• Oct 17

  Brazilian Team – Days 1, 2 and 3

  Filed under General News, Trips
  Message from Bernie in Brazil

  Day One
  Amazing welcome, we were met at the airport by Elias, Ed, & a couple of others and taken straight to a restaurant!

  We are staying with Wendel, who has given up his home for us and has also taken holiday from work to look after us! They arrive first thing to feed us and make lunch for later in the day: the hospitality we are recieving is amazing. Things keep just appearing in the house that we need but have’t asked for! It’s like they can sense what we need.

  Everyone is trying to feed us too much!

  Day Two
  7:30am: 3 people arrived to make breakfast and cook lunch for later in the day!

  Then we had a very emotional look around the Favela. First we visited the project centre and saw people being given food packages. They are helping about 100 people a week now.Then we had a walk around and looked at where Elias wants to start with rebuilding people’s houses. He has 5 urgent ones to begin with. First they will rebuild Simone’s house, starting on Monday.  The old house has already been pulled down. The builders will be volunteers from the community – mostly people involved in drugs and with other problems and not attending the church. It will cost double because it needs adapting for the disabled. Then Elias explained they had 5 families they wanted to start with the rebuilding project.

  So we visited the 2nd of the list. We climbed up a very steep hill of paths and steps, slipping in mud with a sheer steep drop to one side. In this house lives a mum with her 2 daughters one of whom is in a wheelchair. She only gets out of the home when she visits the hospital; she has no way of going to school. To get out, first the mum has to carry the wheelchair down this very dangerous path, then go back and carry her daughter. We all found the path extremely difficult and have no idea how she does it. The house had no electric light and a huge damp problem.

  The 3rd house was a man of 80+years who had many health problems including huge ulcers on his legs. Again he is trapped in the house as he lives on a very steep slope with his daughter and granddaughters. He was obviously in a lot of pain and his surroundings weren’t comfortable at all.

  We will visit the other two at a later date. All our hearts were full and it brought it home to the team the scale of the problem and what the project is trying to do. It’s impossible to get a true idea of the area from the photos and the team were shocked at the level of poverty.

  Day Three
  We are spending the day at Ed & Gio’s with the kids, relaxing and eating, ha ha. Then this evening we will go to church brazilian style, ha ha. We will say a little of why we are there and it will be good for me to connect with the church again, so many amazing people doing so much, with so little!
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