Our Last Week(s) in Brazil

We made it back to the United States, safe and sound! What a crazy ride the last few weeks have been. But first, a recap of our last week(s) in Salvador, Brazil.

A very good Brazilian friend of ours named Bruno got us in touch with an American woman named Susan who started a “museum” for children, and she invited us and the kids for a free and private visit. Brother Joao da Immaculada helped set up transportation (2 big vans) and a wonderful woman in our community talked to all the parents of the kids and collected permissions slips. We loaded 2 brothers from the Community of St John, 2 Brazilian volunteers, us both, and 26 kids, into the two vans. 

The kids were so excited to be going on a “field trip!” They all waved good bye to the favela, the market, and local shops as we drove off, and they sang and chanted the entire way, barely able to contain their excitement. When we arrived at the “Museu for the Children,” we all gathered in a room to meet Susan who explained the rules and to hear what was in store for us that day. Everything there was kid-sized. 

There were fossils for the kids to explore under a magnifying glass, science experiments, a bubble room, a life-like market with cash registers, typewriters and telephones to play with, dolls, dinosaurs, basically a child’s heaven. And that was just the inside! Outside, was a wide open (but safely enclosed) space with GRASS (something that is rarely seen in our city) jungle gyms, swings, a water sofa, a turtle habitat, and a huge tree that the kids were allowed to climb. The kids would have been happy enough just to run around in the open space doing cartwheels and playing tag! 

Bruno and his wife made the kids hot dogs, juice, and fruit, and we all ate together in the “tree house.” They were eager to eat quickly so they could continue playing! Finally, it was time to wrap up our day and head back to our favela. The kids (of course) did not want to leave. They kept asking us when they could return. We are so grateful for Bruno and Marcella for getting us in touch with Susan, and for her generosity in opening up her museum to us. It was definitely a day the kids will remember forever!

A few days later, we were had a catechism day at the convent and invited all the kids in our community. We expected to get maybe 25 kids to come, and asked for everyone to gather at one of the entrances to the favela, and we would walk to the convent with them. We quickly realized that we had underestimated the outcome of our event, as there were a little less than 60 KIDS who showed up! 

With the help of some priests and volunteers, we walked all the kids to the convent, which was about a half a mile away. We got them all settled in the chapel and Fr. Patrick said Mass, and walked us through each part, carefully and simply explaining the significance. 

After Mass, we fed them lunch, then separated the kids into age groups, and had a rotation of different activities. Since we weren’t expecting that many kids, we had to do some improvising, so a soccer game was quickly started for the older kids. We had music and prizes and the kids just had a great time. 

After the games, we gathered them together for a snack, and our friend/volunteer, Gabriel, surprised us with a beautiful slide show of our time in Brazil. A few days prior, the kids from our classes sneakily drew us a picture and they combined them to make a huge collage that they surprised us with as well. Then we got hugs from EVERY kid. We could not stop crying! I definitely will remember that moment for the rest of my life. When all the tears were dried up, we walked them back home.

The next day, we invited everyone from the chapel in the favela to our home so we could say goodbye. Everyone brought something to share, and we ended up with a huge feast! There was food, music, dancing, and more tears! When we started in our mission we had 10-12 kids who knew us and when we left there were over 60 that knew us. How good God has been to our little mission. And now the Community of St. John is keeping it going.

People from the US often ask us if we were ever scared living in a favela, but to be honest, it’s such a family-like community, and we definitely felt accepted as one of their own. Even the drug dealers (who usually kept to them selves) started saying hello and striking up conversations with us. We miss everyone so much already, but we feel at peace being back in the States and knowing we will visit someday.

As we left Salvador, we made a stop in Rio to unwind and reflect on our past year. It was a year of joy, learning, patience, growing, heartache, laughter, and falling more in love with each other and our creator. 

We are aware that we have not updated you on our lives here yet. We have some exciting things to tell all of you about, but we need a little more time before we unveil God’s plan for us. Stay posted.

A Mission Transition

It’s with teary eyes and broken hearts that we announce that we will have to return to the United States after one year in Brazil.

After a great deal of praying we have decided to return to the United States by October in order to seek some medical assistance to find out why we have been having recurring miscarriages.

We feel that, despite the good work and immense blessing we have received by being missionaries in Brazil, we are called to start our family as soon as possible.

Please pray especially hard for us as we transition and as we hand over the reigns of the mission so it can continue when we leave.

The good news is that this does not mean we are finished with our mission work. Definitely not! In fact, we see it as a transition from one mission to another.

Being here in Brail has put us into close contact with many friends, family, and strangers who were inspired by what God is doing and eager to do it themselves. But they realize that they have families and it’s not necessarily possible to move away or to do such extreme things. This has inspired us to take some time over the next year or two to help ordinary Christians encounter Jesus in the poor of their own communities. We will be moving to San Diego in order to work as mentors to families who want to serve the poor, but do not know where to begin. We will be walking families through the process of doing mission work from home with their family. We will be focusing on serving the homeless, widows, orphans, elderly, those suffering from domestic violence, and immigrants while at the same time helping ordinary families do radical things for the sake of the Gospel. We’ve been working on a concept that uses social media to make the work of evangelizing understandable and accessible for everyone.

Please stay posted this fall for some information on what this mission looks like and our website currently under development. We pray that many of you will join us this December when we launch our initiative.

Adventures of July and August

Well we are long overdue for an update. We have been traveling extensively and only with the kids a few weeks out of the last month.

We went back to the US what turned out to be a rapid two-week flurry of activity.  Our itinerary was jam-packed with activities and we tried to see as many people and do as much as we could.  After the whirlwind of visiting our friends and family and collecting things for the mission we came back to even more kids than when we left.

We collected two large suitcases of toys and games and activities thanks to the generous support of you guys. So many of you donated Legos, Duplos, Perler Beads, Shrinky-Dinks, stuff to make slime, blankets/bibs/bandannas for babies, toy cars, etc. These are all things that the kinds here have never experienced and would be entirely too expensive to procure here. We doubled our supply of activities and came with some money to finish organizing the activity closet.

Since we’ve been back we have been spacing these activities out so we can do some with them each week. Can’t spring all of this excitement on them at once, they would explode. Their energy and enthusiasm is already hard to contain. They have been bringing their friends and we have seen countless new faces. Mothers are even lying about their children’s age to get them into our classes – hahaha.

One of the major accomplishments from this trip to the US was that we started the long and arduous process of finding out why we are having recurring miscarriages. We were blessed to be able to talk with a pro-life fertility doctor in San Diego. There are many reasons ranging from hormonal problems to uterine problems and even chromosomal abnormalities.

We had our blood drawn while we were in San Diego and we are having it analyzed for chromosomal abnormalities – this is the worst result because it usually cannot be fixed. If this is negative for abnormalities then that is good news with regards to us having a family in the near future.

We went to a baptism/chrismation for our new Goddaughter in Canada. Suffice it to say that she is a complete miracle and we are totally blessed by having a little saint to look after spiritually.

We had a party in Vegas so we could see all our friends and it was outstandingly hosted (as usual) by Jaime, Ryan, and Dr. Frank. It was an awesome time to have carne-asada and update our friends on what we’ve been doing. Then we had an amazing beach bonfire with our friends in Huntington Beach graciously sponsored by Aunt Kathy, Uncle Bill, and Aunt Mary.  Finally, we had a get together with the Deatons in Escondido so we were able to say hello to everyone we possibly could.

We got back to rainy weather, which is starting to clear for the season. We bought out first churasco so we can barbecue Brazilian style. We are now officially Our English classes resumed and the students want to learn how to pronounce lyrics to popular songs so we did that with them for the classes most recently. We brought back ingredients for American Chocolate Chip Cookies that they only see in the movies and they were totally into them.

The news from Alto is that there was a fire in a home near us. Fortunately it doesn’t seem anyone was hurt. There was no response (or at least timely) from the fire department so we helplessly watched as the community came together to put it out. We are hoping to do something to help the family, as it appears they lost mostly everything to smoke or fire damage.

And finally, the most popular part of our blog… the Pictures! Here is what we have been doing here in Salvador, Brazil:

June in Review

June was a great month for us! We are completely assimilated into our routine and we finally feel like we are making meaningful impacts here.

Classes

Our classes reached record attendance! We had to get additional chairs to seat all the children and we are trying many different ways to get more tables to accommodate all the kids.

Some kids have had to stand up for activities because we don't have enough seats!

The reason we have so many children this time of year is that the kids are on their “winter” break. Most of the time the kids go away to the “interior” (country) to visit relatives and celebrate a successful harvest for the feast of São João (St. John the Baptist).

The kids drew pictures of what São João Festival is like

It’s like our Thanksgiving, but it is one of the largest holidays here. They decorate with banners and eat corn on the cob, boiled peanuts, corn bread, and other fall foods. But, because the economy isn’t very good (inflation is at 8%), not many of the families in our community could afford to travel. Of course, that is mixed with the fact that our classes are just awesome. Kids are bringing their friends and their siblings and cousins.

Typical decorations of this time of year

We celebrated by going to the historic center this year, but after the first hour it was too crowded to even see the concerts or hear any music so our night was pretty tranquil.

Typical banners for this time of year

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We have settled into a new routine for the classes. We have different classes for each day of the week. 

• Tuesday: Art  
• Wednesday: Film
• Thursday: Music
• Friday: We have a volunteer, Sonia, who comes to do an extra-fun activity
• Saturday: Catechism and Games

Sidewalk chalk outside

Kara with Gabriel and Giovana
Coloring the new popular kind of coloring pages here

Irma Dulce

In addition to our work with the children, we are volunteering at one of the largest nonprofits in Brazil, the Irma Dulce Center. Blessed Irma Dulce (soon to be Saint) is like the Mother Teresa of Brazil… and she is from right were we live. 

She started a social service agency that is extraordinary and huge. A network of free hospitals (which we used), a bakery, services to the homeless, single mothers, elderly, you name it. We are privileged to be able to partner with them to teach English as a second language in the historic center of Salvador on Saturdays. We have fifteen adult students.

Our House

As we said before we had a mold infestation in our house, which we controlled with bleach and vinegar (at one point toxically mixed). This worked for about a month, but it is back. We’ve gone over a week with constant heavy downpours every day and the water is seeping into our walls again. This made our wardrobe as well as most of our clothes grow mold. But, we cannot clean it until it dries so we can wash everything.

Mold in our dining room.

But, the mosquito situation is improving. After we went away for a week, most of them that were in our house died off and we have been extremely careful about keeping every last one of them out. We wage a serious war on those that sneak their way in with little electric racquets.

Our electricity keeps burning out, but we are looking forward to the power company coming and connecting a new line this coming month. Maybe we can have a warm shower without burning our wires through. Hehehehe. 

The white wire powers our entire house. 

We celebrated our three-year wedding anniversary in June. We went for a romantic dinner next to the beach. It’s been a crazy-fun adventure. Looking back we have no regrets. Even though our life is absolutely insane, we couldn’t imagine it any other way.

We are coming home for some doctors appointments for two weeks at the end of July. We will then have more to report after that. Thank you to all who have been supporting us and our mission financially and with you prayers. Keep it up, we depend on you all to carry Jesus to these far parts. Love you all.