Walls and Bikes

Hi, this is Jeyson - I thought I'd have a try at blogging this week....so here goes!

When you come visit us here in Brazil one day, you'll probably notice a major difference when we're taking a walk down the streets....walls. Walls, walls, everywhere! Before coming to Brazil, Stephanie had never really seen a house surrounded by a wall, like many of you haven't. So, when we posted a picture of our house (months ago) it's easy to see why it was so confusing. We posted a picture of our house...but all you saw was the wall! Where is the house?!? So, this post is dedicated to clearing up the confusion of walls.

This picture shows our house.... with the gate open,

Within the gate, you can see the car garage (where Stephanie is standing), as well as part of our huge lawn! (ok, actually the lawn in the front is about 12 ftX 6 ft - but it's green and cools the house so that's what counts!)

...and the main entrance to the house. (please excuse the bike...more on that later!) As you hopefully can see, the house is in the middle of our property and surrounded by, but not actually attached to, the surrounding wall. The trouble is that it is impossible to actually take a picture of the house since when you back up to take a picture of the whole house, you have to walk outside the wall. Here actually, driving down the street, you can't see what houses really look like ever - all you see is a wall. Only when you walk through the gate can you get a view of the house. As strange as the wall situation sounds, many (if not most) places in the world are like this. In fact, people here are amazed that the houses in the States do not NOT have walls for safety and privacy. It's all a matter of perspective of "normal".

This is the view of our street. That's our car parked there....although it always comes in the gate at night for safety. Can you see the grey splotches every few meters? Thats dried up cement! During construction, most house builders can't afford to have access to cement mixers and so they mix up the cement right there on the street with a shovel!

Ok, back to walls, here are more examples of walls around the neighborhood. The wall around the green house looks pretty small but is actually 2 meters tall. Its just the grass surrounding it has never been mowed! If you look closely, you will notice an electric fence above the wall, to deter people from "hopping" it.

Most builders actually build the wall that goes around the house first, and then build the house! Why you might ask? Well, so people don't steal the bricks and building materials before the house is finished, of course!

Pictured: Tempting loot for thieves laying around! (ie, bricks and tiles :)
More walls in front of each house....

Here's a house in the middle of construction. Here in Brazil, people don't really worry about fires since, as you can see, there really not much that can burn down!

(There I am walking Bobby down the street.) Some people can't really afford to build a wall so a wire fence will do. These neighbor's have a vicious dog that helps protect their house and car and Bobby likes to have a barking match with him every time we pass by!

Well another fun thing that happened recently is that we were able to get our hands on a tandem bike! Stephanie had really been wanting one so we could ride to the airport every so often and get some exercise in. However, they are extremelly rare here and the few that we saw for sale in stores where about 1.500 US dollars!

Well, recently we were able to borrow one that had been given to the YWAM base in Goiania. The base there is surrounded only by rough muddy roads and the thin-wheeled bike does not handle that too well. It had not been used in several months and was in need of much repair, so they agreed to let us use while we're in Anapolis, it in return for me fixing it up.

The bike is actually old and kind of "home-made" so it needed some modifications. One problem was that the front chain, called a "timing chain" fell off every couple of meters we rode and it could not be adjusted. The solution I found was to throw a few parts I had lying around the house to make a chain tensioner. So far it is working great and the chain has not fallen off!

Another problem was that it did not really have brakes since they were rusted together. Some lube and adjustments got that problem fix. It's in process, but we're having a lot of fun!

Whenever we ride around the neighborhood people love to marvel, since most people have never seen a tandem bike before. The other day we passed a group of kids playing soccer in the street. A little boy (about 5) stared at us with a dropped jaw. After a second he called out "WOW! I have never seen a bike like that in my WHOLE LIFE!" Very funny!

Finally...Pictures of Jeyson's Trip

Finally, the long awaited pictures of Jeyson's recent trip. He's gotten far enough in his training that he was able to join a missionary pilot from SIL (Wicliff in Brazil) on a 5 day trip in Mato Grosso, transporting missionaries and indigenous people who work Bible translation and their supplies to isolated places. I had the hardest time trying to narrow down the pictures so there's a lot! Enjoy!

Getting ready to take off from the Asas hangar in Anapolis Monday morning.
See you in a few days!

Joy (the other pilot) and Fritz (who accompanied the flights during the trip)

One of the trips was to a tribe in the Pantanal....the world's largest wetlands. The few existing roads that there are, are completely flooded and unusable for 6 months out of the year.

Some amazing views of the marshland

Landing strip ahead

Here they picked up three indigenous (Bororo) women and took them to receive training to learn how to translate the Bible into their language.

The women were dropped off in a canoe at the place where the plane landed.

Each day was had anywhere from 1-3 flights and at night Jeyson got to stay with a missionary family in a larger city, Cuiaba. Some amazing views from the next few days...

A small island with trees looks like it could be a tiny piece of moss in a puddle :)
During the flights, they flew over many small tribal villages. The following pictures are of Xavante villages.

So many trees!

Villages built by the edge of the water...

Villages surrounded by an endless sea of trees

The river system is the only way to get around, other than airplanes....needless to say airplanes are much more efficient in long distances like these!

Dropping off a 70+ year old missionary who has faithfully lived among the tribes of Brazil, translating the Bible into their languages.

She always has the pilot fly over the tribal village to alert the tribe to meet her at the landing strip. She brought gallons of gas for the outboard motor they use to get around.

What a privilege to be part of this work....what a joy to be a small piece of the bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ to extremely remote places!

It is so exciting to see Jeyson's hard work and training being put into action - a small taste of the ministry ahead

Meet Bobby!

In the next blog I'm going to post pictures of Jeyson's trip, but in the meantime, it's long overdue to update you (aka my animal loving sisters) to Bobby.


Wow, I can't believe I'm publicly admitting that we now own a dog since I swore we wouldn't have one for now. It's a long, strange story but true! It started off with Hilu's (the dog we've been sitting while our friends were raising support in Argentina) time with us coming to a close. As the date started coming closer, we started to feel concerned about no longer having a watch dog. Here in Brazil, it really is a real possibility that your house could be broken into and now that Jeyson has started doing some overnight flights, I started to feel a bit insecure.

Just at the same time that these thoughts were beginning to enter our minds, Jeyson's parents had to give away one of their dogs....Bobby. Why they had to give him away is a very bizarre story involving a new neighbor claiming that the Braun's other dog ate their sheep and claiming that he killed the dog as a result. Although the sheep eating part is completely far fetched, their other dog really did disappear a few months ago, never to be seen again. The neighbor made enough threats about Bobby's life as well that the Brauns decided they needed to give Bobby away to keep the peace....hence his new home at our house!

Bobby is a good watch dog and has a very deep and loud bark...even though he's really nice! It's hard to imagine the neighbor not wanting him around, trusting him to guard his sheep! Bobby isn't a house pet, he stays outside (after all this is Brazil where the weather is always warm!) and watches the house....but we take him for walks and has a nice bed. His arrival was especially great timing because he came just one week before Jeyson traveled on this mission trip....I slept well at night knowing if there was any danger that there'd be a lot of barking to warn me!

We're glad to have Bobby, though Sam's still a little unsure of how much he can trust this loud barker! The only think I'm still trying to figure out is his name. What do you think of the name Bobby? Keep it or change it?

Checking In

Jeyson's coming home tomorrow - I can't wait! I'm so excited to hear stories and see pictures and just see him again! We've chatted a few times on Skype and Jeyson seems to be doing really well and enjoying himself and the ministry. They also have had GREAT flying weather! Tomorrow he will possibly switch seats and be in the pilot's seat instead of the co-pilot's, which will be a great experience! Throughout the week I've been keeping a close eye on Jeyson through the internet. As they fly, every few minutes the plane's GPS checks in and I can see where they are on the map. Here's a screenshot of the program - zoomed way out. I wanted to just give you an idea where in Brazil he's located. The pink circles are all different points from the GPS. If you find Bolivia on the map and follow almost parallel to the right, you can find Goiania. Anapolis (where we live) is only an hour west of there.

The program also allows you to zoom WAY in. Here's where Jeyson and Joy were on Monday when they picked up 2 Bororo (indigenous) women. He told me they came up in a canoe - and you can see just where the plane stopped by the water to meet them, and then headed to the end of the strip to take off again.

I'm looking forward to seeing the points on the map head back in my direction as they make their way back to Anapolis tomorrow morning! See you soon, Jeyson!

See you soon, Jeyson!

Right after the sunrise this morning, Jeyson took off for 5 full days of flying in Mato Grosso - a state to the west of us in Brazil. As you might remember, Asas de Socorro is partners with SIL (Wycliff in Brazil) who works with Bible translation in villages/tribes. Here there is only 1 SIL pilot, so Joy (the pilot...who is in fact very joyful!) asked Jeyson to go on this trip as a co-pilot. This is an exciting opportunity for Jeyson to put his training into use and it's even more exciting that all of the flying is related to Bible translation. They are flying to quite a few different places over the next few days, using one of the cities as a hub to make several trips out of. He'll be spending the nights with SIL missionary families.

Taking off from Anapolis, Joy and Jeyson brought 2 SIL missionaries to a city where they will be meeting with others to record part of the Bible in an indigenous language. After dropping them off, they headed to a tribe called the Bororo, where the landed on a grass strip. There, they picked up two Bororo women and brought them to another city where they will receive training for Bible translation. Above is a picture of them landing at the first stop ;)

Technology is amazing! I was given a link to a website that their plane's GPS checks in with every 10 minutes so I can see on a satellite map exactly where they are! Although I'm not responsible for keeping track of their flight (other SIL missionaries do that) it's been fun checking in!

Jeyson being away for the week is somewhat confusing....for example - what do I bother cooking for one person? After 0.37 seconds of contemplation I decided....

I'll be making a huge tray of eggplant parm to eat throughout the week. Jeyson's not of big fan of eggplant as a main dish (something about no meat is hard on a mechanic!) but it's my absolute favorite!!! I'm planning to eat it until I'm purple :)

I'm missing you, Jeyson and praying for you!