I am with Deanna and our girls again in BC. Five weeks has been our longest separation in our twenty years of marriage. We are in Canada for March, April and May. Suddenly this year seems almost done! The girls are doing well in school. Via is now registered at UFV. Anni is finding the second semester better than the first one and she has part-time work with Karen’s Katering and at the ABC Restaurant on Clearbrook Road. Deanna and I will be doing deputation work (building our support team) during these remaining weeks and I will be taking several more intensive courses at the Justice Institute of BC (jibc.ca) at their School of Community and Social Justice.

Two stories from my flight home:

1. The airplane left Marabá at 5:30. A young fellow  wanted to sit by me where there was an empty window seat. He was a collage student in a State in Central Brazil. He was returning home from visiting family in Altamira. “Have you ever heard of Igreja da Vinha?” “Yes! All my relatives go there now. Cleber. Tatianne. Was it called ‘Igreja da Vinha do Mirante?’” It made me feel like we are starting to make an impact in Northern Brazil when a stranger in an airport 500 kms from Altamira, a city of over 100,000 people, has heard of us in a positive light. 

2. In São Paulo I had a 9-hour lay-over. I found a quiet corner in a waiting area with a two foot square coffee table at the end of some chairs. I curled up on my luggage, the table and a chair and fell asleep, exhausted. When I opened my eyes an hour later there were suitcases piled up around me people sitting and standing very close to me, talking to each other. I lay there quietly for half an hour soaking it in. Finally I took out my ear-plugs and tuned in to their chatter. They were a Brazilian church group of 14 people heading to Northern Mozambique. They knew Pastor Abe and Pastor Geraldo, the people we worked with when we first moved to Brazil. This is in a country of 200 million people! They said that if I thought any part of Brazil was poor, Mozambique is completely off-the-charts. No work. Everything is imported and expensive. The poor just eat farinha with nothing else. I told them we originally wanted to be missionaries in Northern Mozambique. We are now dreaming of sending missionaries from our churches in Brazil. They think this is a good idea, “You need to come check it out personally first, to see what you are sending your people into. Come with us now!” Well…I’ve been away from my family for five weeks already. We traded email addresses.