Exotic Hamburgers & Life in the Dump

Part 1 - Exotic Hamburgers

It all began back when the leaders at Asas asked Jeyson to help by teaching some of the newer missionaries how to weld. This might not sound exciting to everyone, but Jeyson loved the idea. When Jeyson arrived at Asas 2 1/2 years ago some of the other missionaries taught him the basics of welding, and ever since he has loved it! So when he was asked to help by teaching 40 hours of the subject to the new guys, he started brainstorming ideas of some practice projects and decided on a charcoal barbeque grill. Great - I thought....and it did turn out great!

Here are some pictures of Jeyson instructing -

This missionary, Loren, and his wife are recent graduates of the Word of Life here in Brazil.

Up close shot

Part of the shop - a little messy with everyone in the middle of projects.

Jeyson with our grill, hot off the press

And a few more shots around the hangar while we're at it...

My language partner, Cinninha, and I had come over to the hangar together.

Me hard at work :)

Ricardo, one of the new missionaries who is a former pilot of one of the largest airlines in Brazil.

Heber, a pilot/mechanic who was previously a dental surgeon. He uses all of these skills serving with our mission. His wife, Suzy, is an accomplished classical pianist who studied for several years in France. She gave up a lot to now be a missionary and own only a small keyboard now.

Anyway, so the grill came out great so we gave a a try

Then yesterday our friends (not from the mission) called to tell us they were going to be taking care of 4 children from a local orphanage for the whole weekend. (In the States I'm sure the process is much more complicated, but here all you have to do is go there and say you are willing to take some children out for the weekend and you're allowed!). Anyway, so they were looking for something to do with the kids this weekend so we invited them all over for lunch. I thought, why not try out our grill and make some hamburgers for our guests? I thought this was especially a great idea knowing that they are young kids (4-12 years old) and hamburgers are something everyone is used to and can easily be eaten....or so I thought. Jeyson mentioned to me that it would not be a common idea here, but I somewhat ignored the comment and moved ahead with the idea anyway. "What could go wrong?" we thought. So we got everything ready - burgers, potato salad, salad, etc.

(Here is a picture of some of the group...it was hard to round everyone up!)

Unfortunately, eating hamburgers wasn't as easy as we thought. When everyone settled in at the table we started making up the buns and handing out the plates, the kids didn't know what to do! One started eating the bun with ketchup and lettuce inside before he even got meat. Another said he didn't want any, he preferred to wait till lunch. When we told him, this IS lunch, he said it couldn't be lunch if there were no beans! (Of course I hadn't made any!) Oh no!! Another kid didn't want anything except the meat - the potato salad and eating meat inside bread seemed strange to him. Even our friends who are adults said they had never eaten this before. (Here they have McDonald's but still for some reason making your own burgers was a VERY different thought). They kept saying how great and different it was and that now they are going to tell their friends that they had eaten American hamburgers! How exotic! You would have thought we were serving them lobster!

Anyway so that's a little taste of our new reality and the new ways we have to adjust our thinking - even adjust our idea of what to serve at a picnic. Everything is different here! So, our picnic didn't go SO smoothly, but we're not ready to give up! We're keeping a good sense of humor and just laughing about it! (By the way, in the end the kids DID like the burgers, one 10 year old even ate 3 of them!!)

Part 2 - Life in the Dump

Anyway, in addition to wowing Brazil with our burgers, this week we had an exceptionally big opportunity for ministry. Our mission organized a trip to all go together to the capital, Brasilia, and minister in the city dump through meeting physical and spiritual needs. Each person was assigned an area to serve in, depending on their abilities of course. We partnered with a church that we have already worked with several times in the past.

Jeyson and I personally did not get assigned to the actual dump itself (where people live and work weeding through the trash). However we did work in a neighborhood surrounding the dump that is such a poor area it is still unofficially called the dump even though there is no big pile of garbage to be seen. The houses are made out of scrap material found in the dump and many people from the neighborhood travel to the dump to work every day. It is a very rough neighborhood with sewage running through the streets, but even there you can find friendly people willing to have a conversation about Christ.

A street of houses.

Kids looking over their house wall.

At the church we set up dental and medical clinics, a hair cutting station, pharmacy, a place for health seminars, and even a table for women to learn how to make crafts and a place to get a facial. All of this of course were to meet physical and social needs and just show the people in the community that we were truly there to LOVE and SERVE them.

On the left is Heber, the dentist/pilot who in the previous picture was doing mechanics in the hangar. Here he has literally put his other hat on and is hard at work between the church pews.
Not all of the dentists and doctors are full-time missionaries with our Asas. Some work normal jobs during the week and volunteer on the weekends like this woman here. However all are believers and anxious to serve and share their faith.

Bea, a woman from Asas who went to school to learn how to cut hair to serve just like this. It was important to her to really do a good job cutting hair if she is going to share the Gospel while she does it.

Behind the blue curtains are private stations where the doctors see patients.

Patients waiting to be seen.
A 15 year old single mother waiting to have her sick baby seen by a doctor.

Otinaracy, a doctor who is a missionary with Asas, in the pharmacy giving medicine to a patient.
A seminar on health. Many people from the community were anxious to participate as they waited to be seen by the doctors and dentists.

The whole church "nursery" was this crib in the corner of the church.

As for spiritual needs:

We also had a team that ministered to the children, a team that ministered to the teens, and a team that did door to door evangelism and invited the community out to the free services at the church. All of this was to meet the community's spiritual needs. I was part of the group with the adolescents and Jeyson was the with evangelism group. It was a long day - 8 hours out on the streets with these ministries, but there was fruit from the work.

Jeyson and his group that went door to door sharing the Gospel.

Unfortunately, Jeyson did not have a camera with him so he was not able to get many pictures, but here is one of him sharing with some children. Most of the time is spent talking with adults though. Jeyson said that several adults really seemed to understand the Gospel message and chose to put their faith in Christ for the first time. The local church we worked with will follow up with them. Seeing people come to Christ is what this is all about - so if even one person truly hears it is all worthwhile.

At the end of the day Jeyson's group paused for a few minutes to jump rope with some children.

One of the most encouraging parts of the trip is that we could see that our mission had already built a good reputation with the community through visiting several times and the seed planted in the past is really growing! Many people remembered the Gospel from the mission's previous visits and were already friends with the missionaries. Some of the missionaries went back to visit homes from the past.

The Teen Ministry:

I am learning more and more that you should expect the unexpected to happen and to stop thinking that planning equals the outcome you were hoping for. There are so many factors!

As you might remember for the past months I have been part of a team from Asas that has been planning a new branch of our outreach which would specifically reach out to teens. The idea was to invite all the teens in the city to a central place and play games, do dramas, and explain the Gospel - all in a "cool" way that would appeal to teens. Our plan seemed great back in Anapolis...however on the streets of the dump of Brasilia our plan worked out quite differently.

First of all, we had counted on having our activities in a closed in area, but they wound up being here in the middle of the town square where people on bikes rode through the middle of our "stage" and cars with speakers were blasting advertisements. To make it even crazier, after announcing that our event was going to be in this square, at the same time a political debate was scheduled there that we did not know about. We waited about an hour for the event to be over and started up.

Some other factors that we did not foresee was that our target group (13-17) would not be interested in games and dramas because they had more important things on their minds. The teen girls were mothers already and the teen boys went to work in the dump. Also the young pre-teens that did come (10-12 year olds) had to take care of their little siblings so we wound up also with a large group of young children. I'm not saying all of this to make it sound like it was bad - because God really used the day to reach out to these young kids, but I'm just saying that we can't think our plans are always going to work out as we hoped. After the trip in Anapolis we had a meeting to rethink our strategy to reach out to teens with a whole new kind of appeal.

Here are some of the pre-teens and the siblings they are responsible for.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this boy who stopped by the program for a few minutes. He was "lucky" enough to have his own pet hamster. Unfortunately though, he told me his dog figured out how to open the hamster's cage so now he has to bring his hamster with him every time no one is home to keep the dog away! Too funny!

Me and a few of the girls.

After a whole day of hard work and unexpected changes to the plan that we had to adjust to, it was all worthwhile for me when I got to really share the Gospel personally with two 12 year old girls. One girl, Jessica, was interested and listened intently as I explained about Jesus and His sacrifice for her. She said she wanted to think more about it but was not ready to make a decision that day. Another girl, Amanda, (in the picture above wearing orange) obviously had the Holy Spirit preparing her ahead of time to hear the message because she was so interested, understanding, and ready to put her trust in Christ. I also really knew God was working through me because I was able to clearly explain the whole Gospel in Portuguese. Then when she said yes, she did want to accept Christ as her savior, I got a little nervous. I'd never prayed in Portuguese before, never mind such an important prayer! I didn't know all of the beautiful vocabulary or even if all of my grammar was correct. I just led her in a simple prayer asking God to forgive her, thanking Him for Jesus, and asking Him to be her friend (the best way I could think of to phrase it in Portuguese). I explained to Amanda that these were not magic words, but if they reflected her heart than she truly is forgiven and a friend and child of God's now.

Us back at the church after a long, but worthwhile day.

Thanks for joining me as I walked you through our day in the dump. We wish you could have been there, learning and serving along with us! The other day I got a great suggestion of walking you around our city here in Anapolis and showing you some of what we see day to day, place to place. I am going to be busy taking pictures this week, so stay tuned and hopefully next week you will take a drive with us around our town!