Sao Jose is a lovely church: clean and freshly painted white. The Sunday school building faces the side courtyard. The bright and inviting colors of their rooms welcome us to come and join the fellowship. But first we begin the service in the sanctuary. After some speaking, including Rosangela explaining Ubuntu and our visit, we sing a few songs and then adjourn for breakfast and Sunday School. We wander around meeting everyone and partaking of a light, traditional breakfast: fruit salad, savory cornmeal with ham, coffee. Rosangela drew our attention to a plaque on the wall. In 1998 this church was built in 15 days by a mission team from Lafayette, Indiana. We take a picture of the plaque with Rosa and Rita on either side so they can share with the churches in Indiana!
Now it’s time for Sunday school. The children used Galatians 5, the fruit of the spirit as the theme for today’s lesson.Teca helped the children introduce themselves and learn their “guest” teachers’ names with introductions and our favorite song: A paz du mundo—ending with lots of hugs, of course! Olma taught them a little melody which we all sang together when prompted during the paper “puppet play” performed byOlma, Janelle and Suzanne. Each child received a paper hand cut out of construction paper and wrote on it by themselves or with help one “fruit” from the scripture reading that they particularly liked. Then they glued their “hand” on a huge paper “tree” on the wall. The tree had blossomed with their gifts!
2 Kings Chapter 4. With the youth Ashley and Jessi introduced themselves and invited the young people to do the same. They opened up to questions and shared about the similarities and differences between their churches in the US and Sao Jose. The youth moved outside to play a game: the “human knot.” It was fun to watch them try to untwist themselves after grabbing a friend’s hand in each of theirs! They all had to work together to find ways of untwisting: each person was a necessary part of the solution. Inside again theyeach took a piece of paper and wrote their name. After adding qualities they like in themselves, they passed their paper on to their friends for them to add good qualities they saw in each other. Rosangela helped lead the discussion with Ashley and Jessi’s input: tying together the game, the paper activity and the scripture. Each person has a role to play, we need to search out our best qualities and find ways to use them to help others, just as the widow, her sons, and their neighbors in the 2 Kings did.
In the adult class Sonia spoke about the same scripture and posed questions about how we relate to people who are in trouble in our community: do we try to help them out as the neighbors did by lending their empty jars? She reflected also on how each of us has talents and a role to play: We need to do our part. Several adults got up to share instances when they felt the community worked together to help. One man stood up and emotionally told the story of teenager Pedro and his sister who had been coming to church for a long time—not their parents, just the children. They haven’t seen Pedro in about three weeks and he was concerned. The young man had been getting into drugs and perhaps we should, as a church, be looking for him, trying to help. Many others agreed and pledged to begin a search for Pedro. We all gathered in the sanctuary for a final song and a wish for a wonderful week.
Our Ubuntu team left for the country. On the way to Alto Alegre church in Cascavel we stopped at a churrascaria on the edge of Fortaleza: a perfect place to spend a Sunday afternoon eating with friends and family, relaxing in the open air restaurant, looking out over the courtyard with children’s playground and a cashew tree. As we chose our food from the buffet and the waiters came around with the various grilled meats for you to pick what you wanted, we chatted and laughed, remembering our morning and thinking of the afternoon. The local band began playing both traditional country songs of Brazil and, surprisingly to us, some older American songs in ENGLISH! What a pleasant welcome, though we would love to have heard even more in Portuguese. The singer and the musicians were excellent and it topped off a wonderful and pleasant afternoon.
It is difficult to even begin to explain how central music is to life here in Brazil: on the street, in the home, at the beach, at church. In every church we felt the music gave expression to our faith, to our joy in being here and we wanted to join in raising our hands, jumping up and down, swaying our bodies to the rhythms. It was one of the times we most desired to be able to understand every word of Portuguese and were so grateful for when translations were shared.
We continued on our way to Cascavel, past small houses right next to each other, red tile roofs, small ponds created to conserve water in the dry season and very full from a heavy rainy season with water almost lapping at the foundations of the houses around. We are leaving Fortaleza now, and see a number of factories or warehouses, places with cranes and building materials. We see more vegetation, some sugar cane, palm trees scattered across the landscape. It becomes dryer, though, as we go along. The soil is reddish in color. We pass a cemetery with tiny rows of low headstones, flowers on each. Suddenly the van pulls into a shop. Surprise! This is a local artisans’ workshop with over 20 booths. We get to shop—only 10 minutes, and of course we choose to use “Brazilian time” and take about 20! We walk in to a lovely coop of local and other Brazilian handicrafts: lace blouses and skirts, tablecloths and more. Many kinds of trinkets and jewelry. What fun to look, take pictures, and purchase a few souvenirs. One of theladies showed us how she makes the traditional lace. They have a huge role of it near the front. They are trying to beat the Guiness Book of Records by surpassing 3000 meters of lace. They are up to 840 meters. We continue on, driving further into the countryside. A herd of goats grazes, their black and white coats dancing among the trunks of the trees over their heads. A cashew tree full of orange fruits (different variety than the yellow ones we saw in Sao Paulo), people swimming in the reservoir, orange tanker trucks pulled up to the shore to take water back to the farms. A speed boat buzzes by. Directions were a bit unclear on these small country roads. We had to make a u-turn on what turned out to be the wrong country lane. Then we found it—easy because some of the church members stood at the corner waving to us and to Junior, our driver! They hopped in the van and we drove the equivalent of a couple blocks down the narrow lane. A few men and boys played futebol (soccer) in the field, small houses of brick and stucco were scattered through the fields across the road from the church. Inside the wall cashew trees in several stages of development dotted the yard. The bright sun warmed our backs as we walked to the front of the church. Once inside the shade of the building and the light breeze blowing through the open windows was a welcome respite. A small group of musicians rehearsed at the front of the church, their t-shirts proclaiming “Projeto Musical & Canto.” It seems that every church we go to has amazing music and musicians. Talent is everywhere. A rooster crows as they sing. He wants to join the chorus. A gust of wind brings more refreshing cool air. We wander into the courtyard behind the church and stand in awe of the ladies doing their lace work. Each has a bit rolled “pillow” filled with something firm. On it they have pinned with quills or cactus thorns a lace pattern. Each of the individual threads/strings is wrapped around a kind-of spindle with a nob at the end and their hands moved expertly twining these two, wrapping number 4 around number 8, dropping two and picking up two more, pinning in the twist they have made. They smile proud of their heritage. One of us wonders if the craft is dying and asks if they teach the young girls. They call over a teenager and ask her to sit and show us what she can do. She shyly complies.
We return to the sanctuary to hear some music, including a group of young people playing the recorder. We plan to do the same Sunday School lessons here and all goes very well. Sonia tells the adults “It is so beautiful that you can count on your neighbors.” The children and youth classes are smaller here because the church is smaller and at first the children were shy but they warmed up to us quickly. We all returned to the sanctuary for more beautiful music and dancing, moving to the rhythm. Lee stood up to say how much it means to us to be here, to share with you, to be a part of your service and to make new friends. She said that next Sunday when we are all home in our own churches and you are here we will all remember each other. The children and adults warmly welcomed us to join in learning lace making and having refreshments. The children wanted to be near us and hug us as we shared in coffee and snacks – an amazing array of savory and sweets, including a bowl full of cashew fruits brightening up the end of the table with their shimmering orange skins and dark black cashew nuts on the end. We then had the opportunity to try our hand at making lace. How can they remember the patterns. They gave us maybe four spindles to work with and pointed out each of the twists and over or under moves. Then they took eight and flipped the over, under, through, dropping some andpicking up others, the soothing click clickclick of the spindles keeping rhythm to their work. The women had also set up a table with some of their crafts for sale and we made a number of purchases! All too soon it was time to go and once again we had to leave new friends. They gave us a wonderful send off, standing outside the car saying good bye in English and “Tchau” in Portuguese and waving to us as we pulled away.
We travelled back through the countryside and made our way again to the church we first visited yesterday: Central Methodist, our third church of the day. What a remarkable day it has been and more to come with our own Olma. The band tonight is full of young people. We so admire the talent of the musicians in all the churches we have visited. The guitarist and two of the singers, are older. The guitarist, who is blind plays beautifully and also sings in a strong pure voice. The new lay leader is one of the performers, a family affair. For many of the songs they project the words in English and Protugues on the screen beside the pulpit. The pulipts in several of the churches have been the clean straight lines of plexiglass with the Methodist flame and cross on the front.
At all three churches so many people have remarked on our MulherMetodista bags that were given to us in Sao Paulo and we are now using. We have met the two young women who make them. They are sisters.
Pastor Emmanuel spoke, then Bishop Marisa for a few minutes before she left for the airport and her flight home. The musicians led us in singing someof the hymns of the past 45 years of the church here. We hummed or sang along in English when we recognized a tune!
Then Olma spoke, using a scripture from Mark 5, the parable of the man with a legion of demons. She said “If we have the heart of God then we will hear the call of God: we will see the suffering of others.” She asked us to do an exercise with her. Cup our hands over our ears, pull them away and put them together. What do we see? A heart. Cup our hands over our eyes, pull them away and what do we see? A heart. Hold one of ourhands in a fist and place it over our heart, pull it away and join it with our neighbor’s hand. What do we see? A heart. We need to keep our eyes and our ears open to help each other and to join together in making the world a better place.
After another song, accompanied by beautiful harmonica music, Elizabete was consecrated as a lay leader by Pastor Emmanuel and Pastor Isiahs, a guest from a neighboringdistrict church . She read a poem about faith that was one of her favorites and then the congregation surprised her by playing a recording of her mother saying the prayer and with a skype phone call from her brother who lives in Belo Horizonte and could not come.
We were so tired and blessed after our long day (we left the hotel at 8:15 this morning and didn’t return until after picking up take out at Habib’s about 10 pm). The memories of the faces and the hugs, the new friends and singing will warm our hearts for days—and years—to come.
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