Internet, natural remedies and a trip

I must beg your pardon for the lack of posting. We've been slowly getting back into the swing of things. Not a lot of news worthiness... but here are a few things we've been up to:

• About a year ago a fiber optic internet cable was brought into Altamira, and with it the promise of a new era in the sad saga that is Altamira internet. For those of you that don't know, we've learned to live with dial-up speed (remember 14.4K speen? That's a good day), oh they call it high speed, but then oversell the servers and everybody slows down to a crawl. Anyway, the high speed (real high speed) via the fiber optic line was first offered just to government agencies and schools. The NGO that our mission runs was told they would soon receive the service as well (this was back in February). After a looooooooong wait, we now have high speed. It's almost as if I blocked out of my memory how enjoyable it could be to use the internet, but now I'm actually opening more than one page at a time and am able to, can you believe it, WATCH VIDEO (can you believe Charlie bit his finger??? I mean come on... that's hilarious!). Part of me is saying this is all too good to be true, but for now we're open for business. Please send all cheesy videos and large forwarded emails via Brin.

• Speaking of Brin, she's been fighting a bit of a sinus infection/lung congestion, it may be a new strain of the swine flu, but don't worry, we were given a natural Amazonian concoction that was given to her by a friend. It may or may not include tree bark and very small rocks. Decide fro yourself...

• I (Josh) will be leaving on Sunday (Aug. 23) for an 8 day trip to a new area where our mission plans to open a new base. The town of São Felix is about 300 miles south of Altamira on the Xingu River. It has access to a lot of remote areas by river and roads. I will be going with Clyde Berquist, another missionary, who plans to move to São Felix by the end of this year. We will be traveling down the Xingu, towards Altamira, trying to get a feel for the population that lives along the river and the potential need for churches in that area.

Here is a map of our planned journey:

View My Saved Places in a larger map

Here is a video Clyde made on a recent trip to the area:

a long time coming

Sony and Abi arriving at the airport

After some canceled flights and confusion (which is becoming much too normal for our visitors), Sonya and Abi (Josh's sister and niece) finally arrived last Friday. Abi and Ella, having lived a block away for several years, have always been very close. Abi started talking about wanting to visit since we first talked about moving to Brazil. So this opportunity has been a long time coming. The girls have been busy chasing geckos, writing the script to a movie they plan on making, opening a store to sell various homemade items, and doing a lot of giggling. Meanwhile, the adults have enjoyed just catching up with each others lives.

Click here for more photos

giving biblically

One of the defacto roles that we have experienced here in Brazil has been that of philanthropist (ok, maybe that's a stretch, but it sounds good). Shortly after our arrival here I blogged about how we are able to pass on some of the funds that are donated to us to people that are in need. Since those early observations, we've grown and learned a lot about how we can best help the people in need around us. The numerous Biblical commands and admonitions to help the poor sometime seem to stand in stark contrast to the reality that giving to people in need often robs their dignity and breeds dependency. What was meant to help them often ends up hurting them in the long run.

Like so many things in this life, there is a balance to living out the Biblical mandate to help those in need. We are to give freely, but not indiscriminately. When our hearts break at the condition of some poor soul, we should not just write a blank check, but neither should we walk callously by, saying to ourselves "they'll just buy booze with my money anyway...". So the question becomes not should I help, but how. And this is a question for which there is no easy answer.

The reality of our situation is that we are here to help the local church. The other day I was asked by a friend of mine if I would help with the cost of transportation to a village where a group was going to have an outreach. He was in charge of planing this mission trip for a leadership class at our church. As is the case so many times, many of the students didn't have the money to go. A couple years ago I probably would have just said "sure, how much will it cost?". Instead, I asked for more details and told him to try and make it work first. A few days later he had worked it out, I did end up giving a little bit to help with food, but those that couldn't afford the fee also contributed some food to help offset the price.

I remember a scene from the movie "Dances with Wolves" in which Kevin Costner's character sees how the indian tribe, which he has befriended, is in a position of weakness. A neighboring tribe is about to attack and they are concerned that they will suffer many loses. Costner's character suddenly remembers that he has something that will help them, guns and ammo back at his fort. He excitedly tells them about his stash, before thinking through all of the ramifications. I've often found myself in this position, whether it is planning a youth group event, a mission trip to a remote village, or helping someone afford a much needed medical procedure, I often have resources that will help. But sometimes the best thing to do is let them find a solution to the problem on their own.

So instead of just reacting by extending a fist-full of dollars, we are trying to be more creative with the ways we help. This process of helping, truly helping, becomes one in which the leading of the Holy Spirit is integral.

Thanks to all of you that support us financially and make it possible to bless others. Please pray that we would have wisdom as we seek to not only alleviate some of the suffering we see, but ultimately lead them to the One that can provide true hope and relief.

-posted by Josh

water fun

We packed a lot in the last week of my parents stay here. They leave this morning, after 3 weeks of sharing our lives and hanging out with the grandkids. We're sorry to see them go, but ready to get back into more of a routine.

Here are a few pictures from a boat trip we took and a day-trip to a waterfall...

Waterfall:

Boat Trip:

Dad sharing at a church service at Agua Preta, Cleide interprets.

wood, water and wisdom

This is the third guest post in as many weeks. We 're not intentionally shirking our responsibilities to you, our loyal readers, however, the break has been nice. We hope the outside perspective can give you a fresh angle on our lives here. So here, again, is Josh's dad writing about some of our activities this past week...

Josh and Brin host an international Independence Day barbeque. People with roots in America, Canada and Brazil will come. The girls pull out red, white and blue dresses, Ella makes decorations, we borrow plastic yard furniture from the mission. Josh harvests green coconuts from his backyard for cocoverde and borrows a home-made BBQ pit, made from the wheel rim of a big truck, so heavy it takes both of us to lift it. Josh also points me toward a pile of wood scraps to split for a bonfire that we will build in his back yard, to roast marshmallows and make s’mores.




I am stuck by the beauty of the wood I am being asked to prepare for burning. Some of it is furniture-quality, uniformly sawn and planed smooth pieces of the exquisite lumber from the rainforest, with deep rich grain, so rock-hard that you cannot drive a nail through it, so full of natural oils it will literally last a century without rotting. This wood we will be burn to make s’mores.

A gentle cool breeze blows through the house today under cloudy skies, Josh and Brin know without even thinking to bring the outside things under cover, and within a few minutes the Amazon skies break open to bless us with only the second rainforest rain we have seen we’ve been here, clear, intense, refreshing, beautiful. The river is down to normal now, but we occasionally still see watermarks on houses and buildings by the river, memories of the record flooding from this spring.

Bud shows us at his house where the water came, rising higher than anyone here remembers, covering his porch, only a few inches from entering his house. River village people usually continued during the flooding to live in their simple shack homes, building make-shift platforms inside, living above two or three or five or more feet of water. Tales are told of families losing toddlers who wandered or fell especially in the darkness of the night into the swirling waters, never to be seen again.




Most houses in Altamira manage their water needs by pumping water daily to a holding tank above the level of the house, from which they draw for cooking, bathing, and washing. It would seem logical that there would be a float in the tank to turn on the pump when the water level gets too low, but at least at Josh’s and Bud’s houses, filling the tank is a daily task to be remembered. One can only imagine the implications of this on marital harmony, the prospect all across Brazil of soapy wives left standing in showers under a trickle of water, screaming at forgetful husbands

I make it my business to try to contribute around the house by washing the dishes whenever I can. Nothing here is the same. I do not fill a basin to wash them in. Each piece is handled individually, scrubbed all around by a scratchy sponge which I have rubbed on a bar of soap, then rinsed under unheated tap water. Connie is not completely happy with this situation, one day recovering the contents from a hose left under the sun all day, bringing me a container of warm water. It is quickly gone, however, and I return to the Brazilian way.

More than twenty guests come for the July 4 barbeque, and Josh and I share the cooking of the meat duties. Once again, everything is strange: roasting hamburgers that do not look or cook like American hamburgers over hardwood charcoal in a truck rim in the dark. My hopes of maintaining an even, 3-second fire are impossible. I am in completely uncharted territory. I should never have got involved.

Long story short, we serve hamburgers to all our guests that are very pink in the middle. I have no idea how big a cultural blunder that might be. I try to read the faces of our Brazilian friends, picking gingerly at their hamburgers, wondering how far back I have set the mission work here.




I am invited to give a little lesson at a men’s cell group that meets at Agostino’s house. My heart is burdened, as it has been in many places I have worked and visited, for young men who have not had strong fathers and husbands and male role models to watch. Here are eight or nine young Christian men, meeting with Agostino, an older man who seems to have many of the qualities of a mentor. It is a perfect opportunity for me to encourage them to be strong as young Christian men. We read Psalm 1, I give them all LED flashlights I’ve brought from the US, and we use the flashlights for illustrations. Josh translates, and all the young men seem to be appreciative.

A few days later Agostino invites us to go with him and some others to a beach. A friend takes us on his boat up-river half an hour or so, where we spend a lazy day, watching children swim, eating açai with tapioca and sugar, building sandcastles and talking. The best part of the day is hearing Agostino’s testimony.







When he was young, he says, his life was all about drinking and prostitution. His first wife left him and over the years he has fathered 14 children. It was only four years ago that he became a Christian. One of his sons was a Christian and was holding a cell group in his home. One night he sat in on it, and eventually it lead to his giving his own life to the Lord. He pats his heart. Now, he says, he knows real happiness.

His testimony is beautiful, but not what I expect. When I spoke to his cell group last week, one older man meeting with a bunch of high school and college age guys, I had made an assumption—that he was sort of mentoring them. In fact, the opposite seems to be true, that the son is the older, more mature Christian, who leads the group.

I am reminded of an axiom I learned first at Normandy from a lady who had spent years in the discipline office trying to unravel the endless conflicts surfacing daily among the students: things are never what they seem. Even before that, I remember finding out during the last week of our year living in Montana, that the president of the school board was the wife of the man who owned the local gas station. It was a critically important piece of information in understanding the politics and the troubled relationships between the Indians and the non-Indians who lived in this tiny reservation town, known by everyone but me, and I was learning about it literally as I was packing up to leave.

A high school girl who speaks some English tells me about her father, who has been an alcoholic and absent as a responsible parent all her life. I try to convey what I think I have seen in every culture, the deep hurt that happens in the heart of a child who does not have a relationship with his or her father.

Her response surprises me. She says, I don’t like it when people look at my life and try to say how hard it has been or how disadvantaged I am. There is wisdom beyond her years in her answer.

It leaves me thinking how little I know, how little I really understand about this culture, or really about any other person, how dangerous it is to make quick assumptions, how important it is to ask good questions and to listen patiently, how careful I must be before I try to give advice, that the first rule for helping is to do no harm.

A family outing

Twice a year a carnival comes to Altamira. July is the vacation month, so it's here the whole month of July. Which usually only serves as a source of constant annoyance every time we pass by and have to hear the begging to go ride the rides. However, we decided to celebrate the last day of school for the girls (and a somewhat difficult semester) by going to the death-trap that is the Altamira Carnival...

Ava had to be convinced to try the mini roller coaster,
but by the end she wanted to ride again

Children's Songs

Guest post by Josh's dad, Tom Pflederer...

Our first week in Altamira is highlighted by watching and participating in Josh and Brin’s ministry to the people who live in this remote town and by funny experiences and random snapshots of the curiosities of the culture.

Some of Josh and Brin’s activities are planned. Josh is responsible for maintenance and improvements on the boat, so one day we make the 30-minute run over to Vitoria where it is docked, taking diesel fuel with us and working on the installation of a new generator. One night we get to see the last Alpha Circle of the semester, where the English students from the school where Brin has taught get to show off what they have learned. Another day we visit a small orphanage where each child gets a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste from the USA, and a lesson in proper brushing, and a young woman named Lica teaches the children songs about Jesus.


Loading diesel fuel to take to the boat

Other times the ministry comes to Josh and Brin’s house. On our first full day awake, I am sitting and reading after breakfast when two young people come to the door. Brin introduces them, Flits and Aniele, students from the CDR English classes, who often stop by just to visit and practice English. Brin turns them over to me and we enjoy more than an hour of getting to know each other. They are high school students, so we talk about their hopes for college after high school. Flits lives with his parents, but Anaeli has left her family in the village where she was born, to continue her education in Altamira. She lives with her grandmother. She touches my heart when she says plainly that she does not know who her father is.

Sunday afternoon, nine friends come over, bringing their own TV, to watch the USA-Brazil soccer championship game, a tournament leading up to next year’s World Cup finals. Brazil is the only nation to have won the world Cup five times, and it would be hard to overestimate the place soccer holds in the national psyche and its view of itself in the world. This is an opportunity for relationship-building and honoring this culture. Josh feeds them coke and popcorn and chocolate chip cookies, which they have never had before. They bring a Brazilian flag and cheer raucously when Brazil scores, which doesn’t happen until the second half, when USA is leading 2-0. I cheer with equal fervor for the USA but am privately pleased when Brazil scores the winning goal in the final minutes of the game.




The funny experiences started before we even got here, being denied seats on our flight from Rio to Belem, even though we had an itinerary and ticket receipts in our hands. So we spend an extra eight hours or so exploring the Rio airport. We are exhausted, of course, falling asleep sitting up, walking around today scoping out the airport for a flat place to lie down. Connie looked longingly through the window at a padded bench at a booth in what appears to be a high-end restaurant, deeming it beyond our means, and finally we find a little chapel with cushioned pews where we take turns lying down and sleeping, until people begin arriving for Mass and we are shooed away.

Curiosities so far include huge, free dental floss dispensers in the restrooms at the Rio airport, an odd amenity, I think, but I press the lever and out pops about 8” of string. So I do what I can to melt into the culture, as if I am perfectly accustomed to walking around the airport flossing my teeth. Or, it occurs to me later, was I supposed to do that in the restroom?

On day we take Ella and Ava to the ranch for an overnight youth activity. The ranch, where I had spent a day with team of Brazilians in hard physical labor pouring concrete floors, is now complete enough to use. The grounds—I would estimate several acres—are neatly mowed. In a hardware store with Josh yesterday I saw two very small lawn mowers for sale. One of them looks almost like a toy, a miniature machine with cutting width barely half that of typical mowers in the states. I ask Josh if they use such mowers at the ranch, trying to imagine cutting such a large area with a 12” mower. No, he says, they mow the entire thing with weed-whip trimmers.




Sunday morning we walk down to the market. All the churches in town meet Sunday evening because the weather is cooler. The market is a sensory overload, an explosion of color and texture and smells and sounds and sometimes a taste, where you can buy vegetables and fruits, some familiar and some that we have never seen before, such assorted items as live chickens and peacock bass, blankets (OK, could you sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo…?), gaudy watches, spices, coarsely ground grains of all kinds, T-shirts and hats with impossible English wording, women’s tops of every conceivable size and color and degree of coverage, cows’ hooves and jowls and other better-unnamed parts that you will probably not find at Schnucks, the fruits of the Amazon.




Many things remind us of Japan, in spite of stark differences in geography, culture and, most strikingly, population density: so many people want to practice speaking English, the refreshing excitement and chaos of young churches, the passion of new believers, the creativity with which they reach out to unbelieving friends, their determination to plant God’s love and truth into the hearts of children.

When Lica was teaching the songs about Jesus to the children at the orphanage the other day, I was reminded of Hidemi in Japan, and Brin translates as I tell her story. The first time Hidemi came to church with us, she sat and wept as we sang. Why? we ask. She tells us that for one year when she was five she attended a kindergarten run by Christians and learned children’s songs about Jesus. For the next 25 years she had never heard those songs again. But tonight when she heard people singing again about Jesus, she remembered, and her heart was opened. Later in the evening, she prays to receive Jesus.

I thank Lica for teaching the children songs about Jesus, and Lica weeps.

July Newsletter

I recently sent out a newsletter, you can read it by clicking on the photo above. We send out newsletters at least twice a year. If you would like to be put on our mailing list please let me know, and indicate whether you want a paper copy or an email.

take a deep breath...

This post by Jane Thorson, a friend down the hall in Memorial Dorm, College of the Ozarks, 15 years ago. And now a lifelong friend.

somewhere in between Porto Do Moz and Gurupa, Brin and i were looking out at the amazon river, and she told me to take a deep breath...to breathe in the fresh air that the amazon (the lungs of the world) produces. she had this really philosophical idea about how she would remember taking these deep breaths while she lay on her death bed...very deep stuff.

and so, i've been taking alot of deep breaths lately...breathing in the amazon air, of course, but also breathing in the life and culture of the amazon.

i didn't know exactly all that i would be doing when i made my plans to come visit josh and brin. all i knew is that i wanted to see what their life was like living in altamira...in the amazon river basin. but a couple days after arriving in altamira, brin and i joined a team of canadians/brasilians/missionaries on a river trip up the amazon river to the port city of Gurupa.

their goal was to deliver water filters to people living in villages along the amazon river. my goal was to get the chance to see the amazon. i think we both got a lot more than what we expected!

for ten days we slowly traveled up the river, stopping at different villages that one of the brasilian pastors had surveyed earlier. during the day, the canadians would deliver around 8-10 water filters to the families in the village where we had stopped (by village, i mean a few houses clumped together) and brin and the missionary doctor would set up a makeshift "clinic" where they would do consults with the people in the area. while the adults were visiting with the doctor, a couple other people on the team would be painting children's faces, passing out candy and little toys, playing frisbee and of course soccer with the kids. (that's the team i joined!)
then in the evening, we would hold a small meeting in one of the family's homes. sing some worship songs, share some testimonies, preach the word, and pray for people.

it was great!

it was cool to see how open the brasilians were to strangers coming into their homes....it was inspiring to see how brin and the missionary doctor sat with people, listened to their hurts/pain, and gave them physical hope (medicine) and spiritual hope (prayer)...and it was encouraging to see the brasilian church working along side the canadian church in ministering to peoples felt needs. i couldn't have asked for a better picture of the amazon.

and all along the way, i was taking deep breaths:

i breathed in the friendliness of the brasilians...the smiles from the children and adults...the amazing fruits of the amazon...the refreshing river baths...the art of sleeping in a hammock...the adventurous travel in canoes through the tributary rivers off the the amazon river. the joys of living together in community...and of course, the amazon air itself, sometimes scented with tropical flowers.

i know...as i go back home, i hope that i will continue to take deep breaths...
maybe not of the air (although the air in omaha isn't that bad?!) but more importantly, that i will breathe in deeply the life and culture of the place GOD has me for this time in my life. because i know that HE has things there for me, just like i've experienced in the Amazon.

so wherever you find yourself at the moment...don't forget to take a deep breath...

heading off into the remote tributaries of the amazon!

some of the amazing cacao we enjoyed on the trip!

the smiling faces!

Brin translating as i shared a testimony!

relaxing in our hammocks!

painting faces

brin doing her medical things!

setting off to deliver some filters

observations of a former youth pastor

I’ve been able to dabble in youth ministry here in Brazil. After nine years as a youth pastor I am happy to just dabble. I’m thrilled to not have to go to a youth meeting every week. But in dabbling I still get to do the fun stuff, like work with the college aged leadership team. Most of my closest relationships are with youth on the leadership team. It’s really the best of both worlds, I have no real responsibilities, but I get to help out whenever I want, or when I’m needed most.

But once a youth pastor always a youth pastor, I suppose… I can’t help myself from analyzing the youth culture as I have been so accustomed to doing. I know enough to know that I haven’t figured much out here. When I finally think I’ve nailed down some aspect of the youth culture, I usually discover something else that blows my whole theory. It’s a good thing I’m not getting graded on all this.

Failures aside, I have been able to come up with some striking differences in the youth culture here and back home. Usually it’s a this-would-never-work-back-home moment that leads to one of these findings. So here is my list of 2 (I know, pretty pathetic) things that I’ve figured out about brasilian youth culture…

1. Technology rules, but the bar is low. Like American youth, the youth here are enthralled with all things new, but unlike their American counterparts they don’t have the pretention of cynicism. You’ll never get a “that’s so cheesy” sneer or a “that’s so 90’s” comment. They’re just glad you’re trying to put something up on the video projector. So if the sound system feeds back and the video stops 3 times during playback and all we have for bathrooms at the retreat center are holes in the ground… well that’s ok, they don’t mind.
2. People are shockingly patient when it comes to being preached at. Probably because of a number of factors, in the U.S. we are overly sensitive to offending people that we are trying to reach (and rightly so). It’s a breath of fresh air (and at the same time somewhat disturbing) to find that here there is really no need to be concerned with that. Either people are not offended at anything or they just keep their thoughts to themselves, I’m not really sure which. Let me explain, let’s make-believe that you are a youth pastor, your youth leadership team comes to you and says they want to put up a fake police road block to stop traffic in front of your church and tell people they need Jesus and they should come stay for the church service. You’d probably laugh or cry or maybe both, but you’d gently guide them away from that absurd idea, right? Well not if you were here. No joke. Our youth group did this. Some people sped away because they were breaking the law in some way and thought it was a real roadblock, but the rest just took it in stride, some even stopped and stayed for the church service!

The roadblock in front of our church

A youth talks to the driver of a car that was stopped,
a policeman stands nearby supervising the mock roadblock.

My other example comes from the other night. We were given permission to hold an evangelistic meeting at a local school. It was in the evening, during the time of night classes, which are attended mostly by high school and college age kids. I’m still not sure how they pulled this off, but somehow they were able to cancel the classes but instead of telling the students, the youth group was hoping that when they showed up for class they would decide to just stay for the meeting. Now if I were a student, religious beliefs aside, and classes were cancelled and no one told me, I’d probably be a little peeved, I know I’m not sticking around school for some meeting that is not required. But again, I was totally wrong in my assumptions. The students did stay, and some even seemed to enjoy it.

The outreach program at the school

I do have to say, given these factors alone, this would be a pretty great place to be a youth pastor. Not having to try so hard to impress people is liberating. I spent too much time as a youth pastor trying to think of the next best thing that will capture their attention. There’s something authentic about knowing that the audience is not so caught up in the delivery system of the message that they miss the point altogether. Come to think of it, that’s the one thing that drew me to Brazil from the beginning, the openness and often eagerness to hear the Gospel.

Intervinha 09

Two of our mission's boats anchored off-shore from the camp

We just returned from a 3-day annual leadership retreat including leaders from all the regions of the Xingu Mission. The retreat was held at a camp on the river, near Porto de Moz, one of our bases to the north of Altamira. We left Ava and Mia at home, so we were able to more easily enjoy our time with the other missionaries, pastors and church leaders. Around 170 people were present from all three of our bases (Altamira, Porto de Moz and Maraba) as well as a short term mission team and a few pastors from the U.S.

Here are some pictures from the weekend...

Brin with some friends on a jungle hike

Returning from the hike

A group prays for a pastor and his wife.

Teaching from a guest speaker from Santarem

Evening worship