A family up in BC gave us money to help someone in need, so we helped Eliete get some cement, sand, and bricks, so they could build some bedrooms into their little home. “There was some cement and sand still left over, so I even built a sink area for washing dishes.” Just a couple of years ago Eliete and Cesar were serious alcoholics, everyone slept in one room, stuff (and they themselves) kept getting smashed and broken. Last year Cesar’s brother broke Cesar’s leg. Then Cesar got leprosy and tuberculosis. He was on death’s doorstep for quite awhile. Now he did most of the brickwork to build these bedrooms. Things have taken a turn for the better since they have given their lives to Jesus.
Eliete is a rescuer in our neighbourhood. She functions like a pastor in the way that she cares for people, especially the down and outers.
Last week-end Eliete and Cesar were supposed to come to the Alpha week-end retreat. Everyone was looking forward to this event for some time. But then Leo’s uncle disappeared, and everyone thought he died. (Leo is a 16 year old boy who thinks he is a girl. He dresses, acts, and looks just like a 16 year old girl. He is kind of an outcast, so Eliete lets him eat at her house and sleep on the floor in the girl’s room). Eliete went and found Nailson, a neighbour who has many bullet and knife wounds, who also likes to help those in need. Together they got a motorboat with an outboard “rebetta” (5 hp briggs and stratton) and started scouring the river banks. About an hour and a half upstream they found the man’s canoe, tied up to the shore in a huge jungle area. The next day they went back and kept looking. Nailson told me the story. “We were going up and down the shoreline, hollering the guys name, when this hunter showed up. He told us his dogs had found a man curled up at the foot of a tree, almost dead. When we found him, there he was, curled up at the foot of a tree. He had gotten lost for 5 days. He had no clothes except his underwear. He was completely dehydrated.” They got him back to Marabá, and he went to the hospital for treatment. He was still there the last I heard.
Then…while they were at the river bank, just a little ways upstream from our place, the same Alpha week-end Sunday, someone told Eliete that a teen-ager had disappeared in the river. Eliete told Nailson. They went to the exact spot where the 16 year old boy had been pushed in. Nailson studied the river currents. Then he jumped in to the same place, let the river carry him a bit, and then he let out all his breath and sank. “I went down and down. The current took me this way and that. I wondered how far down I would go. And then I landed, right on top of the body. I pulled it to the surface.” Later we heard someone pushed the boy in. He couldn’t swim. Someone jumped in to rescue him, landed on the kid who was floundering in the water, and broke his neck.
And there are more stories. These are just the ones about why they missed the Alpha week-end retreat.
And we feel very honored to be able to help them a little with their house.
Yara, Eliete, Emily, Marlison, Cesar, Luan (Luana was in school, studying computers).
The girls get one room, the boys get the other. There is a race now to see who can earn enough money for the cement, first, to plaster the walls of their new bedrooms.
These bedrooms are very small. Yet this first bed actually has another pull-out bed under it. Eliete and Cesar’s friend, Orlando, got really beat up three months ago. I saw him yesterday. A 2 inch scar on his face, full of stitches, and two more long scars on his arm. Someone cut him up bad with a machete, including cutting the tendon that lifts his hand. So now he cannot lift his hand. It is in a brace. His fingers still work enough to hold a spoon when he eats. Orlando is a strong, 41 year old man, who loves hard labor. He has worked for us on our house. Now he cannot work. And he is illiterate. Eliete lets him sleep in their kitchen. I cannot imagine how big these people’s hearts are. Maybe this is what the Bible is talking about when it says the last will be first, in heaven.
Yara and Deborah
Cesar and the new sink area.
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