Well, we have been gone for three months now and we are finally back in the US and ready to give you an update about what we have been doing and what the future holds in store for us.
We arrived in Brazil in October where we set up camp at a 300 year old convent. The convent is now a monestary (but still called a convent because of the historic nature of the building). This massive 50 room + building sits in the historic center of Salvador, Brazil... the first place that the Americas were founded (i.e. it doesn't get older than this in the Americas).
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| The Historic Center of Salvador, Brazil |
The convent is the monestary for a group of five priests from the Community of St. John (a French religious community). All the priests speak French and Portuguese, with two speaking English. We are accompanied by three lay American missionaries and one Frenchman who later returned home.
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| When we arrived in Brazil this October. Meet our mission family. |
Our days at the convent were jam packed from 5am to 10pm with occasionally one or two hours of free time in which we cleaned, napped, and got caught up on the flood of emails that were taking over our inboxes. We had no time for anything as every hour was filled with prayer, outreach, and meetings. It was a very intense period for Kara and I as we learned how to be married, but still live a monastic life. It was as rewarding as it was challenging. We are very sorry that we were not in better contact, but we literally had NO time to talk. Our parents were scared at first because they didn't hear from us for a month at a time.
Every day for a month and a half we walked to Alto da Esperanca, a favela (i.e. ghetto) that is about a 15 minute walk from the convent. We did this to make our presence known to the local community so they would know who we were and that we were missionaries.
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| The innery courtyard of the convent. |
A favela is a small community of hapazardly built shanties that are very basic brick houses stacked upon each other. There are no roads, no proper sanitation, and no police protection. The entire community is controled by drug lords and the only industry is drug trafficking. Every person in the favela is personally affected by the conditions of poverty as well as the dangers and uncertainty of the drug trafficking. This is where we want to work.
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| A view of the outside of Alto da Esperanca |
In this favela there is a small three story house, Mary Magdaline House. This house has been vacant for 14 years. Over the past 3 years the brothers from the Community of St. John have been restoring the house to a safe and livable condition. The top floor is a classroom, the middle floor is a small apartment, and the bottom floor is a hang-out for the youth group, a small library, and a tutoring room.
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| A vew from Mary Magdaline House, the favela's Catholic Chapel |
Our second month and a half was spent preparing for moving into this house in the favela. We spent countless hours working on preparing the house to be a home. Yes, it's in the favela, but it is now a warm and welcoming home where Kara and I can be a real presence to the community there. We've painted the apartment level, got furniture and household items, and we are in the process of decorating. Most importantly, we set up shop so we can work from this location (getting our phones and internet working enough to not need to return to the convent every time we need to check our email).
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| Kara playing with the street children after school |
Now, what is the purpose of living in a drug-trafficking community in Brazil? We get this question all the time. Drug trafficking is a way of life for the people in Alto (the shortened name for the favela). While not every person is a drug trafficker, everyone has some tie to the business. Children are recruited as early as grade school and by the time the children are in high school they are already fully "in." To make matters worse, the public schools in Brazil are only half-day (with one group going in the morning and the others in the afternoon). The children are unsupervised for half of the day - roaming the streets with no adult supervision. The result is very clear... the children begin to get involved in the drugs earlier - since they get money and social support by doing it.
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| The kids are so hungry for role models. |
We are in Alto to provide an alternative to this lifestyle. We have an afterschool program for these children that keeps them off the street. We teach them art, music, theater, dance, and of course, Catechism. The hope is to provide much needed structue, discipline, and values for the children of the favela. Once they get older, they will be able to come to our newest project, a bakery, where they will learn life-skills both in terms of potential employment and as a way to have life-skills to help their future families.
In addition to the 15 hours of work each day, we also found time to take private Portuguese leassons from a local school. We spent about 6 hours per week in intensive lessons with our tutor who did not speak any english (except for a few Michael Jackson lyrics). Our Portuguese is progressing and we are able to get around, take the bus, and have important conversations. Right before leaving we had a couple dinner parties where we spoke in all Portuguese to our guests who did not speak english. We are anxious to continue to learn so we can have more intensive conversations and I would like to speak more financial and business language.
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| "Let the little children come to me." Matthew 19:14 |
That's as brief an update as we can give. Hope you're as excited as we are. Thank you to all of you who supported our mission financially this year. We have been humbled by the generosity of untold numbers of people who made our work with the children possible. From them to you, "Obrigado" (thank you). Your gifts are really making an immediate impact on the lives of these children. We are privelaged to see it first hand and we hope this blog will be a place where we can share it with you.
1 comment:
Parabéns amigos!
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