A witness to change

Guest Blogger: Tom Pflederer (Josh's dad)

 The daily afternoon bath in the Amazon.
 
This is our third time visiting our kids in Brazil, and no trip has provided a more relentless flow of diverse experiences and impressions than this one.  After an exhausting and stressful flight, we spent our first few days in Manaus not settling in, but packing boxes and preparing to move out.  It was long enough to see both sides of city living--the congestion and the dirtiness and lack of security, balanced by the convenience in shopping and church options. 

The move was unlike any other I've seen--who moves by rope and pulley from the second floor, then by truck and boat and tractor and wagon?  We got a first hand look at Asas de Socorro, the aviation ministry where Josh works, and witnessed the dramatic arrival from Ohio of a donated Cessna.  I spent a day working with Josh, seeing what he does.  I shower and shave without hot water and--if I wait until after 9:00 pm, when generator that powers this community goes off--without light.  I sleep on the top bunk with Connie below me, usually sweating our way through the night with a battery-powered fan.

Lowering a heavy, Brazilian hardwood, wardrobe from the second floor balcony.

The transfer from truck to boat was made on the ramp used by the float planes when they are pulled from the lake to the hangar.

Arriving at the school.

Everyone chips in to help unloading the cargo from the boat and transferring it to Josh and Brin's new house.

And I got to meet Benny, the 71-year-old Pentcostal pastor/pilot who was the subject of one of Josh's blogs a couple months ago. Benny has survived a variety of crashes, is pretty casual about pre-flight safety checks, and flies without a seatbelt.  Nevertheless, Josh and I and a couple other mechanic friends accepted Benny's invitation to fly in to his fishing cabin on a remote lake in the jungle, where we caught around 70 pounds of peacock bass.

Pastor Benny piloting our fishing boat, his plane and floating house in the background.

Josh, Tom, Andrés and Joel with our haul (Andrés and Joel are fellow mechanics).

But more than anything else, I have been completely fascinated by this Puraquequara community (called PQQ).

PQQ was started in the early 50's not as a school, but as a print shop.  The ultimate goal of a tribal linguistic missionary is to make the Bible available in the language of a new people group, and for all of western Brazil, it is in PQQ that those Bibles are printed.  It is a far more complex task than one would think.

The rocks are a popular swimming spot at the school until the river comes up and covers them during the rainy season.

Mark, who has been the print shop guy here for almost 40 years, gave me a window into his world--developing unique fonts and keyboards for each tribal language, transitioning to computers in 1992, facing problems with layout and binding and production, struggling with changing technology and limited funds, working most of the time completely by himself, giving up the tribal work he was trained for and loved, spending his life printing books because there was no-one else to do it. 

Mark and his print shop (we're going to let the Cubs shirt slide, only because it was probably a donation).

Still, his shelves are full of copies of New Testaments in strange languages, most spoken only by a few thousand people, evidence of his faithful, unheralded plodding service over four decades.  Mark is a wealth of knowledge and history, but when we part he expresses appreciation for my interest.  He says hardly anyone ever asks questions about his work and really listens to his story.

Of all the perks and curiosities of living at PQQ-- the jungle sounds, candy drops from the sky, swimming in the Amazon, eating peacock bass grilled over an open fire--it's the people who live here who have captivated me most. Like Mark, most of them have some very personal connection with an indigenous people group somewhere in the Amazon Basin, where they have left their hearts and to whom they long someday to return.

Janelle, our nearest neighbor, grew up as a missionary kid in Colombia, living with a tribe there until her family was forced by the government to leave.  Her parents still live there in the city, still trying to minister to their tribe as they are able.  Lots of people here have some connection with the Yanamami Indians, whom we have been told used to have no word in their language for "forgiveness."  It was a graceless culture, based on retribution and consequences.  If your wife slept in too long, you would go and poke her with a hot stick.  Eroch got malaria five times during the four years he lived with the Kulina Indians, says it was the most difficult thing he ever did, and is living now at PQQ trying to figure out the next step.

I will not be here long enough to hear all the stories of the incredibly unique people who live at PQQ.  Brin says every one of them is like a one-in-a-thousand person in the U. S., treasures to be mined.  I am looking forward to hot showers and snuggling with my wife again.  But I am deeply grateful that the Lord in His providence and perfect timing has brought my son's family to this place.

The Pflederer's new house.

Flies from the heavens

Bennie's Cessna 206 docked on a river where we fished.

When I first met Pastor Bennie I wasn't sure what to think.  He's still a bit of an enigma, even after (or maybe because of) all the stories I've heard about him.  Like the time he tied a live pig on the top of one of his airplane's floats, only to find it dangling at the end of the rope mid-flight.  I'm not sure what happened to the pig.  Bennie, on the other hand, is still going strong after almost 50 years of missionary service in Brazil.  He and his wife have overseen the planting of over 400 churches in the Amazon basin.  Bennie was a float-plane pilot before he moved to Brazil from Canada, and he continues to use aviation to help train leaders, visit churches and oversee the many believers that live in the many backwaters of the Amazon river basin.  

For several years, Asas de Socorro has been maintaining Bennie's Cessna 206 and 172, both float-planes.  For the past couple months we have been rebuilding the floats of his 172.  It's a big job, drilling out and replacing around 8,000 rivets.  We've been working with a parts supplier out of Canada and when one of their employees learned about what we were doing he decided to come down to Brazil for 2 weeks and help us with the project.  While the rebuild project has been time consuming and tedious, it's such a practical way that we are able to help Bennie and his ministry - saving him tens of thousands in dollars. 

 

Jason, who visited from Canada to help with our project, myself, Joel, and Ryan, fellow mechanics, riveting on one of the floats.

All of the old skins and parts removed from the floats, most of the parts were replaced due to 40 years of wear and corrosion.

A couple of weeks ago my father-in-law Larry and I got the chance to go fishing with Pastor Bennie.  He appears to truly delight in taking visitors on trips to the interior in his plane to secret fishing spots that he has learned about over the years.  Being from Canada, he is a fly fisherman and ties his own flies.  Over the years he's come up with a fly that the Peacock Bass can't resist.  He told us how he always takes a can of the flies with him on flights.  When he sees someone paddling a canoe on a river below he swoops in low (probably scaring the daylights out of the unsuspecting paddler in the process) and drops a jar of his special flies.  In the can is a note inviting them to his church the next time they are in town.  He says he has lost track of how many people have come through their church and eventually come to know Christ, all because of the fishing flies from the sky.

  

Larry and I on our fishing expedition.

Sometimes I can lose sight of my role in the big picture of mission work here in Brazil.  I'm reminded though, that God has called each of us to do our part in reaching the lost, and no matter our role it is equally important.  Whether it is driving rivets into floats, tossing flies out the window or, like so many of you, supporting us through prayer and financial giving.