Frank visiting one of the cute young members of the Imagawa church during our evening social with them.
Frank visiting one of the cute young members of the Imagawa church during our evening social with them.
I will also make a special remark about the grammer used here: due to the various times that what was written here was recorded, there are frequent changes in tense, and I have left those in place to accurately reflect the sentiments at the time the particular sentence was written. While the wisdom of doing this is certainly questionable, those who question it will be invited to spend two weeks on a mission trip in a foreign country and provide a coherant and sensible response to everything afterward!
Also, in some cases I use the American spelling of Brazil, and sometime I use the spelling of Brasil that is used in many countries, both English speaking and non-English speaking, including Brasil. During the 1999 Trip, I noticed that most all other members of the American team had switched to using Brasil because, after spending only a week and a half of being exposed to nothing but the spelling "Brasil", it became very difficult to use the American spelling of "Brazil", particularly when in a hurry writing e-mail back home. Thus, when in a rush typing messages back home, one or the other spelling may wind up scattered through the message. These messages are designed to convey thoughts, feelings, and conditions at the time they are experienced, and thus they are left as typed to faithfuly convey the situation and feeling at hand.
Before I lauch into the long winded version of the trip to Brasil, I should probably introduce the cast of characters to you, who certainly deserve to be mentioned since they play a key role in everything described here, and the absence of any of which would have created a different makeup of the team. Ministry teams are, after all, teams, and every member contributes in some way or the other to the experience that the team has. I like to think that each person on these types of teams was put there by God to fulfill a particular purpose, though in all honesty in one or two cases I have met those who participated in such teams for their own motives and didn't seem to be there to fulfill a desire by God for them to be there. No such person, however, was on this team and certainly in this case it appears that God had a special hand in assembing the team and making sure that we were all working together as a group. Thus, the following people are of vital importance to the result of the team coming together, through the grace of God:
Mike and Ann Miner: from the South Albany Evangelical Church, Oregon. They and their three children had already been in Brasil 3 weeks when we arrived, and are planning to spend an entire year there with missions agency OMS International, a missions agency with a seminary and some 60 churches in Brasil. Without them, the entire group from South Albany would most likely not have come together for this trip. Their primary ministry is to help teach English in a Christian language school that works closely with OMS, but is independent and owned by Brasilians.
Frank and Lyonie Gorsline: OMS missionaries in Vancouver, Washington whose ministry it is to put together these types of short term teams. They were also missionaries here in Londrina, Brasil in the 1960s.
Nigel and Priscila: couple from Ireland, though Priscila is originally a Brasilian from Londrina. They are currently serving as short term members of the OMS team in Brasil, and as their primary ministry are looking after Acampamento Shalom. This is a church camp that is operated by OMS for churches in the Londrina area. It was originally built int he 1970s, and over the course of a number of years has been the location of a number of ministry events, ultimately resulting in some thousands of people turning to Christ.
Daniel: from England, and currently filling a one year term of service as an assistant to Nigel and Priscila at the camp.
John and Roberta: couple from South Albany Evangelical Church
Steve and Diane: couple from South Albany
CarolJo: team member from the South Albany Church
Carol: team member from the South Albany Church
Dennis and Mim: couple from the South Albany Church
Percy: South Albany Evangelical Church, and a primary leader in the painting project, including brining a number of parts into Brasil for the paint spraying machine that has been here for quite some time.
Vicky: Oregon City Evangelical Church, and previously visited the same area with other teams, including the 2005 Imagawa project
Bev: Oregon City Evangelical Church, and another member of previous teams
Leah: Oregon City Evangelical Church, and participated in last year's team.
David: from Michigan, and a family friend of Frank. Last year his entire family (wife and 5 children) came to Brasil, but this year only he was able to come.
myself: the lone representative from the Valley View Evangelical Church
Lamar: volunteer from Indiana. He has worked out a way to spend considerable volunteer time here in Brazil, while still being occasionally employed in his engineering job back in the states. He loves working on the type of work project we will be doing, and therefore joined us for some time there. He will then be headed north to Belem, where there is a new church forming. Belem is about 5,000 kilometers north of here.
We (Oregon City Evangelical Church group, South Albany Evangelical Church group, and myself) met at the Portland airport abut 9:30 Saturday morning, March 1. After a little something to eat, plus wandering the airport briefly, plus check in procedures, plus security, left us with a comfortable amount of time. The flight to Dallas left at 12:30, and was relatively uneventful. The several brif glimpses I managed to get out the window showed snow over much of Colorado., or at least somewhere that looked like Colorado from the air. Praise be to God that all of us arrived at the airport safely, and that none of us had luggage that was rejected due to being over the weight limit, or even subject to over weight charges. This is significant as some of us were bringing some heavy items. I got off pretty easy with some cordless rechargable tools and the waffle iron.
We had enough time to wander around the Dallas airport for a little bit, and grabbing a snack of sliced meat at one of the restaurants in the airport we headed for the plane. Departure for São Paulo was reasonably close to on time. There were considerable problems with the American Airlines video system. We saw the flight safety video at the start of the flight about 7 times in both English and Portuguese, as the system seemed to randomly want to show it. The movie "Dan in the Real World" played 3 different times, and the sound system didn't work quite right (though the plot line is simple enough you don't really need to hear the words to be entertained by it). There was a big to-do several hours into the flight. There was a fairly large group of Brazilian young people (probably 12 to 15 years old) on their way back home from some special USA trip, and one of the girls and her boyfriend had become entangled and were apparently attempting something under the cover of darkness that only a male and female in that age group would be flexible enough to try in an airline seat. This upset the head stewardess, who appeared to be one part southern belle and one part Tonya Harding. The southern belle part of her personality came out by being incensed that two young people would try to be a bit too intimate on an airplane. The Tonya Harding part of the personality came out when she threatened to throw them off the plane over Cuba. The guardian of the group tried to explain that she had told them to stop, but the head stwardess said that telling them to stop wasn't good enough and wanted them separated. Eventually this did get accomplished, and another girl from the group took the boy's place. The "princess" (she was wearing a silver tierra and otherwise carried herself like a spoiled wealthy member of the Brazilian upper class) then decided to do a pouting routine, which didn't bring too much sympathy from the head stewardess.
Most of us found it quite difficult to sleep on this trip. It had a little to do with all the disturbances, and also a bit to do with the discomfort of the seats.
We were in the São Paulo airport by 9:30 in the morning, and none of us were required to go through customs inspection. All of the stuff we were bringing fell outside the customs declaration, but if they had wanted to they could have made it quite difficult for us to deal with them due to the used power tools, etc. brought in.
One of us did get hit with a R$50 fee for an overweight bag on the trip from São Paulo to Londrina, but none of the other bags that were overweight by TAM airline standards were hit due to them being within American Airlines standards.
We ate lunch in one of the airport cafeterias called Terra Azul (Blue Earth), and were able to get a cheese burger and a fairly nice juice for R$4.60 (that is, about $2.50 at the time the money was exchanged - the value of the doller is rapidly falling in Brasil and therefor each day of exchange makes a bit of a difference - what we get for a dollar in the airport now may be somewhat less later on in the trip due to the present currency problems in the USA).
We were able to locate our one team member from Michigan (he arrived via Miami and TAM airlines) and we all went out to the departure gates. After wandering from one gate to another (the GRU airport is horridly short of gates, and thus frequent gate changes happen), we boarded our flight to Londrina at 3:30. The time spent sleeping on the benches at the departure gate was very well spent.
We arrived at Londrina at almost exactly 6:00 PM, after spending about 30 hours on airplanes and in airports. (Remember we are some 5 hours ahead of you in Oregon, so that it was only 1 in the afternoon to you when we arrived here.) By about 10 pm, we had been relocated to Acampamento Shalom (the church affiliated camp where we will be spending the next week), we had had dinner, we had cleaned off the travel dirt, and we were able to get some long needed rest.
On the flight down to Dallas, I was reading the final book in the series on Hudson Taylor and the start of the China Inland Mission (Hudson Taylor and China's Open Century: "It is not death to die", from the very excelent collection of such stories in the Valley View church library). The section I am on is the Boxer Rebellion, and the mass killing of missionaries that occurred. What we consider traveling difficulties and what our forfathers 100 years ago had to go through are vastly different things. If missions agencies today had to ask their participants to literally go and run the risk of getting killed in a very unpleasant manner just because they need to travel to certain areas, I don't think we would have many missionaries on the field today.
With life being so much easier for travelers in so much of the world today, to not be willing to give up two weeks of time to come here to Brasil and help would seem to mock the very existence of those who suffered so much more than having to be away from home for 2 weeks, and having to swat the occasional mosquito.
Praise God for our safe travels and that we lost no items on the way here.
After dinner on March 2, we have already had our first evening payer and praise session. Among the items prayed and praised:
+ Various items relating to the future of the camp. The current camp managers will be here until approximately August, and after that they need to return to Ireland for a time due to some of the school related tests one of their children needs to take there. They are hoping to find a Brazilian couple to manage the camp for the time of their departure, as running the camp really is something that one day the mission hopes to transfer to the churches in the area. However, it takes a very special personality and skill set to be able to run a church camp. It takes a lot of mechanical (repair and upkeep) as well as management skills and social skills to be able to run a place like this. There is someone we will be hiring to help our team, in order to see if he is a good fit for the camp in terms of being a good caretaker (someone to help the couple who runs the camp take care of the grounds and help with a number of other maintenance items).
+ The situation in Kenya. One of the good friends of the Oregon City Evangelical Church is a Kenyan pastor, who returned there in the mid 1990s after studying in Oregon for a few years.
+ Our own health and safety while we work here.
One of the team members who helped build the camp in those days was a member of the South Albany church. One of the projects he helped with was construct the camp chapel. The prayer theme was to pray for one person to come to Christ at the camp for each of the cement blocks that they put into the building. There are about 3,800 blocks in the chapel, and that number of people have come to Christ within its walls many times over. With a location of such importance to so many in the churches of the city of Londrina, there is definitely a desire to keep the camp in as best a condition as possible, as a pleasing offering to the Lord who has so blessed the ministry there.
In a more practical manner, the better the condition of the camp, the more the churches are able to use it, and the better the response of those who are not Christian to events held there. Thus, in a very real way, anything done to improve the camp helps the long term efforts of the churches in Londrina, and also in the surrounding areas. Quite a number of the people who now serve in the churches as pastors or in other positions came to Christ at this camp.
In the meantime, the painting crew has been having quite a time with the exterior painting of the buildings. Much of the bare "rebaco" surface (sort of like stucco) has been properly surfaced with the required sealant and primer. The walls of the swimming pool are starting to look a lot better too.
We were blessed with a merciful breeze most of the day, which was enough to keep the temperatures in the tolerable range, but I don't think it was enough to interfere with the paint operation (part of which involves a paint sprayer).
On one of my previous trips, our team installed fans in each of the rooms. Today, a dedicated small group of workers were responsible for making 25 screens to go over these fans, and those will be installed over the next few days.
In the evening we received a surprise visit from some friends at the Imagawa Church, who know a few of our team members from previous trips to Brasil, on previous teams - one of which worked at their church in 2005. They brought considerable food for us (not realizing that Americans tend to eat dinner much earlier than Brazilians do) and it was all really good.
Also during our evening praise, prayer and community time one of our team members, who also happens to be the head of the Evangelical Church Women of the Pacific Northwest Conference, presented Nigel and Priscila with a gift. It so happens that repairs and upgrades to the camp was this year's Evangelical Women's project, and the money thus raised was presented to the camp. Both Nigel and Priscila were quite speechless for a time, which for both at the same time is quite an accomplishment. We praised God for providing such funds at such a timely point in the camp's history.
Frank came in with some wonderful news in the evening: we received an exchange rate of 1.8 Reais for each dollar. This is better than we expected, with the decline of the American dollar. For so many years it has been the South American countries (and during the 1970s and 1980s and early 1990s, certainly including Brasil!) that had trouble with declining currency value. The declining value of the dollar in Brasil gives us some very small idea of the problems caused by having an unstable currency must have been like. For example, we exchanged all of our money on our first full day in Brasil since we expect that soon we will only be able to get 1.4 Reias for every dollar. And this is only a two week trip! We praised God for the extra funds provided by the good exchange rate we were able to obtain, as every Real we get is another Real we are able to use in the ministry here. This will be important when it comes to, for example, buying food and items for the orphanage in Maringá next week, and when it comes to buying all the materials we need to do our work here at the camp. It will also help a lot when it comes to working with the bus company in arranging our transportation to Maringà and Foz do Iguaçu later on.
Perhaps though it was a little too good. With the good exchange rate and the price for coffee at the plantation up the road at 15 Reais per kilogram, we decided to order bags of coffee. It turned out to be well over 100 kilograms of coffee, which apparently is a record for the teams Frank has brought down.
I am rooming with Percy and David in Red Cabin #1. This is a reasonably good place to be. Percy showed us a pile of letters from his family. He is supposed to open one per day.
During our praise, prayer and community time this evening we had a presentation from Fran and Melvin Noah, who have been the field director family here on the Brasil field for quite a long time. They described the history of OMS in Brasil, and how such a missions agency called the Oriental Missionary Society (as OMS was then known) came to Brasil through immigration from Japan around 1910. In 1950 they started their Brazilian national ministry (as opposed to the ministry handled by the Japanese affiliated churches) and today there are some 60 or more churches scattered through southern Brasil that are affiliated with OMS, not including the huge number of churches that are part of the Japanese immigrant ministry, which is actually still handled somewhat through Japan but is mostly national / Japanese cultural today. There is one seminary in Londrina, with some 50 seminary students learning to become church leaders. There are also a large number of seminary students taking part in various other locations through extension classes.
As part of their description of their own history in coming here to Brasil, they described their attendance at Asbury College, and how they were there during the Asbury revivals. With so many lives being overturned during that time, they clearly heard the message to go and preach the gospel. Brasil is where they were led.
As the field directors, they described some of the recent history of OMS in Brasil. For example, the seminary has recently had a change in leadership, and this was somewhat of a rough transition. The Brasilian church denomination has recently had a change in leadership, and this involved moving the headquarters of the church denomination to a new city. It must be understood that the Brazilian church and the seminary in Londrina are pretty much entirely run by nationals these days. The missionaries fill in some support roles and teach some seminary classes that are not currently filled by nationals, but such things as the seminary president is held by and decided upon by nationals. The missionaries could pretty much tell that there were going to be problems with the past seminary president, I think, based on some of the messages of the time. However, if the national church is ever to stand on its own, then it must learn to recognize these types of problems on its own without the intervention of the missionaries. Thus, for the most part the missionaries kept their views to themselves, and the rather messy transition was somewhat traumatic but also (we can hope anyway) also a learning experience for the national church and seminary leadership.
Mr. Noah is planning to retire in about 1.5 years, and he would really like to leave on a positive note. With some of the recent changes going on, things certainly seem headed in the right direction.
On a more personal note, his back has been bothering him and would like prayer for that as well.
The biggest camps here, in terms of needing the most space, are the couples camps. However, there is also a need for the day camps and other day uses to have a dedicated multi-shower room, as otherwise there just isn't enough shower space for all the people. Thus, these rooms have been split into two sections. One is a small bedroom that a couple can sleep in, while the former bathroom section is a multiple shower and toilet room for use by the day users. For us, this means that doing this one room is now will probably take as much time as two separate rooms. The ceiling sections are long PVC sheets that snap together once you have a length and the edges set up. The edges and end pieces are what takes the longest, and thus the break between the two rooms represents a bit of a time sink, but it is what needs to be done.
The cleaning girls also came around and cleaned the rooms for us. These two young women (18 to 20 I'm guessing) live across the road from the camp in a rural Roman Catholic chapel that is supposed to serve the religious needs of the neighborhood, with the priest making occasional visits and making rounds to various other rural chapels. The father of the family was originally employed by one of the local industries, but had an injury that caused blindness and couldn't work any more. Thus, the family has no money, and so they moved into what is essentially the garden shed of this Catholic chapel, and look after the building as part of living there. Hiring them to clean the cabins, do our laundry, do a considerable part of the cooking, and otherwise help out with our team helps both us (we don't have to worry about doing any of that ourselves) and helps them (it gives them a source of income which otherwise they would not have). As possible, Nigel and Priscila hire them to help out at the camp, but generally that is not possible unless there are events or visitors or someone else at the camp to help pay their salary. Thus, our stay at the camp for a week is, we hope, a blessing to them, and an opportunity for them to experience a Christian environment that they wouldn't otherwise receive.
The girls "dont speak English" but in fact understand a little for some basic one way communication. Roberta thanked the one that cleaned her room, and after some arm waving I asked the girl "Did you understand what she was trying to tell you?" She in fact understood enough English to get a basic understanding.
We stopped work at about 5 in the afternoon, showered and got ready to go to the Imagawa Church on the other side of the city. Some of our group have a special connection to that church after helping them with their rebuilding project in 2005. The plan is to eat dinner here at the camp at 6 and be at the Imagawa church at 7:30.
++++++++++++
Bus showed up for the trip to Imagawa church a little early (they always do - they never want to show up late when people are wanting to be somewhere at a certain time). When we got there the entire church, plus a few people from the surrounding neighborhood, were on hand to greet us.
You must understand what the Imagawa neighborhood is. The area is a working poor neighborhood. It isn't like the huge cardboard slums that you see photos of in the various places that discuss poverty and inequality between rich and poor in Brasil. These people own homes and sometimes autos, but they are not wealthy and generally have troubles making ends meet. In at least one case I know of, there are three generations of people living in one two bedroom house, with only one of the men having a full time job.
The Imagawa Church is really just the basement of the building, which is all they have had money to complete so far. We helped them do some of the improvements on the rooms, and for this they have been extremely thankful and have never missed an opportunity to express that. Which is why a few of them came all the way to the camp yesterday evening.
Everything that went on tonight realy defies any sort of attempt at trying to describe it, particularly for those of us who have been friends of this church for a while. One doesn't bid farewall in a Brasilian Evangelical church in a very quick fashion. It took us some 45 minutes just to get out the door after our time visiting them had come to an end.
One of the South Albany Church people said, after the bus finally started to depart and people continued to chase after us waving their farewell, "I feel like we are some sort of rock stars or somehing." I suppose in some ways we are, but even more they consider us part of their church family now.
Our morning devotions started with Diane presenting Acts 17. A beautiful sentiment about how we are "Never far from God" and God is never far from us, as we grope about to try to find him, and what he has for us.
We are real close to being able to finish the ceilings in 5 rooms total duirng our week here. This is a wonderful step forward.
Nigel is overjoyed by our gift of a gasoline powered hedge trimmer to the camp, and it is very helpful to him. We carefully selected a brand that has good parts availability in Brasil, and has a good reputation for reliability here in the USA as well. We used it once in order to wear the paint around the blades slightly, so that we could show the Brazilian customs officers that in fact it was used equipment and therefore not subject to machinery import taxes when giving it to a non-profit organization registered in Brazil.
Early start today. I woke up at 5 for some reason, and could not get back to sleep. Read Acts 17.
Morning devotions included a discussion of Isaiah 55. This included a remark by Priscila about how we never really know what small acts of kindness or other activity done for the glory of God may ultimately serve some very larger purpose. This is perhaps a very important consideration for our time here.
After some small clean-up and touch-up work, we visit the coffee plantation that is just up the road from Acampamento Shalom. David, Lamar and I return to the Camp soon afterward as for us there is still one small part of the ceiling project that needs work. The painting crew has pretty much finished everything that they set out to do, and the camp looks wonderful.
This is a good thing, because today is much hotter than earlier in the week. It is a blessing from God that we had the unusually cooler (though still quite hot) weather during the painting process, as they would have roasted outside if temperatures had been like they are today.
We spend some time organizing our departure from the camp, as well as sorting out materials we brought. Tomorrow is the day we do our lessons for the Webb language school, and thus we must organize our presentations for that as well.
Cleaning up efforts are also quite involved for some people today.
Percy presents our devotions for this evening: James 1:19.
Some years back, the ministry of OMS here in Londrina included a language school. This school was formed partly by a need to teach English to students going overseas to earn more advanced degrees. In 2000, this language school was opened to the public and the Webb Language School was born. Helping with regular conversation time with the students was part of my 2000 trip to Londrina. In reorganization of the ministry efforts in 2006 and 2007, the Webb school was made completely separate from the seminary, and put entirely into the very capable hands of the Brazilian teachers that had been running the school for several years already.
However, there are still some ties between the school and the missionaries, as the school is able to draw students to its classes due to the presence of the missionaries because few people actually have a chance to talk to someone who is a native speaker of English. Unless they get to talk to an authentic English speaker (American, Canadian, Australian, Irish, and English have all been involved at Webb at one point or another) the classes that are taught are all theoretical. Talking to a "real" English speaker suddenly makes them realize they are able to communicate, and people really do talk the way they were taught.
The Webb school continues its unique format of offering English classes with openly Christian content, and this is a popular point as well, since the rest of the English schools in the city are teaching English in a secular fashion. For example, most of them seem to use MTV or some other source that doesn't exactly express the highest of either American or Christian ideals.
Saturday was our day to present various seminars to the school. We each divided into teams, and taught things such as cooking, travel English, American music, scap booking, and various other items of current interest in the USA, and thus also of interest to the students.
This may sound like a really bizarre way of approaching ministry, but it works. Despite the fact that we were only there for a day, and despite the fact that it is really a Brazilian educational institution and ministry, one of the students (the owner of a nearby bar who is in her 30s) came to Christ through our time at the school. Was it worth the trip just to change her life, assuming no other long term effect is made on anyone else through our ministry? I think so. The fact is, we will never know in this life how our visit may have had a positive impact on someone.
Few churches in Brasil have a Sunday morning service of any sort. It just doesn't work here that well. The weather is too hot during the day, and the people are too much into going out at night, for it to be popular. Furthermore, Sundays are reserved for families in this culture, and people would much rather dedicate the entire day to their families rather than have an interruption in the middle of the day for church. Thus, for almost all churches in Brasil, from the Catholic to the smallest protestant groups, the primary worship time is in the evenings.
Every Sunday, Londrina has a craft market downtown. On most other days, this area is crowded with regular commercial establishments, but on Sunday the local handcrafts and artists come and sell their unique items.
By about 10 in the morning we had said all of our goodbyes to the people at the camp, and had gotten on our bus for the trip to Maringa, which is about an hour and a half from Londrina. We stopped for a time at the craft market in downtown Londrina before heading to Maringà. The church in Maringà is the largest of the OMS affiliated churches in Brasil, and Frank wanted us to experience their Sunday service. There are two Sunday evening services, several mid-week services, and other events. There are also a number of daughter churches that have been started through the city to take some of the crowding away from the main church. Even so, the Central Church there minisers to some 6 thousand every week, and no matter what they do in terms of adding daughter churches and more services at the central church, the sanctuary is always packed to the point where they put chairs down the aisles between the pews so that there is no possible way of getting more people in there (and little chance of getting out unless you make a considerable effort to do so).
This night and the night afterward we spent in the Hotel Golden Inga, which is a wonderful hotel. How can we afford to stay there? Only by God's grace and Frank's severe Brazilian style negotiating skills, which usually involves some considerable efforts but by God's grace convinces management of hotels and restaurants to give us decent prices to the size of our group.
As part of our time with them, in the evening we picked them up on our bus for a trip to McDonalds, which is a rare treat for them. Considering the large number of kids involved, it was definitely going to be quite an event.
McDonalds thought so too, apparently. They decided to back out of their agreement to host our group in the restaurant. With Frank unable to negotiate any sort of deal that would still let us all in, another option had to be found.
And find one we did, thanks be to God. There is a type of pizza parlor here in Brasil called a Pizza Rodizio. "Rotary Pizza" is about as close as you can come to the English translation of that. They are constantly baking pizzas of all sorts and kinds, and as they are ready each is brought around to the tables. Anyone who wants a slice of that type gets one, until it is gone. The next one of the same type that comes out picks up where that one left off, and in the meantime other pizzas of different types are starting out in various other places around the restaurant. If this sounds like it is absolute choas, it really is, but there is at least some order to it because the serving staff is always able to keep track of who has been offered what type of pizza, and no one is ever offered two slices of the same pizza without various other types being offered first. Now, add about 20 Americans with various langauge skills, several staff from the orphanage, and about 45 children of various ages running around and freely intermixing with the various Brazilian families already in the restuaurant, you will probably get something that is absolute pandemonium.
On the other hand, if there was ever an appropriate location for absolute pandemonium, a Brazilian Pizza Rodizio is definitely the place for it to happen!
Besides, they charged us about half of what McDonald's was saying they would charge us, and we got dessert included! (Most Brazilian Pizza Rodizios will make ice cream pizzas that put most American hot fudge ice cream treats to shame, in both sheer size and taste.) McDonald's would have charged extra for the dessert, I am quite certain.
Still, there is noise among the group that we need to "do something" about the McDonald's incident. Some have suggested writing a letter to the corporate headquarters and see if they will be willing to give us some sort of consolation, or maybe help out the orphanage in some way.
Eventually, in the early evening, we arrived at the Turrance Green Hotel, which will be our home for the next few nights.
This marks the start of our time of debriefing, where we adjust back to our "home" culture in some ways. As an international tourist destination, but still in Brasil, it is our time to get back into our culture and help prevent culture shock from being too terrible when we go back to America from our time here.
This happens in more ways than one. Staying in our hotel in the city of Foz do Iguaçu are two Wycliffe Bible Translator missionaries who are here to visit the falls before they retire. One of them happens to be from the state of Washington, and whose field director attends a Portuguese language Bible Study in Beaverton, Oregon that I also attend.
You can see some of my Photos of the Falls from this March, 2008 trip.
On the way back to town, we stopped at the Three Frontiers Marker.
Frank, Lyonie, the Minors, and the bus driver took off for Maringà, with the bus. In the meantime, by 1:30 in the afternoon, we were playing dominos in the airport waiting for a flight that was delayed coming out of Rio de Janeiro, and would bring us to São Paulo, and to our return flight. Most of the flights are delayed due to bad weather along the coast.
Soon, all of the delayed flights arrive at the same time, producing an awful confusion in the waiting room. Eventually, we are routed onto the right plane and head for São Paulo, and eventually our trip home.
Received: by 10.114.88.13 with HTTP; Tue, 4 Mar 2008 04:10:12 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 12:10:12 +0000 From: "Glenn L" To: (list of addresses deleted) Subject: Hello from Brasil Hello Friends and Family; Not much opportunity to write. Arrived safey. More later. - Glenn --
Received: by 10.114.81.3 with HTTP; Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:26:00 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:26:00 -0300 From: "Glenn L" To: (list of addresses deleted) Subject: Re: Hello from Brasil Hello Friends and Family~=Ç I am attempting this from a Brasilian keyboard, and as the layout is somewhat different there will be some errors. I have half an hour to send a message to you. We finished a lot of work at the camp. The exterior of many of the cabins were painted, plus ceilings were added to 5 cabins. The appearance is much better than it was before, with the bare concrete block. Acceptable in the 1970s when the camp was built, but Brasil has moved on since then. Now, so has camp Shalom. The airline ticket for the returning flight has been confirmed as of yesterday, so everything looks like it will be happening as normally scheduled, but we haven~t been to the airport yet. On Saturday we were at the Webb English school, which is unique in its focus on Christian schooling. We spent the entire day conversing with the students there, and one student made a decision right there to become a Christian. On Sunday we traveled to MAringa and participated in the worship service with the church there. This is a very lively church and they now run 3 service every Sunday. Every service they add, quickly becomes overcrowded to the point where they must put portable chairs down the aisles (at much distress to the local fire department). We spent one day playing with the orphans at the church run orphanage there, and took them out to eat in the evening to a pizza parlor. This is a ^^rodisio^^ style pizza parlor, which produces pizza slices fast and furoious, but it was a good experience for the children to get away from the orphanage for a while. We then spent Tuesday (today) traveling to Foz do Igua=E7u for our departure flight, and our team time together before we leave the country. I hope to be able to write more later, but that is all I will be able to write for now. God bless you all, and thank you for your responses. - Glenn --