Mia

Mia said something very insightful at the table the other day. I had mentioned doing something “when we go home”, referring to our furlough in July, and she stopped me saying, “Dad, you have to stop saying ‘when we go home’ because I don’t know what that means because this is our home.” Brin and I remember learning in our training about how missionary kids feel like that have no home, being stuck between two cultures. For us, we have a lifetime of memories from “back home”, but for Mia especially, it’s just a blur. She even refers to America as Africa. We’re not sure where she picked that up, but we usually just laugh when she says something about “when we go to Africa”. It can be scary thinking about all the future struggles we’ve brought upon our kids by choosing to live here. But in the end I realize I can’t shelter my kids from the pain of the world, all I can do is teach them where to turn in the face of it, and trust God with them.

Speaking of trusting God and Mia. After talking to my friend Dan who is an orthopedic surgeon, we’ve decided that Mia’s leg probably has a fracture. About a week ago she injured it while jumping on a trampoline and since then hasn’t been able to put weight on it. X-rays came back negative, but that doesn’t necessarily rule out a fracture. She has not been in pain, and seems to be bothered very little by it. It’s been a little bit more stressful on her parents, but we’re learning to trust God like she trusts us. I just wish this came as naturally for us as it does for her.

Furlough Calendar

I've just added a link, at the top of the bar to the right, to our official "furlough calendar". I will keep this calendar up to date, so check back as we are continuing to add to it. Just a note, I've only added our schedule for the dates when we will be in the States (July - Sep) so you must navigate to the correct month on the left side of the page.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

a pleasant run-in

This was a slow weekend, at least at the start of it. Now on the tail end we have different thoughts. The first story involves a spontaneous trip to a village called Grota Seca. It starts out when Josh was at a store and ran into “Mr. Z” from the village of Surubim. If you remember, he is the community leader that, after spending some time with him, Josh recognized that he would probably make a good pastor. At the time, however, he had not put his faith in Christ. (See this post for a refresher)

Josh offered to give Mr. Z a ride to where he was staying while in Altamira and on the way he jubilantly announced that he had accepted Christ. The conversation progressed to a plan to visit his mother in Grota Seca right after lunch. So the whole family, along with Alison, Ronaldo and Mr. Z jumped in the car for a trip. Even though calling Altamira a city is a stretch, it feels like it when you get out into the surrounding villages. It was tranquil really.

We met Mr. Z’s mom and explored her jungle homestead. She gave me a tongue lashing for not having boys, or at least that is what we understood. Our conversational Portuguese is improving, yet we still have moments where we think they could not have just said what we think they said. Mr. Z’s mom told about her 16 children and how one died because of “piun” bites. Yes, piuns are a nasty little bug whose bite often draws blood, but we hadn’t heard of a death by piun. So, who knows what she actually said.

We traveled to other people’s homes where Ronaldo prayed, listened, chatted and invited them to a service the next weekend. We are back to pioneer days where you actually have to go to someone’s house to inform the family of a meeting. The girls played everywhere we went, ate wild passion fruit and listened to the distant sounds of a troop of howler monkeys. Like I said, it was tranquil.

This morning we woke up to the sounds of Mia yelling to use the toilet. Why? Because she can’t walk. On Friday she was playing on the homemade trampoline at the Bergen’s when another girl sent her flying higher than was comfortable. She landed with a scream and hasn’t walked since. Pain has been controlled but she refuses to bear weight on her knee. We even threatened that if she didn’t try to walk we would have to take her to a doctor, and she remembers with horror her last trip to the hospital. But she simply could not walk, so now 48 hours later, we immobilized her leg and will take her for an x-ray tomorrow morning. It might be a growth plate injury or just a hairline fracture, but lets all pray that it is nothing at all.

Ronaldo shows Mr. Z's mom photos of her family in Surubim (where Mr. Z lives). Most likely it has been years since she has seen her family, even though they only live about 4 hours away.

Brin carries the injured Mia.

Bugs

Ava had a swollen foot one night. I didn't know why so I prayed for it, elevated it and put her to bed. The next morning she was itching it like crazy and Cleide noticed this and looked at her foot. She has a “pulga,” she announced! Now home to the dreaded foot flea, Ava was the first person in our family to have a bug pulled out of her foot. She referred to it as her “worm” and screamed as if it were an elephant we were pulling out. At the time we had about 5 brasilians hanging out at our house, i am quite certain they had never witnessed such drama over a pulga.

That was only the beginning of a day filled with Brazilian critters. If you want to see more pictures click here.

Ready or not

We’ve got a fun update! We will be coming home for almost 3 months, July – September. The more we talk about our plans, the more excited we get (and consequently, the fuller our calendar gets).

So many of you have been following our lives through this blog. We look forward to seeing you face-to-face and reconnecting with you in person. We will be spending most of our time either in St. Louis or Tremont, as well as a trip out east to Brin’s family in NC. We plan on attending Midwest Camp, for those of you who know what that generic name refers to. Please talk to us soon if you’d like to arrange a time to get together (by the way, Brin especially misses conversations in English and Josh is looking forward to a good Starbucks). Ella has started a list of things that she wants to do (including have an American Doll tea party, whatever the heck that is, and swim with the dolphins at Seaworld – any guesses as to which one she’ll get to do?) and the other day Mia filled a water bottle to take on our trip home. Seriously though, we would love to meet up with as many of you as we can.

Looking for another Emily

Emily celebrated a birthday here in Brasil. That always makes for fun memories. Some Brasilians friends showed up for a lunch of sloppy joes topped with cabbage and mayo and a pasta side dish. Often birthdays, at least we have found, involve some sort of an egg fight. This time, the Brasilians took mercy on Emily and so the only eggs she saw where the ones on top of the pasta.

Emily has been with our family not quite 3 months. And in a lot of ways it seems longer as our family has lived in 3 different places since her arrival. But already we are making flight plans for her to go home as well as our own family’s plans for furlough.

Emily joining our family has been huge. Just the other day I was reminded of the difference having her with us has made. Early Tuesday morning, my neighbor came over and needed a ride to the hospital with her sick newborn. Which worked out great because as it turned out I was planning on volunteering that morning in the hospital anyway. So I just went in a little early, and then when I was done working I went back to the clinic to see if she needed a ride home and I discovered that over 3 hours later she still had not seen a doctor. So I waited with her. Now that is not the sort of thing I could do regularly if I were home schooling my children without help. Home schooling our children is a huge part of my responsibility as a missionary. And I am ok with that. However, looking to our family’s future, I have tested the value of having a home school helper and I am so eager to see who will be my next “Emily.”

Parts of me, maybe the ugly parts, have a compulsion to campaign aggressively to find another home school helper. I could promote the opportunity to live in another culture. I could suggest that 6 months in Brazil could springboard one into full-time foreign ministry. It would broaden horizons. I could say a lot of things in eagerness for my next home school helper. But I'll just say this, Emily met a huge need for our family, and without question God guided her to our family at just the right time with just the right skills and gifts. And so as I write this, my hope is that someone is reading this and either they themselves, or someone they know, will be prompted to be our next home school helper. And I can't wait to hear from you.

Here are a few things that Emily has done since arriving…

~accompanied us on trips
~home schooled Ella and also gave her guitar and piano lessons
~assisted the teachers at CDR, an NGO our mission runs that give English and computer classes
~led worship for the missionaries
~attended youth events

To get Emily’s take on her time with our family here, read her blog.

A Family Reunion

Alison preparing to lead worship at the church service.

My friend Alison has an aunt and cousins that live out on the river. It's only a 4 hour boat ride, but he hasn't seen them for 5 years. He told me his uncle died two years ago from consuming rat poison. They weren't sure how he got rat poison. When Alison told the story I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask. He seemed satisfied with the rat poison explanation, so I decided to keep my questions to myself. Anyway, last week I was able to go with Alison and his dad, along with several others, to visit his aunt's village. Our reason for going was Augustino, Alison' s dad, wanted to go and tell his sister and her family about his newfound faith in Jesus.

I have grown to really appreciate Alison's family. They have all put their faith in Christ and have become very involved in our church. Augustino, runs a refrigeration business and he has helped me out several times when I'm in need of a shop. I use the word shop very loosely however, because it is surprisingly ill-equipped for a guy who builds industrial freezers and ice makers by hand.

For me, this was not just another trip. I was excited to experience this through my friendship with Alison. I began putting myself in Alison and Augustino's place. What would it be like to not have seen your sister for 5 years, and then try to explain to her what happened that changed your life? Would I be excited? Nervous? Would it be awkward?

Before we even got on shore we could see they were expecting us. They were busy butchering a cow and getting ready for a feast. I wasn't sure how much they knew about our visit, or if they knew Augustino was bringing his pastor and two missionaries along. I did find out that they were contacted ahead of time by phone. They are able to call family when they make occasional trips into Souzel, a larger town nearby.

Irregardless of the expectations, we were received well. Adamir, one of the Brazilian pastors with us, shared that he has passed this village many times and he now hopes to start making regular visits there. Two of Alison's cousins accepted Christ and they all seemed grateful for our visit. I look forward to seeing what will develop in the future.

At one point on our journey I was reminded of how the gospel spread in the book of Acts. Particularly how entire families came to believe in Christ. It must have been something like this. The boats are different, the body of water is different, the people are different. But the message is the same, and it is still being spread in the same way.

-JTP

Augustino helps out with the butchering.

Alison's aunt.
One of Alison's 4 cousins (all boys).

(All pictures taken by Bud Simon)

Don't Beat Your Donkey

Pastor Ademir (in red)

It’s refreshing to get out on the river and see the work that’s being done there. Recently most of my trips have been to communities on the roads. But there’s something about being out on the river that is rejuvenating. I went with a team from Canada to help with translating. We spent a few days with Pastor Ademir, the pastor of our church in Souzel, a town of about 8,000. He overseas about 5 river churches that are at different stages, some are only a handful of believers in a village, others actually have buildings and meet regularly. His oversight includes visiting them on a monthly basis.

Ademir’s story is a story of sacrifice. He used to be the associate pastor of our largest church in Altamira. A few years ago he felt God calling him to Souzel. The contrast between Altamira and Souzel is almost as great as that between Altamira and the States. He stepped down not only in living standard, but also in salary and position.

The story of Souzel somewhat parallels that of Ademir. What was once a thriving community with 7 sawmills fueling the local economy is now struggling with the closing of nearly all of it’s sawmills. Ademir’s wife used to run a clothing store to supplement their income, but recently closed down the business due to the local economy.

I’m sure Ademir feels like Brin and I do sometimes, that it would be easier to pack things up and move back to where it’s comfortable. I’m sure he wonders if the struggles are worth it. And yet he chooses to stay. I hope I can have the faith of Ademir. That I can see the eternal value of things and not the temporal.

I was reading about the prophet Balaam today. Balak offered him many riches (comfort, security, higher living standard) in exchange for cursing God’s people. The choice was clear, the easy way out or doing what God called him to do. I only wish I had a donkey that would talk to me to help clarify where God is leading.

A big step for a small church

The day before I left for my river trip we attended the first service that the Muturão church met in it’s new building. You may remember the Muturão church as the “garage” church were my dad (Tom Pflederer) spoke when he was here. As a church plant, in a neighborhood in Altamira, it has outgrown the garage of the pastor where they had been meeting. With only limited seating, the standing-room-only crowds would usually pour out into the street where most people had only an obstructed view and were vulnerable to rain.

The “move-in” date is not necessarily synonymous with the “completion date”. The building is still without running water and a bathroom, the floor is only half completed and the lights are comprised of two temporarily hung bulbs.

None of this, however, stopped the congregation from celebrating what they surely viewed as nothing short of God’s miraculous provision. The 3-year-old church is made up of a mostly under 25-year-olds, with limited to no income. Although most of the financing for the project came from North America, they certainly sacrificed what little resources they did have.

Other posts about the Muturão church:

A Garage Church

Philanthropy

Hose-eating rats and more

Moving always provides a good share of unexpected and unforeseen incidents. We thought we’d share some of our favorites from the past week or so…

- A rat built a home in the bottom of the washing machine. Don’t worry, I watched him run over the wall into the neighbors yard, not before he chewed his way through one of the hoses. I suppose it takes a hungry rat to eat a rubber hose.

- I’m now referring to the Internet situation as a saga. It pains me too much to tell the whole story, and it would only bore you. Remember dial-up? I’m now dreaming of dial-up. What they call broadband here is the speed of dial-up back home (they oversell the bandwidth and so there are too many people trying to use the same server). The service we have now is pathetic. I can occasionally get on long enough to send and receive email, but not after 7:30 am and before 11:00 pm.

- We realized we needed to re-grout the tile in one of rooms. I hired a guy and when he showed up he had no tools. I think he used a key to scrape out the old grout and then he asked if I had an old flip-flop (in case you don’t know, the flip-flop is the standard Brazilian footwear), he actually said something more like this, “go get an old flip-flop” (of course, everyone has an old flip-flop). As per his instructions, I then cut it up into 4 smaller sections so that he could use it to trowel on the new grout.

- It’s been fun to see our girls get to know the neighbors. One family in particular is large hanging around in front of their house most of the days. Fortunatly for them, they are either oblivious to, or just care, that they don’t exactly blend in with their surroundings…

Doing the Limbo

For those of you wondering if we have been stuck somewhere on the TransAmazon Highway for the past few days, we were only stuck for about 5 hours. We jumped right into moving into our new house as soon as we got back. In fact, after arriving around 3:00 am, Brin was up at 7:30 packing stuff and getting ready to move. She did, however, hit the wall about 12 hours later (not literally).

The highlight of our adventure on the way home had to have been the delay we experienced about 2 hours from home when we came upon a stretch of road where 3 trucks were stuck in the mud (it was nighttime so no pictures). We thought we were going to have to spend the night on the road, but fortunately they were able to move one of the trucks and allow for some vehicles to squeeze by. So, after 55 hours in a bus we were glad to finally be home. Thanks to all of you that helped with our language school expenses, and especially for all the prayers.

We are now in the midst of our 3^rd move (that I can remember) since we’ve been in Brazil. We keep filling in for missionary families that are home on furlough. But now we hope to be in this house until we leave for furlough, probably this summer. Moving, in any culture, has it’s stressful moments, but here it seems to remind us again that we must change our expectations of how efficiently things should run. I think we’ve somewhat begun to learn from our past experiences, because this time our “moving day” has turned into our “moving week”. It’s good that we’ve lowered our standards, however it has made for more moments when we wonder aloud “did I bring that to the new house yet? And if so, what box is it in?”.

So right now we are in that limbo-state... some stuff is in our new house, some stuff is in our old house. We are without internet, but the lights are on. I fixed the drain in the shower, but haven’t hung the curtain in our master bedroom. We do like our new house though. It gives us plenty of room, it’s in an ideal location and we are looking forward to making it home.

Here are a few pictures of our new digs:

View from our front porch

Mia's 4th

Today Mia turned four. Another birthday in a strange place (anyone remember Ava's birthday on the boat?)... but it seems like it is becoming more comfortable. If you're intersted, here are more pictures of our day with Mia.

It was good to have a reason to celebrate. We're still in Salvador, with one more week of language school. It has been good. And it has been hard. I will leave you with a picture of our family.

breaking bad habits

Here is something funny. On Friday nights, we have a small group meeting up at the mission guesthouse. So we would tell our kids we were going up to the mission. Except when we went to the mission, really we were just going to the Kubacki’s home, the family that lives in the guesthouse now. But, in Ava’s mind she equated “the mission” with the Kubacki’s. So she refers to the Kubacki family as “The Mission.” As in, “Is ‘The Mission’ coming with us?” or “Why doesn't 'The Mission' have to eat fruit before they get chips” So, after over a year, she was still calling them The Mission so I had a chat with her and explained that we can call them by their names. She seemed to understand, but still to this day she calls them The Mission. But it’s kinda cute, so I just let her.

I am so like Ava. During the past year in Altamira we picked up plenty of Portuguese, some of it, I am finding, was erroneous. So the problem of unsticking of the wrong words and replacing them with the correct words is really hard. And when I continuously mess up it does not come off nearly as cute as Ava. O well. We are still plugging away.

We have this 7 more days of class and I am nervous even writing that because I need so much more. It hasn’t been easy though, especially for Josh. God allotted him about 1500 words a day. That is just how Josh is designed. So imagine this, Josh spends all of those words, in Portuguese, while the teacher shakes her head saying, “wrong,” or “again.” Josh comes home exhausted and is not in the mood to say one more word. It makes him a real treat to be with. But we knew language school would be challenging. Despite the ocean, the restaurants and the pickles, mustard, and nectarines we can experience here, it has not been without challenges.

O yeah, I almost forgot, we found a small jar of Peter Pan peanut butter. It was $14.

Here is what the guys do in their free time.

Ava has enjoyed the beach even more then the other kids, she pitches her body into the waves and screams to herself gleefully. Probably because she feels rather caged all morning in the small house we share with 2 other families.

Portuguese... making me feel stupider every day.

Tim, Steve and Josh all packed and ready for our first day of school

Brin showing off her command of the perfect-present-subjunctive-reflexsive-gerund verb tense

Brain hurts... can't make words... must stop talking...

The other day I got out of Portuguese class and felt like if I didn't talk for the rest of the day I would be happy. Unfortunatly, it didn't work out that way.

Brin said she feels like she's in college again, she's returned to the habit of sitting down to do her homework with a pencil in one hand a bag of chips in the other. I, on the other hand, don't ever remember feeling this worked over after a class.

Unfortunatly learning about Portuguese is alot like learning about God: the more you know the more you realize you don't know...

A Blog of note

Emily fancher, a shorttermer who has been living with us and helping Brin with homeschooling, has just published a blog that we wanted to make you aware of. She gives a unique perspective on our lives here and we thought some of you might be interested in taking a look. Click here, or under our "links" section to the right.

The Beauty and Tragedy of Salvador

After arriving Thursday, we have had a few days to get to know the city. Salvador is a beautiul city, built on a bluff overlooking a bay. We've learned that the history of the city is linked closely with the slave trade from Africa. The high population of African decendants have influenced the culture, arts and religion. The culture and arts are beautiful, the religion, however, is a convolution of Catholosism and African spiritism. One of the results of this mixing is something called sincrotism, which is essentially combining some of the Catholic saints with an African deity counterpart. for as much beauty that we see in the people and culture here, we have felt a difinite darkness and spiritual heaviness.

Our school starts today. We are excited and anticipating the challenge that lies ahead. Brin said she felt like it was the first day of school all over again (she had her bag packed the night before).

Click here for more pictures...

Goodbye to Beto

The day before we left Altamira, we had to say goodbye to someone very close. My language helper, since coming to Brazil has been a young man named Beto. He has grown to become much more than just my language helper, he has truly become a close friend.

You know how some people just give you the impression that God is going to use them in a big way? Beto is one of those people. Teaching himself English, mostly through a Portuguese-English Bible, he has proven to have more ambition and drive than the average person.

I've also had an opportunity to see Beto's heart for the lost. I've been on several outreach trips with him and experienced the passion and love that he has or people that don't know him. I've seen him deliver impassioned sermons to a handful of villagers, as if he were speaking to thousands.

In a couple weeks Beto will be leaving to study at a university in the south. He will be studying International Relations, and will probably not return to Altamira for 1 1/2 years.

I'll certainly miss my friend Beto, but I'm excited that God will be using him where ever it is that he ends up.

Beto, on the right.

Beto's going-away party.

Arrival

After over 50 hours on a bus, we 've arrived in Salvador. The trip was somewhat smooth (an ironic word to use to describe the roads). We only had one vomitting incident, got stuck only once, and our bus driver was only late twice (for a total of nearly 4 hours).

fortunately we only had to wait for about 10 minutes before our driver got us out of this easily avoidable delay.

Leaving...

Just an update, we'll be leaving tomorrow (Feb. 12, Tuesday) for Salvador at 4 am. Please pray for our journey, a 48 hour bus ride. We will be checking our email once we get there. We plan on returning on March 17th. -Thanks.

The Graduate

Marilda, 21 has graduated from high school. Among her classmates was an Elvis Presley de Santos, or something like that… after hearing his first name I really didn’t pay attention to his last name.

Attending the graduation ceremony was truly a cultural experience. We were happy for Marilda and she was especially happy to be having a ceremony because earlier in the year the students were told there was no money available. Then one day she came to our house and excitedly announced that she was going to go to a planning meeting for a commencement ceremony. It would occur in 5 days.

We showed up at the ceremony at 7:00pm along with Marilda and several other families with graduates from our church, only to find out the time was now 8:00. So we sat down to chat. It became quite obvious that not much was ready and that it would not start at 8:00, so we started to take bets as to what time it would actually begin. I forget who won but finally the ceremony got underway at 8:50. But the main event was not until after the announcement of graduates when the real party started with the graduates serving food to their guests. By then it was well after 10pm, a great time for dinner. Huge trashcans filled with rice, meat and farinha were rolled into the room. The graduates flocked to them and brought back heaping plates. So now I can say I have eaten out of a trashcan (if I ever have the desire to say so).

Graduating from high school is by no means a certainty here. So for Marilda this was more than just a ceremony marking a foregone event. Her abusive father left only a shell of a family when we moved away years ago. You can imagine what her family has since coped with. Her siblings exhibit the scars of years of abuse. Marilda, however, has truly become a new creation since coming to know Christ a few years ago. With more confidence and self-assurance she’s done things she never dreamed of doing before such as going on boat trips, learning to swim and sharing her testimony in front of church. For Marilda, her graduation seems to represent hope for a future she never had before, hope that comes only from Christ and the miracles He’s performed in her life.