emergency. Does he still have the radio, I ask. No, he says, it died. But he still has the antenna that Luke helped him put up. We embrace for a picture in front of it.

That night we worship together in the little swamp church above the water with Joao Paulo, his children, and grandchildren and neighbors. Afterwards, he pulls from his Bible a prayer card from 1992, showing Luke and Christine and all their children, two years before Luke fell out of the sky in his ultra-light aircraft and went to be with his Lord.

After church, we are invited into the home next door for cafezinho and water buffalo cheese, but I am still thinking about meeting Luke and Joao Paulo someday in a place that is even more beautiful and other-worldly than this village, worshipping the Lord together in one tongue, exploring the wonders of eternity with Jesus.

Filters and Followers

My dad and I just got back from a river trip. We were able to see more of the work that is going on out on the rivers (you’ll hear more from him later). One of the things we did was get a tour of the water filter project. The Xingu Mission has 3 missionary families in the river town of Porto de Moz, about 12 hours downriver from Altamira. One of their ministries is building and delivering bio-filters, which are given to people living on the rivers who have no source of clean water.

The water filters not only solve a practical problem in the lives of these river people, but it also builds a bridge to that community, often leading them to invite us to plant a church there. Our work in many communities that now have churches were first begun with the gift of a water filter.

The filters are built out of concrete. They work in much the same way that God designed groundwater to be purified. Layers of sand and gravel along with bacteria, filter out 95% of the impurities. For about $50, the filters can be built and delivered to a remote family. You can read more about the water filter project on the Xingu Mission website.

airy words

Josh and Tom should be arriving home tomorrow after spending 5 days out on the river. They went with a big group, short on women. I am anxious to hear how the trip went and also anxious to just chat with Josh. Before he left we had one of those rare moments in our marriage where I was discouraged and piled high with rubble and when I needed Josh to rescue me, he couldn't because he was under his own pile of rubble. The rare part is not that I was discouraged, it was that Josh was too. So in my usual way of coping I spent an entire day in bed avoiding anything that might annoy or discourage or frustrate me. I missed a breakfast with a visitor from Canada, lunch with a local pastor and then later that evening our 4th of July party. I was not in the mood for fireworks. Nor God for that matter. I told Him he surely had forgotten me. And also mused to myself that maybe God really did not care, and maybe He is not even listening. I taunted Him to speak. The conversation was not all that different from the one Ava has with my bedroom wall when I send her to my room for some discipline. In hopes of staving off punishment, Ava turns her back to me and tells the wall, "I am sorry. I didn't know. My mom is being mean to punish me because I am sorry now." Ava knows she's not talking to the wall, the words are for my benefit. So even if I had ugly thoughts, I knew all along, yes God is listening and yes, He cares. And I am forced to allow Him to heal my broken heart because Josh certainly cannot. This is the way it should be, wouldn't you say? But, wow is it painful.

A Long Distance Birthday

Our girls were very excited to wish their cousin Maci, whom they've never met, a happy 2nd birthday. Maci and her sister Ana were adopted from Ethiopia by my sister Sonya about a month after we left for Brazil. Below is a picture of Maci. You can check out their story at their blog.

-JTP

White-water Rafting

Guest blog by Tom Pflederer
Suzanne, the missionary wife who lives next door, walks by one day as I sit reading under the veranda. We engage in brief conversation about her life in this town for the last 12 years. Like lots of people who live here, she also wants to know what we think of Brazil.

We are still noticing lots of little things that are different. Buying milk in a bag. Hiring a man to mow the entire yard with a weed whacker (It took him two days.) Paying a $1.50 for a haircut.

Doing church is a little different here. Most obvious, of course, is the steep learning curve to really be able to communicate in Portuguese about spiritual things. On a of couple occasions someone interprets for us at church, so we get a clue what’s going on. But last Sunday I had only Josh—who is still struggling with basic conversation—to rely on. At the end of the sermon, he leaned over to me and said, The pastor made four points, of which I understood none.

My working hypothesis about animals in church is that when dogs run through, they are chased out, but cats seem to be allowed to stay, although it may also be related to whether you have an actual building for your church or you meet in your garage. At a village service on our river boat trip, a gecko dropped out of the rafters onto my shoulder and, before I could even react, hopped off and away. Children wander in and out. People sometimes appear to be having side conservations during the sermon.

But there is a level of freedom and expression and passion that is deep and moving during the worship and prayer time. Interpretive dancers are usually a part of the worship team up front. Everyone of every age seems to be completely involved, often openly weeping, singing with great enthusiasm, eyes closed, swaying to the music. People often respond to the preaching with Amen’s and tears and coming forward at the end of the service.

On our boat trip, as we arrived at the little village of Vila Nova, we saw a passenger boat already parked on the banks. We learned that 20 – 25 people had come from Vitoria, a town about an hour down-river where there is already an established church. In fact, they had not only come, but had brought with them a worship team and, at considerable inconvenience, a sound system, complete with several microphones, a sound board, and a couple of huge speakers. By the time we arrived, they were already set up and practicing.

It was not until the service was over and they were packing up in the dark to leave for home that I began to catch some perspective on what we had experienced. I thought this little group of believers had done something really special, coming all this way to present an evangelistic program at this village, and I thought we ought to go and thank them. Brin said it’s not necessary, that they would not understand why they were being thanked. They were only doing what every evangelical church in this area does all the time. It's part of their genetic code.

Over and over, once or twice or three times a month, at their own initiative, by boat, by car, by motorbike, in the back of a truck, the believers in these little churches pack up and go. If someone knows someone who is the only believer in some village an hour away, they help them start a cell group. In cell groups, people hear the Gospel for the first time and believe. The cell group invites a church to hold evangelistic services in their village. Others believe, other cell groups are started, the cell groups come together to become a church, and the pattern repeats itself.

I ask Suzanne if she has any desire to move back to the US. She pauses, and then comes and sits down. Her eyes sparkle in the Amazon sunlight. Ministry in the US, she says, is like swimming in the community pool. Every day here is like going white-water rafting. She smiles. I’ll stay, she says.

A Frontier Wedding

Guest blog by Tom Pflederer

Altamira is a frontier town—isolated, undeveloped, surrounded by tens of thousands of square miles of mostly unexplored and sparsely inhabited land. Estimates of the population of this city run from 40,000 to 70,000. Bud estimates about 15% of the people are wealthy (by Brazilian standards), another 15% middle class, and the rest poor.

Alcoholism and sexual license are common. Marriage is not valued, babies are born out of wedlock, and there is a high degree of unfaithfulness. It is common for a 14 or 15 year old girl to move in with a man who is ten or more years older. The unemployment rate is high, those who do work usually just find day jobs, and most people are just trying to survive from day to day.

Somehow the community seems to work at least at some level. People from the outlying areas on the river and by road bring their produce to market on Saturdays and Sundays, by canoe, by horse and cart, hoping to barter for what they need or to come home with a few reias for medicine or school supplies. The family structure is strong. A typical household includes multiple generations, with the home divided into several small “apartments.” Children born to single parents are absorbed into the family community and raised by grandparents. The two or three people in a household who do have jobs try to support the rest of the family.

Rick, the mission director, tells me the reason people don’t get legally married is complex. First, it is culturally acceptable not to marry. Second, it’s expensive (a marriage license costs 250 reias—about $150.) Third, many people are functionally illiterate, uninformed about the law, and lack the relationships to find out basic information.

For example, how do you find out what office to go to to get a marriage license if you can’t read and have never known anyone who was legally married? Rick goes off on a little tangent, explaining that poverty goes far deeper than not having the basic needs for life. It is also about not having information and not knowing enough people who can give it to you. Rick says the most basic definition of poverty involves not a lack of things but a lack of relationships (or connections).

But following Jesus introduces new ideas into this frontier town. Men stop spending the little money they have on cigarettes and alcohol and begin to try to provide for their families. People are introduced to new teaching that honors marriage and to a community that supports it. They meet people who share information that they never knew before. The mission keeps a collection of old wedding dresses donated by people in the US and sometimes provides financial help to pay for the marriage license.

By far the most common kind of wedding in this town is the mass wedding of people who have been living together, become Christians, and want to become legally married. Women rummage through the dresses, men find suits to wear, and the couples pool their money to buy one simple wedding cake. Last night Connie and I had the privilege of attending such a wedding of four couples. One of the couples are the parents of Angelica, the girl who works for Bud and Suzanne. I took a little teasing from my son for attending the wedding of people I did not know and in a language I did not understand. But for me it was deeply meaningful to see this evidence of changed lives first hand.

Rick says he knows of only about four couples in their twelve years in this town who have actually “done it right”—actually getting married before living together. Still, the church is slowly developing an alternative culture which may eventually set the standard.

On the way home, Brin, who celebrated her own twelfth anniversary just two weeks ago, says the mass wedding was particularly sentimental for her. A bunch of years ago she sent her own wedding dress to Bud and Suzanne to be part of the collection. Last night, Angelica’s mother was wearing it.