Luziânia

We have been working on coordinating a Bible School in Luziânia since our mission trip last summer. Finally all the arrangements have been made and this weekend we are going. All week Kelly and Lance have been working on the schedule, the songs, the craft...all the details. We decided that we would start at the beginning...with Adam, and then we would end in December at Christmas. Our plan was to leave on Friday and stay over night at Pastor Terezinha's house. We would have time on Friday night to buy food and then we would prepare it on Saturday morning. We were expecting about 100 children, and there mothers and Kelly and Lance had offered to provide a lunch for them. On Friday however we received a call. The pastor was still in Brasilia having some test on her heart and wouldn't be back in Luziânia until Saturday. So we pushed everything back. We would now be leaving on Saturday afternoon and the Bible School will be on Sunday.

On Saturday we headed off to Brasilia to meet Vilma (David Sander's secretary from the Church of Christ) who would be going with us to Luziânia. We met at the bus station downtown Brasilia and caught the bus to Luziânia. Luckily we packed light because the bus was pretty crowded. We arrived in Luziânia and took a taxi from the bus stop to the crèche. Pastor Terezinha is the president of this crèche, which she is hoping to turn into a help center for the poor. The need to do a certain amount of work before the government will help fund the rest, so at the moment it is a large building with plenty of space inside and outside.

When we arrived we chatted with the pastor for a while. Apparently the result of her tests is that she needs a lot of surgery. My Portuguese isn't great so I might have misunderstood some of this, but I think that two of her brothers have died from heart failure so she was concerned. I believe that she needs a heart valve replacement, some type of artery surgery and there is bleeding in her uterus so that is being removed. Don’t quote me on this. I wasn’t able to pick up all the details of the conversation, but keep her in prayer. Her surgeries are scheduled for sometime between November 10th and the 15th.

Vilma had purchased some decorations for the Bible School, balloons and tablecloths. So we then started blowing up balloons. She bought 200, so this took some time. Luckily we had some help.

That evening we went to Pastor Terezinha's house where we would be staying that evening. We began the preparations for Sunday's meal. Kelly and I sat peeling garlic for a few hours, while Lance chopped sausage, and a few other women pulled apart the chicken, soaked the beans...and I'm not sure what else went on. Some kids from the neighborhood came over, they wanted us to know that they knew some English, but apparently that meant that they were able to count to 10 in English. Kelly took the oppertunity to teach them their colors. She taught them some basic colors and then we played a game of eye-spy...something red. The kids loved it and this went on for hours while we continued to peel garlic. Eventually I started to get really tired. During the week I have to leave for work at 6:30am, so I am used to going to bed pretty early. It was about 11:30pm, and we were just sitting down to dinner. I could hardley keep my eyes open.

Eventually Kelly and Lance went to the neighbor's house to borrow a mattress and Pastor Terezinha gave me a single mattress to set up. She cleared the coffee table and other furniture from the living room, and I set up my bed in the courner.Her house is pretty big, there are four bedrooms and at least three bathroom (although none of the toliets had toliet seats....Kelly and I never could figure that out...toliet seats aren't that expensive...anyway...). When Kelly and Lance got back they were directed to set their mattress down right next to mine. So we had a bit of a slumber party in the pastor's living room. Which wouldn't have been too much of a problem if it wasn't for the fact that we were blocking her son's bedroom, and apparently 12:30am is too early to sleep, and his girlfriend was hanging out with him in his room, and everyone one else was still awake and yelling across the house. Luckily I was tired enough not to notice, but for a few minutes the three of us talked about the oddness of sleeping in the middle of a very awake, crowded house. Lance commented on the cultural differences. What it comes down to is that Americans just have a different perspective on personal space. Personal space isn't that important to Brasilians.

The next morning Kelly and I walked to the nearest super market to buy breakfast for everyone. When we returned we continued the preparations for the meal. Unfortunately Kelly and I don't know too much about cooking Brasilian, so we were mostly spectators. They cooked the whole chicken...after it was pulled a part...wings, legs, feet...I have to admit, there is something just a little unappetizing about seeing chicken feet cooked and mixed in with the rice.

Eventually we headed over to the crèche where we found about 30 children waiting for us. We served the lunch first and everyone was happy and well fed. After that it was time for registration. I think we were all wishing Gemina was here for this part. It wasn’t very organized, even though it appeared to be. This goes back to that red clock that said nine in the afternoon. Things here in Brasil always look really nice, but underneath they often lack order or function. For example Vilma had put together these really great registration forms, they were printed in color and the paper was even pink for girls and white for boys.

We had theses nice little folder organizers, pink for girls, blue for boys. But then we had to register them after they had eaten and while everyone was anxious to get things started. They were lined up into a boy line and a girl line and Kelly was put in charge of the boys. It was pretty frustrating for her. There weren’t many parents around, and the kids didn’t all know their address, phone number, e-mail address and so on. Anyway, the registration process took a while.

Finally it was time to start the program. We got the kids in a circle and began singing some songs. It was a little challenging since we don’t have an instrument and the echo in the room was pretty bad. Plus there were dogs outside that didn’t stop barking and a couple of the guys decided that this would be the best time to hang up the sign…which required a hammer and nails, and the adults didn’t stop talking, babies were crying, etc, etc, but we got through the song and the kids seemed interested and engaged, so that’s what matters.

After the songs Adam (Lance) came out to tell the story of how God the Father created the earth, and the animals and everything that we see. He explained how God created man, and then women, and about the tree and the snake.
When Adam left we had a few more songs and then the craft. Lance came up with this great idea for the separation of light and dark. This was our main scripture for the day. Genesis 1:3-4. God said, “Let there be light” and then he separated the light from the dark. So we passed out the crafts and the children made their construction paper versions of the first day, (thanks to Judy…there is no construction paper in this country, so this craft would have been quit difficult. Also glue and glitter are hard to come by.)
We then began cleaning up while Vilma and Pastor Terezinha pasted out prizes. Vilma bought these really nice little bags filled with candy. After a lot of hurry up and waiting we finally got back on a bus and headed back to Luziânia. I said to Kelly while waiting for the bus, “I can’t wait to get home.” Then it occurred to me…it takes a trip like this to turn our little, barely furnished, dusty house in the middle of Guará, into home.