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!

What do you do, anyway???

"So, are you a pilot too?" I can't tell you how many times I have been asked this question. Not that it is a bad question to ask, after all why not? But no, I am not a pilot or a mechanic like Jeyson. After giving this answer the next logical question of course is "So, what do you do then?". That is what I'm going to attempt to answer in this post by taking you through some of the things I might do in a typical week. However, before beginning let me mention a few things.

First, my main focuses right now are adjustment, relationships, and outreach. Adjustment means language learning and learning all that I need to function here to make it long term. Relationships means doing whatever is necessary to get to know Christians and non-Christians for the sake of discipleship and evangelism. Right now one of the tools I am using for that is Teaching English as a Second Language but you will also see just plain relationship building in what follows. Lastly outreach has to do with being part of the direct evangelism that our mission does. Jeyson is also a part of this, but I have decided to also join a leadership team that is preparing a new part of our outreach which will target teens. Jeyson will continue with the already existing ministry to adults.

Second of all I just wanted to add a note that this is how my week looks right now, but I am fortunate to have a lot of freedom to change things up as new ministry opportunities open. So anyway, here goes....a glimpse into my world.


My week begins on Sunday with involvement in our church. As I've mentioned before, Jeyson and I are working with another couple to be leaders of the junior high age ministry. This past Sunday we had an event - breakfast with your mom (since it was Mother's day). We made breakfast and had a short Bible Study section. It went really well!

Here's our breakfast. I was in charge of making the food. I made some Brazilian things, but I also made waffles, or "way-fulls" as they started to call them during the meal. They were a big hit and word got around the church about this novel American breakfast food - so gourmet :) Now everyone is asking for me to make them "way-fulls" and one person even wanted to know if she could have the recipe so she could try to make them in her grilled cheese maker - too funny! It's hard to imagine a waffle looking like a sandwich cut cross-wise, isn't it?
Here we are enjoying the breakfast....

And here are some of the students.


Presenting their work....

Two of the "mothers", though actually one is the aunt of a student. The aunt brings the student to church because the mother is not a believer and I found out she is actually a prostitute. Not all of the students have such difficult situations, but it is definitely much more so than where I grew up in New Jersey! I am learning to have so much more patience with their behavior because you never know what their life story is!
Us and the other couple we serve with, Fabiana and Joao.

Also on the weekends we try to spend time with our other missionary friends. We really feel like it is important to have relationships with others in our same situation! We are especially close to this couple who is also married cross-culturally. On Sunday afternoon we went to the park with them and drank "Mate" a traditional Brazilian tea that you drink in this little cup.
Church is held on Sunday evening here in Brazil, so we go back there for the service.


Before we know it the weekend is over and it's Monday morning. What a gorgeous sunrise from our patio!

Monday Jeyson and I head over to Asas together. He goes to the hangar to work on maintenance or fly and I go to the office. I spend the morning with my language partner practicing Portuguese conversation. Then in the afternoon I usually do those not-so-exciting things like grocery shopping at the market down the street and walking to the local lottery ticket store where everyone has to go and pay their bills in person. (Don't worry I don't buy any lottery tickets, but isn't that interesting that you pay your water, light, etc bills there??) After getting through all of that excitement I head over to my neighbor's house where I spend the rest of the afternoon. She is the one who is the young single mother. Really this is just pure relationship building time - spending time with her and looking for opportunities to share the gospel with her through words and my life.
When Jeyson comes home from Asas we spend time together. This week one of the wild trees near our house was ripe with "aserola" a fruit sort of like a cherry. We went arerola picking together..
Then comes Tuesday, when my week really picks up. First thing in the morning Jeyson leaves me at PETI - the children's program I am working with. I spend time with the students as they eat breakfast, then teach a group of them very basic English for 1 1/2 hours. As part of the class I read through a Children's Bible with them. After class I spend time with a few of the students who are particularly interested. A few I just chat with, but a few others who are not Christians are especially interested in my Bible so we read more of it together and talk about it. We're now about 1/3 of the way through the book! At lunch time Jeyson picks me up and we go back over to Asas together. I am part of the women's group at Asas so I go to the meetings which are Tuesday afternoon. Then this Tuesday we had a meeting for the people who are working on the teen outreach as I mentioned in the beginning. Then Tuesday evenings after dinner we go over to our small group meeting where we have Bible study together. On Wednesdays I am back over at the Asas office in the morning with my language partner. In addition to practicing Portuguese we also work on some projects around the mission....very practical and effective language learning I think. Then at lunchtime Jeyson and I drive over to the local Bible college where I have started teaching English. We eat lunch there in the cafeteria with the students and he goes back to the hangar. Then starting this week, at this time I will meet with a young student (about 17 years old) who's mother is a student. I have really felt God putting on my heart to build a relationship with her. So, I asked her is she would like to begin spending time together reading the Bible and she said yes! Beginning Friday I will do this every Wed and Fri before class. After this I teach English for two hours and spend more time with the students for the next two hours until Jeyson picks me up after Asas. Again, more relationship building here. Students working on conversation practice....

Anyway, then Thursday I finally get a day to breathe! I stay at home in the morning and catch up on emails, blog (hence my blogging right now :), clean the house, wash the laundry...the usual things around the home. Someone told me that it takes longer to do stuff around the house in Brazil and I didn't really believe them until I tried it myself! Really, things just take longer! Laundry means pre-soaking it in the sink and washing it with a brush if needed, running the machine, hanging it, then ironing just about every piece (since we don't have a dryer). Anyway so that's my Thursday morning. Then Thursday afternoon my one student, Angelina, comes over for one-on-one English. This has been such a neat blessing! She seems to be a bit of a lonely women because she stays out in the country caring for her mom most of the time. She is a Christian but really lacks involvement with a church because of her mother's needs. We read the Bible together and practice English. It's really been a great opportunity. (Sorry no pictures yet).

Then Friday, I repeat exactly what I do on Wednesday - going to Asas in the morning and the seminary in the afternoon.

Then finally Saturday!! Saturdays are so different. Sometimes it means just relaxing, but often it means youth group activities or helping Jeyson's parents in Goiania, or like this weekend an Evangelistic trip. On Saturday we will be going the WHOLE day (5am-11pm) to Brasilia where there is a huge city dump where people live and work weeding through the trash. We will be ministering to the people there through teen activities, medical/dental clinics, person to person evangelism, and more. Please pray for us on this trip, especially since we're both have a bit of a cold right now.

Anyway, all of that to say, I don't fly but definitely am involved in ministry! One thing I've been wrestling with is knowing that just because I'm in full time ministry it does not mean I have to take EVERY opportunity that comes up. We're learning to balance our time and especially try to keep our evenings free for family time. We've also had to say no to some things, like a church retreat coming up next weekend. We can't do everything, but we're trying to really do well at what we do do!

The Police are Coming!

Well here we are again, another week in Anapolis. It's been a good week of trying to find more routine and attempting to get ourselves more organized...a seemingly impossible task. One interesting thing about this week is that it is our 10th week in Brazil, making this the longest I (Stephanie) have ever been in Brazil at any one time before. (On my internship/missions trip from Moody I stayed only about 9 weeks). So here we go, plunging into unknown territory!

Speaking of staying in Brazil, we finally had our surprise visit from the Brazilian police this week! Most people wouldn't be too excited about a visit from the police, but for us this was a big answer to prayer. In order for me to get my permanent visa the police had to come to our house by surprise to evaluate if we are really married as we claim (since I am applying for my visa based on the fact that I am married to a Brazilian). Thank you so much for praying for us because God heard your prayers in a very obvious way with this police situation. This is what happened:

I happened to be at home Monday afternoon washing some dishes before I needed to make a trip downtown. As I was washing I "happened" to shut off the water, which allowed me to hear much better. Then, VERY faintly I heard Jeyson's cell phone ringing from way on the other side of the house, which I never would have heard with the water. Usually I wouldn't bother answering his cell phone but for some reason I ran to get it, barely answering on the last ring. It was the police! The man was calling to inform he that had come by to visit our house 2 times already and we were not home. (He made his visits during the middle of the day....I have no idea why a husband and wife would BOTH be home together in the afternoon on a week day but that's when he had visited to find no one there). He informed us that he was going to visit in 15 minutes and we both had to be home since this would be his final attempt. If we were not both there we would have a serious problem getting my visa. Quickly I called Jeyson at the hangar and he came home just in time. The visit went well and I'm now onto my final step in the process...when the Brazilian police take 2 months to process all of my paperwork for my visa. Almost there! But really, what a HUGE answer to prayer that he chose to call even though our visit was supposed to be a surprise, that I stayed home to wash those dishes (a few minutes later I was going to be out) and that I even heard the phone!

Anyway, onto some pictures!

Me eating breakfast and getting ready to head to a local seminary/Bible college where I am helping in the afternoon teaching an informal English class with 24 students twice a week. Some of these students need to speak English in order to be missionaries overseas when the graduate. What a great opportunity. My real desire is for God to open up a door to disciple some of the students I am now getting to know. In particular God has really put one young girl (17 or so) on my heart. Please pray for an open door! (I made this commitment to teach until the end of June when I will reevaluate the opportunity. Please also pray for wisdom in knowing what to do when the time comes.)

I have also started tutoring a woman that lives nearby. Today was our first lesson and it went really well! She is a Christian already, so we started reading the Bible together as part of our class. Please pray that I can minister to her in whatever way God has planned. My time teaching over at the kid's program in our city has also been opening up some very clear opportunities that I will tell more about in another entry, but I'll just say God really is working! Keep praying for Mario who I am continuing to read the Bible with.

Next, in flight news..... Jeyson and I went for our first flight alone! I promised my mom I wouldn't mention when it was going to happen, only report after it happened (so she wouldn't have to worry). So yes, it happened! Jeyson took me along when he was doing some practice "touch and go" flights just in the local airfield. It went great...I can now say first hand that he is a great pilot! I wasn't one bit scared or sick.

Jeyson in control of the plane.

Wow I can't believe we're really allowed to go in a plane alone together! I was the copilot - which basically meant I got to wear this headset and take pictures :)
Me having fun....Jeyson always taking his job very seriously (which of course is great!)
Now, some pictures of what we saw from up there:



As you can see, some areas of our city are poorer than others Here is the built-up down-town area

And some more country places. Just to clarify, since right now we are living in Anapolis (central Brazil) the land is like what you just saw. Once Jeyson gets all the experience necessary flying in this type of area, (about 2 years) we will move to Northern Brazil to a city in the Amazon region. So, once we get there you will see pictures with LOTS more trees and LOTS less roads! But this was still great!

Back on the ground after the flight there is still more to do....Cleaning the hangar....Working with the planes....(Andres, a missionary pilot from Argentina)Planning the next flight..... (this will be a 3 hour flight that Jeyson will take tomorrow) Wow this is confusing!

Lastly, we've had many people ask what our house looks like now that we're more settled in. We will show more pictures soon but for now I thought I would include our latest edition to our home...our little "garden". We don't actually have any land since we're living on the second floor of a condo type of building, but we have a huge veranda where we planted this garden.

Lastly, a beautiful shot of the moon from our veranda at night. God is so creative!
Please keep in touch - send an email or leave a comment - we'd love to hear from you!

Up, up, and away

Beans, beans, they're good for your..... cultural transition. To begin with a very light piece of news, I have finally taken an important step in this cultural transition - I made my very first pot of beans. Now of course some people make beans "from scratch" in the States too, but here EVERY wife knows how to make beans from scratch and puts the knowledge into practice on a daily basis. Beans and rice are the staple here and eaten almost every day, in some families twice a day. I grew up in a family that rarely ate beans, and when we did, the recipe simply meant opening a can and adding a few ingredients. (Not that there is anything wrong with this - if there were cheap canned beans available here I never would have bothered with this project and would have just stuck to cans.)
So anyway, the idea of making something from a bag a dry beans was quite intimidating so I have been putting it off. Then a few days ago Jeyson mentioned that he wished we could eat some beans occasionally and I realized I had to give it a try. So I asked around trying to get some information on how to begin and gave it a try....

Me in the kitchen "slaving over the stove".... so far so good...
(notice the cornbread in the pan next to the stove....more Southwestern US than Brazilian, but I couldn't resist)

Giving it a try...pretty good! Officially approved by Jeyson also :)
Anyway, now for some more serious news (and much more exciting than a pot of beans):

Jeyson flew again for the first time this week

First he flew with one of the new missionary flight instructors, Marcos, and Jeyson felt the flight went very well overall. The next day he did another flight with the instructor and today he will do his first solo flight since being back. It is so exciting to be moving forward again!

Here is a picture of one of the airplanes, though as you can see it is going through some maintenance. There was a gorgeous rainbow in the sky that you can sort of see in the picture.

Before Jeyson's second flight I, Stephanie, was at the hanger too for some other things. Before the flight Jeyson took a while to sit in the plane and do a "mental flight", which means going through all of the motions of the planned flight without actually taking off. I got to sit in the co-pilot seat and mentally fly along too. It's nice that on mental flights you never have stomach problems :)

Jeyson mentally flying.
Me working hard being the mental co-pilot. Notice the background...you can see we're still inside the hanger.

I'm not sure what all of these buttons and knobs do, but fortunately Jeyson knows!

And a safe landing :)

For other news, I am continuing teaching English at the children's program, as I mentioned in earlier blogs. Although it is a secular program the leader had told me I was free to share anything about the Bible with the students. Growing up in a public school in the States, this was very surprising news! However, what an opportunity! This week I started taking advantage of the freedom by using part of my time teaching English to start reading through a Children's picture Bible in English with them (explaining in Portuguese as needed). This week we only got through the first chapter (Creation/Eden) and after class three students came up to me with questions. Among the three was that boy, Marcio, who had asked me questions the week before. I wound up taking with them for a while and reading the next part of the Bible with them. It is so encouraging to see their excitement and a real affirmation that I am serving where God has planned for me.

Also, this week we had an event with the youth group. There are quite a few kids at the church but only 7 came to the event...still though it was definitely worth the time and effort. Jeyson is going to be teaching them in Sunday school this week. Here are some pictures of the night. Most of the group is pretty young (it starts at 12 years old) but a few are older (15 or so)

This couple (in the two pictures above) also lead the youth. We have been getting to know them a lot over the past weeks. at church, in our small group, and spending time at each other's houses. They have only been married 7 months so we have a lot in common.