• Oct 27

  Late update from Brazil team

  Filed under Trips
  Update from Bernie – my (Keith’s) fault that it got posted late, sorry.

  Finally got a chance to write a bit of an update. I have had no internet for a week and been really busy, so it’s been impossible to write before.

  Saturday

  Was a great day. We travelled to another city called Itabarito to visit a project run by my friend called New Destiny. It´s an outdoor activity centre run by a scottish lady called Morvan who has lived in Brazil for about 15yrs. She has also worked with Ed & Gio in the past. So this project takes kids from the Favela for camps and gives them an amazing experience. It was a very moving visit for the team and also shows them more of the area as it´s a hour and a half journey.

   

  Then in the evening we had a presentation from the people in charge of the rebuilding of Simones house project. At the meeting was a Journalist, architect, engineer and a Lawyer, all woman. This was a great group of people with a huge committment to the project and to Elias. They showed us plans for the house, how it was all going to happen and also how legally they were going to put the house in Simones childrens name so that if she died no-one could take the house away from them. I then told them of my involvement and the others said why they were there. There was a real sense of us all being a team together. The building will start Monday.

   

  Sunday

  We should have had a Baptism at a Lake but it has been raining constantly for over 24hrs! So as well as the rain the lake is flooded. Thankfully they cancelled it! So we spent the morning preparing the English classes we will do next week.

   

  At lunch time we went to the Fazenda of Elias´s former primary school teacher and her husband and daughter. This is a farm but not like a farm we know, its basically cut back jungle with loads of fruit trees, sugar cane, sweetcorn and lots of cows & horses. We were again spoilt to pieces and had lots of food produced on the farm such as Orange Juice, milk, cheese, meat, cake made with Sweetcorn. everything was amazing. They´d made little messages for us in English to welcome us and when we left gave us chocolate with again another message! The couple who own the farm help Elias and the project by donating food, picking up food from the wharehouse, and others things. Then had church tonight. For several reasons today was a difficult day for me, also some cultural difficulties occurred for the team so I appreciate your prayers and support.

   

  Monday

  Spent time at the project talking to lots of kids throughout the day. It was a really special time getting to know some of them better. They helped us with Portuguese and we helped them with English! Phil helped with the 1st day of building Simones house. We went to check on the progress and started chatting to some of the men helping they are all from the community and most of them not in the church. They have all been in prison but respect Elias & Ricardo lots. It,s a really good strategy to involve them because as well as it being a way to just get along side them, the community need to accept Simones house without being jealous about it. Suddenly one of them produced a guitar and we had a singsong ha ha. Then straight after Ricardo got one of the young men singing to lift up his tee-shirt. he had a scar from his neck all the way down his stomach. He also had 2 gun shot wounds on his stomach and one right on the back of his neck. They explained he’s been shot by the drug traffickers 6 months ago. I have no idea how he is alive. After that Elias found him a job and he has turned his life around. That incident is a good example of life here, one minute you are singing & laughing, the next hearing the most dreadful of stories. Before Elias & the church arrived 2 murders A WEEK happened in Washington Pires!

   

  Later that afternoon we revisited the elderly man who had the terrible ulcerated leg. We went with a friend of Elias who’s a pharmacist. Since our last visit the man had had an amputation above the knee and was already home the day after the op! This is because the family are expected to care for the patient and also the hospitals are not always very good! I was surprised to see the man was much more alert and able to talk. He was obviously very close to death the first time I saw him. Geraldo the pharmacist was great with him, took his B.P, blood sugar, checked him over, gave some pain relief and explained to the family how to care for the man and his stump. It’s scary to think that only 3 years ago before Elias arrived nothing like this would have happened.

   

  Monday night was a BBQ at Elias house for us and some others we have been getting to know. An elderly guy at the church who has been with Elias since the beginning bought all the food and wanted to cook for us. It’s impossible to convey how much we are being blessed!

   

   
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