In the last full calendar year we were in Brazil, we experienced an entire gamut of situations with no missionary colleague close at hand. It was on-the-job training at its fullest.

The video version includes many photos and additional information to illustrate the narrative.

I had spent the whole year looking for a place to work. So far, none of the doors had ever opened, but now at the end of the year, there was a real opening.  We signed a contract on a house and arranged for all our things to be taken 750 miles further south. Everything was packed and ready to ship, but 4 days before the move, God shut that door, too. In a manner of speaking, He slammed it shut in our faces.

In this first full year on the mission field, we knew Brazil was our home.  With the birth of our son, Jeff, we were fully integrated in the country and the culture, but there was one major question to be resolved: where was God's place for us in this vast country?

This episode describes an exploratory trip I made in February. For most of the 4 days on this trip along Brazil's border with Argentina, through some of the most undeveloped territory I ever visited, I didn't know precisely where I was, and I didn't know where I was going. Ater 500 miles of travel in a Jeep over unimproved roads, I knew one thing: my body was sore in every possible way. But did the trip resolve the issue at hand?

The video version on YouTube includes a map of the route we took.

1973 was the first full year we lived in Brazil. In this episode, I take a car 250 miles into the interior, promising to come back and pay for it three weeks later; Abbie asks me to get in bed with her just hours after she had a baby. Then I had to get up in the night and bring a bottle of warm milk from a pan on the wood stove in the hospital kitchen.

This story of 1973 is divided into three short segments, with other significant happenings being related in the following two episodes of this three-part series. 

This episode in video format on YouTube includes photo illustrations.

Este episódio retoma a história de episódio 11, que foi interrompida pelo relato em Ep. 12, ocasionado pela referência aos eventos de 25 de Abril 1973, e sua influência sobre nós. Estes nove meses foram um teste decisivo que determinaria o nosso sucesso ou fracasso na chamada missionária. Se passássemos bem este período, seríamos capazes de passar por qualquer outro teste no campo missionário.

O facto de que o português deste episódio está replete de expressões brasileiras é evidência de que as fontes que consultei foram redigidas no Brasil na altura que estávamos a viver as experiências que 50 anos mais tarde ainda nos marcam. 

This episode resumes the story I left off in Episode 11, interrupted by the account in Ep. 12 of the events of April 25, 1974, and how they affected our lives. These nine months were a test that would make us or break us as missionaries. If we got through them, we would be able to get through any other test of our call to the mission field.




Available in text version.

A Bíblia está cheia de referências à intervenção de Deus na vida de indivíduos e impérios, mas será que reconhecemos Sua intervenção quando ela nos afeta diretamente em nossos dias? Em 25 de abril de 1974, o regime fascista fundado por Salazar em 1926 que durou 48 anos em Portugal foi derrubado em uma questão de horas. Sem um único tiro disparado, este golpe entrou para a história como "a Revolução dos Cravos". Dois anos mais tarde, em 1976, chegámos à Madeira, e aponto aqui algumas das coisas a que assistimos à medida que nos adaptávamos a um novo país. Descobrimos que os madeirenses também ainda estavam a adaptar-se àquele que era, afinal, um novo país para eles

Texto disponível em  formato blog com fotos

The Bible is full of references to God’s intervention in the lives of individuals and empires, but do we recognize His intervention when it directly affects us in our day? On April 25, 1974, the 48-year-old fascist regime founded by António Salazar in 1926 in Portugal was overthrown in a matter of hours. Not one shot was fired, and this coup went down in history as “the Carnation Revolution”. Two years later, in 1976, we arrived in Madeira, and here are some of the things we witnessed as we adapted to a new country. We discovered that the Madeirans, too, were still adapting to, what was, after all, a new country for them.

Text version - blog post with photos

Fazia 9 anos desde que eu sabia que Deus tinha me chamado para ser missionário no Brasil. Eu ainda estava no ensino secundário. Agora, com a idade "madura" de 25 anos, eu era casado e tinha dois filhos pequenos. Tínhamos acabado de passar 15 longos, difíceis meses na estrada, ficando com pessoas que nunca tínhamos conhecido, em lugares onde nunca tínhamos estado, a preparação perfeita para nossa nova vida no Brasil. Tínhamos chegado ao ponto crucial em que mais ingredientes seriam introduzidos na receita das nossas vidas: uma nova língua e cultura, novas vistas, sons, cheiros e sensações, e não éramos nós os responsáveis pela cozinha. Como iria ficar tudo isso? Como dizem os ingleses, a prova do pudim fica no comer.


Quando desembarcamos em Nova York, na tarde de 23 de março de 1972, tínhamos saído de Chicago cerca de duas horas antes. Na aproximação do aeroporto, Raquel (4) olhou pela janela para a cidade em baixo e proferiu o eufemismo do dia. Pensando que tínhamos regressado a Chicago, ela disse: "Só subimos para dar uma volta." Não, Raquel. Mal sabia ela que esta nossa viagem era somente o início de uma mudança de vida, uma viagem que não terminaria com os seguintes voos de 9 horas para o Rio de Janeiro e de uma hora ainda para São Paulo, onde….. 

It had been 9 years since I first knew God had called me to do mission work in Brazil, and I was still in high school. Now, at the “mature” age of 25, I was married and had two small children. We had just spent 15 long, challenging months on the road, staying with people we had never met, in places we had never been, the perfect preparation for our new life in Brazil. We had come to the crucial point where more ingredients were about to be stirred into the recipe of our lives: a new language and culture, strange sights, sounds, smells and sensations, and we were not in charge of the kitchen. How would it all turn out? The proof of the pudding would be in the eating.


When we landed at NYC in the afternoon of March 23, 1972, we had only been gone a couple of hours from Chicago. Rachel (4) looked out the window at the city beneath us as we approached the airport and made the understatement of the day. Thinking it was Chicago, she said, “We just went up for a ride.” No, Rachel. Little did she know that our life-changing ride had only just begun, and it wouldn’t end with the 9-hour flight to Rio de Janeiro and the hour-long connecting flight to São Paulo, where.…