But I don't FEEL dirty

Mia with her cousins Macy, Ana and Abi

Ava and Mia playing with Macy at the beach

Macy, Mia, Ana and Ava

Ella

Our family has been enjoying Lake Michigan for the past week. Our girls prefer the small waves and salt free water to the beaches we've been to in Brazil. It may help also that their cousins are here.

We continue to experience new things with our girls. Or at least it feels like new things. Brin and I are impressed with how clean everything is here. I found that I didn't automatically feel dirty every night at bedtime, so I've had to force myself to take showers. My inner dialog sounds something like this: "Ok, I know it's bedtime, but I don't feel dirty"... "You know, you really should take a shower anyway"... "But I feel so clean, I didn't even sweat today!"... "Yeah, but it's kind of a courtesy to others"... "Maybe I can just go in the bathroom and turn the shower on so everyone thinks I'm showering"... "Good idea! You're a genius"... "I know".

Brin, the other day, said, "I can't believe how clean it is here!". Now keep in mind, this is after a week of living in a house with 3 families and 10 kids. It was really not all that clean, as you can imagine. She's had similar conversations with herself about whether or not a particular piece of clothing needs to be washed, even though it doesn't look dirty.
Please don't think we have hygiene issues. It's just that we feel really clean here.

Our first few days

Mia and Ava with their cousins Ana and Macy.

waiting for fireworks

It's been a whirlwind the last few days. Our girls meet their cousins for the first time (Sonya and Dave adopted their girls about a month after we left for Brazil). We watched 4th of July fireworks for the first time in 2 years. Ava was so impressed that she felt like she was going to cry and that she was convinced that Jesus was there.

We've not been without our adjustments, Mia, through tears, expressed that everything was different (mainly my parents home). She seemed to have a memory about a small pool that grandma no longer had... very traumatic.

Ride on the backs of Sting Rays through amber waves of grain

I'm writing this in our hotel room in Miami. We got in at about 2:00 am last night. It seems the arrival to America was a bit anti-climatic for Mia and Ava. I think they had envisioned "America" as being were grandpa and grandma and other such known entities were. Needless to say, Miami International Airport didn't seem much different than where we had already been - other than the clean bathrooms with toilets that flush by themselves (as reported by Ella to her sisters).

During our overnight in a hotel in Manaus, we overheard Ella telling he sisters that "in America you can ride Sting Rays like horses". I'm really not sure where she got that tidbit of information, but I think she was talking about Sea Rays (not the pain-inflicting Sting Rays that we are constantly on the look out for at beaches in Brazil). Anyway, the younger girls, with their fading memories and Ella's less than accurate description, are no doubt very confused about this place we keep referring to.

Other observations from our girls:

(Arriving in the big city of Manaus) Ella: "Is there an I-POT here?" After some inquisition we learned that she was referring to IHOP (the restaurant).

(In the hotel in Miami) Ella: "Mom, can we walk barefoot to breakfast so we can feel the carpet on our feet?"

We witnessed Ava and Mia delighting in the discovery of two options in the shower and sinks (cold AND hot).

Back from the boat

We arrived back this morning from our river trip. We were able to visit 3 villages, get a start on a church building in one, endure several bouts of diarrhea and thoroughly enjoy the time we had together.

We are wrapping up our time with the team, as well as getting things in order for when we leave for furlough. Here are a few pictures of our trip, enjoy...

Our group in front the work site

Parker displays a home-made knee board that they made to ski behind the boat

Travis "skiing"; there were dolphins jumping in the waters around us as we took turns trying the contraption.

Tyler enjoys a meal and the sunset on top of the boat

a fence post.
Travis, Isaac and Tyler carry a post weighing several hundred pounds

We enjoy a cool moment in the watering hole at Tijuca.

Diving In

The group from Tremont arrived today. Evidently 2 years will change a freshman boy, as several of the guys on the team were freshmen when I last saw them. I’m now finding myself looking up, instead of down at them and realizing that they have changed in a lot of other ways as well. We had some good laughs, retelling old youth group stories and I’m looking forward to creating some more memories in the weeks ahead.

Before and After

Tomorrow a team of high school students from my (Josh’s) former youth group arrives. They’ll be here for 2 weeks and then our family leaves for the States the day after they do (July 1^st). We’ve been looking forward to this time, both because we want to hang out with the team and show them our world, and also because we know that the next 2 weeks are going to fly by and we will be sitting on that plane heading home before we know it.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re not leaving without mixed feelings. We’re looking forward to coming back and getting more involved in the work here. But as our first term here draws to a close it does cause us to reflect somewhat.

Ella’s looking forward to seeing Prince Caspian, I am too for that matter. I always wondered what the 4 siblings were like after their Narnia experience. Were they different? Did people notice? Did they try to explain as best they could about their experience? Did they get frustrated when people didn’t understand? One thing was for sure, when they got back to England they found it hadn’t changed at all.

I’m not trying to compare Brazil with Narnia, but our reentry may feel similar. In some ways I think we won’t know how much we’ve changed until we get there. Please be patient with us if we seem a bit slow, if our girls dance in the aisles during worship or if we exhibit some other unexplainable behavior.

We are so looking forward to sharing with you all in person about our past 2 years. Many of you played a huge role in making sure we didn’t crack under the pressure. We are grateful for all of your support.Our family just before leaving for Brazil in October, 2006

Our family last week, June 2008

wrestling matches and road hazards

It had been a while since I wrestled anyone, so I was grateful that I had 4 partners when the demon-possessed man started to get violent. Oh yeah, and there was this lady that tried to kill herself by throwing herself in front of our motorcycle. Pretty normal stuff for Porto de Moz, I guess.

Our family visited the town of Porto de Moz, situated at the mouth of the Xingu River, where our mission has another base. Three missionary families live and minister there. We went on a river trip while there and helped deliver some water filters that our mission fabricates and delivers to people living on the river in that area. We had heard a lot about this ministry, but were never able to participate. But the real adventures seemed to be waiting for us back in town...

One night a counseling session turned into a spiritual battle with a demon possessed man. They had worked with this man before and had even cast demons out of him, but they evidently returned. It seems he has never really earnestly accepted Christ and the reality of Christ’s warning that a demon will return with 7 more demons to a “house unoccupied” seemed to be lived out in this young man (Mt. 12:43-45). He had been involved in witchcraft since 12 and is finding it hard to give up that lifestyle. He has made some sort of pact with the devil and eats household items after each meal. Last time the missionaries prayed for deliverance he spit up beads and a sewing needle. He’s even had needles come out of his ears. It literally took 5 of us to hold him down. As we prayed for him he would growl, foam at the mouth and speak in several different voices. After 2 hours he seemed to fall into a deep sleep. So Clyde (the missionary we were staying with) hung up a hammock on his porch and that’s were the demon possessed man slept. It’s one thing to read about the demon possessed in the New Testament, and it’s something else completely to be confronted with it.

The next day, Clyde and I were riding through town on his motorbike. A lady was in the road ahead and so Clyde swerved to the left, but she went to the left. So he swerved to the right, she went to the right. At first it seemed like a case of mixed signals (you know, those awkward moments when you stutter step trying to get around someone). But finally she just lay down in front of us. Clyde had to slam on the brakes, coming to a stop only inches from her. We parked and helped her up. She was obviously drunk and through slurred speech and tears she shared about her difficult life. She was now pregnant by a man who wants nothing to do with her and she just wanted to die. She has no relatives to turn to. She was truly desperate. It was difficult to leave her, knowing how needy she was. We bought her some food and prayed for her, not knowing if she was going to attempt the same thing again. Clyde ran into her a few days later (not literally, that goodness) and she said she didn’t remember him, but that people told her what had happened. Her demeanor had changed and she was truly grateful to him. She said she hadn’t had any alcohol since that day.

Both of these experiences showed me how little I know about how to help people. Maybe we could have prayed longer for the demon possessed man, or maybe we should have done more for the lady we almost hit. The hardest is when you see that someone is desperate for Jesus in their life, but they can’t see that.

Here are some other moments from our trip…

Clyde explains the process of making the concrete filters. Many of the sicknesses seen on the rivers are caused by poor drinking water (usually unfiltered river water).

On a normal filter trip they will take up to 60 filters and install them in only a few days. On our trip we took only a few filters because we went to an area that already had received filters. We gave a few to families who didn’t get them last time and checked up on the others, making sure they were in working order. The filters need very little maintenance because the purification process is biological. We also had a church service for those that were interested.

One thing all villages have, no matter how small, is a soccer field.

Kevin (a missionary from Porto de Moz) demonstrates a device which a team recently brought down. It’s an audio bible, in Portuguese, that is powered by a hand crank or a solar panel. Perfect for people who lack electricity and are illiterate.

It’s no easy job installing the filters, at over 300 lbs. it takes at least 3 people to move them.

The filters have precise amounts of 1” and ½” gravel and fine, clean sand. The filtering is actually done by a layer of naturally forming bacteria. It takes about 30 minutes for about 3 gallons of water to be filtered. The result is water that is free of any contamination.

The kids were more interesting in swimming than installing filters.

We were invited to teach English in one of the schools. Brin asked her class how many could read, only about half raised their hands. The class consisted of ages 12 – 35.

A family poses in front of their new filter.

for a previous post on the water filters click here

or visit our website www.xingu.org

or the website of "Thirst Relief" the partner organization we work with.

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