Hello!
As you know, I went to Brazil in July for about 3 weeks to work at the
AMMI Training Center to prepare for and serve at CONPLEI (a Conference for
National Indigenous Evangelical Pastors and Leaders—that’s how we would
translate it in English). It was a
FABULOUS trip!! There is not enough room
in this letter to tell you about all of the things that impacted me…
It started with a whirlwind 45 hours in Rio
de Janeiro where I saw many of the tourist sites and where my friend worked in
the ministry for the 40 years she was a missionary there. My favorite site was, of course, “Cristo
Redentor” the 130 foot statue of Jesus.
Then I was off to Chapada dos Guimaraes to
meet with two church groups and the rest of the
WA team to prepare for the conference.
Manual labor was the name of the game once we got there, and for the
first few days digging and painting seemed to be my lot. We also set up tents for booths, hung
electrical wire (yes, they let me work with electricity—scary thought, eh?),
served food, picked up trash, and a variety of miscellaneous tasks. It was hard work, but I really enjoyed
it. Once the conference started the work
slowed down a bit, so we served meals, cleaned, and did other little jobs that
came our way. In the evenings we were
able attend the conference and it was translated into English. One of my favorite things was watching and
participating in the dancing. It
was amazing to watch so many tribes that literally used to be at war and kill
each other do tribal dances TOGETHER as a testimony of how the Gospel of Jesus
Christ changed their lives and now they are brothers & sisters in Christ!!
While I was at Ammi I stayed in the
girl’s dorm. Honestly, the thought
didn’t thrill me that much. It probably
would have a hard bed, cold showers, and a bunch of girls that speak
Portuguese—and I do not… I was right…
And
I was wrong…God had provided. The
picture to the right is my friend Lucia.
She is Brazilian but speaks perfect English. She was next to me in the dorm and a gift from
God in so many ways! Besides being a
great translator for me and teaching me some Portuguese (and some of the girls
some English), she was a mentor to the girls in the dorm, got the girls
together every night to pray (and included me), and encouraged everyone she
met. She is not a student but was there
during the summer for an internship. She
is now back in Holland getting her M-Div. with the hopes of coming back to
Brazil to take Linguistics classes and start working as a Bible translator for
one of the indigenous languages yet to be translated.
I
could tell you many stories about the girls in the dorm that I spent those
couple of weeks with. They are all
amazing in different ways, and touched my life in different ways…
Geane
is one of the AMMI students that live in the dorm. She is from the Tukano tribe in the
Amazon. There are very few Christians in
her tribe and her family faces persecution because of it. One night we had a very long talk. I think she was at that place where you know
what you have been taught your whole life, but now you are learning the Bible
and seeing God and people differently.
She was being stretched significantly, and I could tell it was hard on
her. We talked about struggling with
your faith, spiritual warfare, and we talked about the things she was taught by
her tribe and the world. Indigenous
people are taught that they are the lowest type of people and that white people
are mean and no-good. One of the last
things she asked me that night was, “How can you
come here and pick up our trash, and be happy?” Talk about being humbled. I answered her question, but not without
tears… The next day, before she left for the winter break, she said, “I never
thought I would like an American, but I am going to miss you.” Again, tears...
You
never know how the Lord is going to use something as simple as picking up trash
to change someone’s view of the world.
Please
pray for the Tukano people, they, and many others, need
our prayers, and to know Christ.
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