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.
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.
