Two weekends away

Easter

We’re sitting at the table out the front of my Brazilian family’s holiday home. It’s a hot Easter Saturday and we’re in the middle of a typically rowdy board game that’s pretty similar to charades. It started off with just the immediate family, my friend Georgia and Clara’s friends who have come away with us, but with every round more and more Brazilian cousins keep emerging from the nearby houses to join in, making it louder and rowdier and funnier by the minute!

In Gravatá

We are in a city called Gravatá, a couple of hours inland of Recife. As it’s a bit higher up the temperature drops a tiny bit - I’m not in any way convinced it’s “cold” as people keeps claiming – but everyone’s enjoying the annual chance to whip out a cardigan! Earlier on we were walking around the market in the centre of town, stopping for a coconut and an ice lolly and trying to remember all the names to the thousands of strange looking fruits. In the meat section we bought lots of goat for lunch (a Gravatá speciality!) and stared at the rather gruesome animal parts lying around. My Brazilian Dad’s cousin had brought her 91-year-old father-in-law, who told us proudly how he had been married for 63 years when his wife died, and is now being pursued by many widows!

Georgia and I in the meat market

It’s Easter day and we’re all dressed up heading out for church. I’m excited at the chance to see a different church, to come back to the real meaning of Easter, to worship with my Brazilian family. However as we finally find the Anglican church, we discover it has no service this evening, nor the Presbyterian church, nor the Baptist one. Why is everywhere shut on Easter day of all days? “It’s because everyone goes away for Easter” I’m told, and yet from the look of the main square at night, the whole world seems to have come to Gravatá for the weekend. Eventually we give up and troop into a café, looking very overdressed. I’m frustrated and disappointed but we have a nice evening and, after all, whether we go to church or not today isn’t going to stop us celebrating Jesus’ death or resurrection or change for one moment the incredible price that he has paid to give us life.

With Emily in Barra de Jangada

A Viagem Missionária – The Mission Trip 
(will try and get hold of some of the photos to share with you soon).

It’s 8:30pm and we’re gathered around a minibus trying to fit in lots of mattresses and fans and bags. We are about to head to a town an hour or so away called Camela, and as we set off, I’m feeling both excited and apprehensive about the task ahead of us. We are going to work with a small Baptist Church to share The Gospel, putting on activities for children and teenagers, health talks for adults, drama, dance and lots of other things. We are a group of people from the seminary where I have my theology classes, some young people from my church and people from a church in the next city down from Recife and it’s exciting to be part of a team made up of all different ages, denominations, and backgrounds.

Saturday morning and I’m standing in the town’s Sport’s Court talking to some 12 year old girls. We are sleeping on the floor of a school here (that incidentally has no water at the moment) and last night none of us slept more than a couple of hours. However now the day is underway the tiredness is put to one side and we’re about to start a kids’ event with lots of different games. I head out briefly with Diego and Mariana (friends from church) some of the children to pick up more of their friends in the community where they live. We are winding round little alleyways and cobbled streets and I stop briefly to invite a little boy and his Dad to our events. As the conversation finishes I say “It’s going to be great” and take a step backwards, only to discover that there is a hole in the road behind me. Before I know it I am stuck in said hole up to my waste and Diego has to pick me out of it! In my extreme embarrassment/relief/imagination of how funny it must have looked I can’t stop laughing and gradually the others start to laugh too! Diego reaches down the hole to rescue my flip-flops and we all agree how good it is that it was just a hole with rubbish in and not a drain/open sewer. With a slightly bruised ego and a very red face I walk on, feeling somewhat like Miranda!

My team at the kids’ event is the Pink Team and we have pink sashes tied round our wastes. Team spirit is at a high after winning the first two games and we chant “ROSA ROSA ROSA” (pink in Portuguese) and then I teach them “PINK” which, as with most English words in a Brazilian accent, gains an “eee” sound at the end (Faceybook, footyball etc!). We walk around chanting “PINKY PINKY PINKY”. When we lose our first game the team spirit drops hugely, turns out team Pink needs to work a bit on dealing with losing, but we have a fun morning with some great conversations, followed by some hip hop dancing, a short talk and the presenting of trophies (sadly not going to Team Pink but never mind!)

Saturday night and we are in the main square of Camela listening to my friend Paulo explain the Gospel and then part of our team performs some dances and sketches. The square is packed, I am standing with some of the children we met today, behind me a group of men are smoking weed, and teenagers mingle around us looking for something to do on a Saturday night. The dramas are about freedom, life, salvation, hope and as I watch and listen to the music my eyes fill with tears. There is a sudden rush as the police arrive on one side of the square and raid a bar, arresting several people. People run to watch what’s going on but the spell is not broken, as the sketches come to an end I chat to the children and one of them says that she cried too, as she saw the actor playing Jesus take our place on the cross. It is late and as the crowds go home I sit and chat with friends about our day, about life, about the future. A few hours ago and I felt broken by tiredness; I was in our prayer room back at the school asking God to somehow keep me going through the evening and to give me something more to give when I felt empty. Now the tiredness seems to have gone completely, I feel full of energy, I feel grateful, I feel alive.

Sunday morning and after another night of little sleep we’re having breakfast. I’m working my way through my plate of cous-cous and sausage with a big cup of coffee when one of the leaders approaches me and asks if I can ‘direct this morning’s church service’. I’ve never directed a church service in my life, I don’t even really know what it means, let alone in Portuguese (!), but before I know it I’ve said yes and I’m handed a list of the different parts of the service and told to introduce each one. Outside the church I’m being teased by all my friends as one of them retells stories I’ve told him, everyone’s laughing and it stops me feeling nervous. I stutter my way through the service and soon we are heading out to visit houses in the community.

The community is built on a steep hillside and Hoton and I are climbing the narrow steps stopping to chat to people on the way. The houses are packed in on each side and each house brings different life stories, a Father’s desperation for his teenage son, the grandmother who’s just been stung by a scorpion, the woman who has drifted from church to church and eventually given up. We chat, we listen, we share a few Bible verses, we pray, we talk about our own lives. I couldn’t imagine how I would have words to say, talking to people I had never met before with a guy I had only met this morning, but it’s amazing how God gives you things to say. So many people are hurting, unheard, despairing and  it feels such a privilege to be able to share just a few words of an amazing message of hope.  Hoton and I come back to the school moved by what’s been a really special morning and back at base we all come together to share what God’s been teaching us. With each story, we see how we have all been touched by each life we came across this morning, by each tale of pain, by each moment of laughter and in my case by the way in which people were prepared to listen and welcome even a strange English girl with broken Portuguese and a slightly sunburnt face! 

It's been an amazing weekend and one from which I've learnt a huge amount, met some incredible people and seen once again how God is so faithful in giving what we need to keep going, even when exhausted, shy, out of our comfort zone and even down a hole in the middle of the road!

With Rai :)

Reunited with one of the puppies -
Look how big they are now!