Introduction to Kites Over Itaquera

Thank you for checking out Kites Over Itaquera. This was the result of a short-term mission trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil in December, 2005.

I wrote this over three weeks after returning, using whatever spare time I had, and then some I didn't. As you will discover, this was the most difficult task I have ever completed. By the time I finished, I was literally ready to disconnect my computer and throw it out on the street. I let this sit for two years, unwilling to return to it until recently to make final edits.

If I have an overarching purpose with this blog, it is to show the importance of missions. Originally, I thought we should take care of business in our own back yard. I thought this until somebody innocuously announced the trip and the suddenly light came on.

I also have a newfound appreciation for full-time missionaries. We must give them the material and moral support as much as possible. Most will never understand what they go through on a daily basis.

However, we are all called to be missionaries. Anybody who does not know the Lord is an "unreached people group." That means we must be a missionary in our own backyards. But if you have the means, I strongly encourage you to involve yourself in short-term missions.

"...The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." Then make yourself available.

Feel free to e-mail petelenz@yahoo.com.

Pete.

PLEASE NOTE THIS PAGE CONTAINS ONLY THE FIRST SIX CHAPTERS.

Kites Over Itaquera

A boy named Clayton looks skyward. I am not even in his vision as I walk close by him. His hand is painted orange from his work and he doesn’t seem interested if I were. But there are other kids with him and I am persuaded to stop and talk with them.

Clayton looks distracted as I approach but he keeps his attention on the sky. He is flying a kite, an orange kite, but not for long as it dives to the ground in a hurry. The wind is uncertain in Itaquera, Brazil and the kites often wrap around and eventually fall victim to the power lines.

As a child, I played baseball most summer days when it didn’t rain, some when it did. I grew up the youngest of six and we always had instant teams, especially when the neighborhood kids came by. The makeshift diamond we constructed on the street was a meeting place. In Itaquera, the children fly kites.

A good pipa kite costs approximately two reais, or about one dollar. The smallest and most common kites are the peixinho, or little fish. They are plain and simple, about the size and shape of home plate and cost around 15 cents. The larger kites are called arraia, which are large enough for messages. They usually have the name of one of the three soccer clubs in Sao Paulo, a heated rivalry. Drug dealers use them to let others know they have set up shop and in certain parts of Brazil they do so with impunity.

For the less fortunate, they make up the majority and must wait to catch a kite after it hits the ground. The first person to touch it, claims it, an unwritten rule and a way of recycling. Like baseball, it usually favors the swift or the resourceful.

If there is a sport to kite flying, it is to cut the string of another kite flyer, an airborne version of king of the hill. Some use a glass-embedded string as an advantage to cut the others. Some apply a metallic coating to protect theirs. Nearly all the string is a hazard to the ubiquitous motorcyclist as many are lacerated across the neck.

Itaquera has a consistent breeze out of the jutting, densely vegetated hills making it perfect as a kite flying capital and it is most windy in June and July, their winter months. In St. Louis, Missouri, my hometown, the wind is strongest in March as it races unimpeded across the Plains. But there are no elaborate games with the kites, just elaborate designs.

I never saw the sense of kites as a child. My oldest brother tried it once when I was young and I helped him. It was cold out, a biting cold because of the wind, I remember, and I hate cold. He worked the string one way, then the other. I fed and retracted the string sometimes maniacally and the end result was the kite stayed in much the same place. Apparently, only in America does one keep the kite in one spot–no opposition, no victory–just working with the wind to keep it airborne. At least in baseball you keep score and know who won and lost when the day was done.

Clayton’s kite was an arraia and I didn’t see what happened to it, if it was a power line or it fell victim to another flyer. Regardless, he joins us afterward, smiling now. While the kite flew, he was pleasantly distracted and it offered a glimmer of hope as he was its captain. But like everything else in this world, including his smile, it was only temporary.

Kites Over Itaquera II

Traveling out of the country was a new experience for me. Going to Itaquera was a revolution.

I am used to mixed cultures, my mom from Switzerland and my dad from what is now the Czech Republic. What they gave most was a different perspective almost like looking at the American culture from the outside in. However, learning about different cultures is completely different than experiencing them.

I prepared myself for a Brazilian template, more like a generalization. I never expected the name Clayton, though. Many of the names in Brazil sound like they come from elsewhere in the world including Bruno, Igor, Emerson, and others. I learn in little time to expect the unexpected.

One thing I notice right away is they are open to strangers as well as friends, not what I know in America. It was once that way in American culture. We’ve all heard the cliches: the front door was never locked, we hitchhiked everywhere, the kids ran the neighborhood until called home for dinner. I’ve found the biggest culprit is money. Studies show the more we make, the more we owe and the more we make, the less we give to charity–the more we make, the less we care.

Itaquera is only one of countless spokes that make up Sao Paulo, one of the largest cities in the world. It is home to an internationally acclaimed Gran Prix race and also home to some of the best beaches in the world. Parasailing off Sao Paulo’s beaches is known worldwide. Amenities afforded to the luxury capitals of the world can be easily found. However, for the Itaquera we visit, many will live and die there and not really notice.

Suburbs like Itaquera consider themselves the engine that makes the Brazilian economy run, as opposed to Rio de Janeiro and the city of Sao Paulo. It is not that different from how many Germans view the French.

Continuing well beyond the horizon are high rise apartments after high rise. Second only to Bombay in population concentration is Sao Paulo. If they are lucky to have their own house in the poorer parts, they live in a home not even the size of storage sheds we know in America. Worse are the favelas, slums essentially scraped from the landscape, many times from garbage dumps.

Most of the homes have two or three small–very small–rooms giving new meaning to efficiency. They are proud of their homes, though, it is theirs, they own it and they don’t share a door or an elevator with anybody.

Two things are common in Brazilian homes. All the floors have decorative tile and some tile the walls. One had tile on the kitchen cabinets. Even in Itaquera, comfort is still relative. All have iron gates to keep out the worst elements and they are well-represented. Cars get locked up behind the gates on what might be a front porch. There is no grass to mow.

Those fortunate enough have cement walls. It covers the bare cinder block found in the others. Many spend days foraging around job sites, the dumps or wherever else to bring scraps home. Some pull it home on carts I might have seen pulled by a horse when I was a kid. If they have a front door, it is made from scraps of wood. The better houses have no front door and show off their fancier tile.

Since it never gets cold in Itaquera, there is no need to seal the house. During winter, it gets cool but not cold, although it can approach freezing on sparse occasion. When I say cold, I mean St. Louis cold. I grew up without air conditioning and sometimes without heat. The furnace broke once during the coldest winter in St. Louis history–one with snow on the ground for 100 consecutive days–and we toughed it out. I can tell you firsthand, it is far easier to survive extreme heat than extreme cold. In Sao Paulo, it helps to have the Atlantic Ocean.
To better understand Itaquera, it is necessary to go back in time a half-century–by plane since many have cars now.

The landscape in Sao Paulo would probably make Picasso envious. It is neat to view from the air. Tightly-built pastel houses form to the landscape, one that juts sharply up and down. None of the roads seem to go straight from necessity.

The airport is like in any other American city. People scurry throughout with only their flight in mind. However, once the intercom goes off, I know I am no longer in America. Portuguese is the native tongue and it sounds like Spanish spoken in a French accent. I understand nothing.

Thankfully, the missionaries and interpreters are there to meet us at the airport. They take us to where we are staying and it doesn’t take long to find traffic signals and street lines are merely suggestions. More frightening are the motorcyclists. They drive on the white lines and pass in the slimmest of margins. Some use the yellow line and they swerve in and out of traffic, cheating death. Never have I been so stressed in a car and I am not driving. However, in the time I am there, I saw only one car accident and that caused by the rain.

City planning is almost an afterthought. While easy getting out of the airport and to the suburbs, the streets must follow where the jutting terrain takes them. As we approach the suburbs, I can tell Itaquera is far different than the streets of St. Louis where the roads escape the urban squalor. There are no malls or big box stores, only small shops, usually a converted home. And like the worst parts of St. Louis, they are heavily reinforced with the iron fences.

It didn’t used to be that way in St. Louis. There is a flip side to progress that usually gets ignored.

Much like St. Louis, the seemingly never-ending retaining walls are splattered with advertisements and graffiti. It is a colorful drive to say the least. Some of the written words I can catch with similar Latin roots, especially amor. Apparently, announcing affections for your girlfriend is universal.

Somebody from the worst parts of St. Louis told me how to judge a neighborhood: look for people sitting outside on their stoops. Too many and they must be unemployed–they share their misery well with crime and drug abuse. As we approach the pastor’s house where we are staying, all I see is people, most of them sitting on their stoops.

Perhaps it is good Clayton flies his kite as much as he does. He keeps his eyes up above the squalor, if only for a little while. I look outside my window as we drive past the streams of people hanging out on the streets and I wonder why I am here.

Kites Over Itaquera III

Never in my wildest dreams did I actually consider going to Brazil. I was content where I was at, sitting in the last pew and soaking up a good message. But it happened one day, plainly, simply, without fanfare.

We all know it and experience it: the voice from no worldly source that seems to gurgle from the depths until it is set free. For me, it came during announcements. Brad East, the Associate Pastor, read the announcements after the message and one was short-term mission opportunities to Mexico and Brazil. I’m not sure it rang a bell because of the warm climates–anything to get away from the St. Louis winters.

I have a writer’s heart which means I let my mind drift to places and never come back until I am ready. However, I never follow up on my ambitions since I also have a knack of talking myself out of things. Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, and Woody Guthrie would frown on me and it is probably why you never have seen my books in print.

St. Louis is my hometown and I attended Southeast Missouri State University about 100 miles from home (about 100 miles too far, I came to realize). Before my current job, I had only flown one time. I lead a boring life by every standard–even my clothes come off the rack at Wal-Mart. Missions or mission trips were for others.

Before I could rationalize this voice away, though, I knew I was going. The hard part was battling my own contentment. It was where the battle started and the enemy was winning handily.

As the trip drew closer, doubts started surfacing again and again. It’s too far, it costs too much. What happens if the plane crashes? Hemingway lived for days in the Amazon after his plane crashed, I would probably get swallered up by an Anaconda. Each day, the doubts intensified. In addition, I struggled with something else. The enemy was trying to cripple me.

I started to look around my church on Sundays and suddenly felt isolated, disenfranchised. Everybody else was going through the motions, it seemed, and I was the only “spiritual” person there. It turned out to be the other way around.

If it hadn’t been for Lou, I would not be writing this. I would not be at church on Sunday and I would be content as ever, at least in a worldly way. I don’t know Lou’s last name but he sits next to me every Sunday. There is never a boring moment at church and he is one of the funniest and ironic people I have met.

The battle came to a head one Sunday when I just wanted to leave. My back was sore from wrenching it earlier that week and I was tired of sitting and standing. The music suddenly sounded bland and everything told me I was better off at home. I was almost ready to turn out of the pew and be through with my church. Just then, Lou leaned over and said something funny, Biblically funny, and that one quip started a small spark of rejuvenation that overcame me.

We all know what would have happened if I had gone out that door. I would have waited a couple of weeks, tried another church a few times, then try another a couple of visits before darkening the door once in yet another before never being heard from again. The money saved from my tithes would look better in my bank account. Thankfully, I perservered because God was not done with me.

However, the doubts of going to Brazil still were as strong as ever. All the reasons for not going suddenly seemed right. It was too expensive, it was too close to Christmas, I couldn’t tear myself from work. But that inaudible voice was too strong and I managed to will away the doubts. But I almost forgot the most important thing: sign up for the trip and I was barely in time.

Administrative skills are not my strong suit. They can be when I want to but I don’t hardly want them to outside of work. I’d rather be in far away places in my office chair. If it had not been for the church staff, I would not have made it to Brazil. The only work I had to do was get my passport–and signing the check.

Filling in all those zero’s was difficult, but after I ripped the check from the register, I felt a sense of ease. It reminded me of another time when I did much the same thing, getting myself somewhere I never would have imagined.

I was at home listening to Focus on the Family in 1992. Bill McCartney, founder of Promise Keepers, was the guest. He talked about Godly men gathering in a stadium in Boulder, Colorado. The only problem was Boulder is about 1000 miles from home and I really couldn’t afford it. That inaudible voice appeared again telling me I had to go. Getting there was another matter.

There was a hotline for carpooling and I had free space in my ‘79 International Scout, a vehicle with more rust than paint. I received a call from a 14 year old boy. Later, I found I was the only person with room and he was the only one needing a ride. With this coincidence, I wish I could say it was of God. It turned out to be a ride from Hades instead.

Because of a late start and losing an hour to time change, we split the drive into two days. He ate with his mouth open. We spent the night halfway in Fort Hayes, Kansas and he snored. He also acted how I did at 14 years old. How did I live to see 15?

Before the trip, though, I lent money in an emergency with a promise to have it back in my account soon. I had no credit cards at the time; cash was king by necessity. I get to Fort Hayes that night and the money is not there. Almost all of my remaining cash is spent at the motel. The next morning: no money. Later that day: no money. Now the incline leading to the Rockies pushes my gas gauge faster and faster to empty. No gas stations are open, either, on the short-cut to Colorado Springs (the boy’s sister lives in Breckenridge, a supposed quick detour) probably because there were no gas stations. We arrive there with drops of gas in the tank. My last five dollars go into the tank. I worry all over again if we will make it to Breckenridge but we do barely. At least we are there. Still no money, however.

The next day, I survey the situation: I am 1000 miles from home with no money, no gas, and a boy I have never met. Could the situation get more bleak? Well, yes.

Before we set out, I have to borrow money from the boy and I felt really low. I feel even worse because if the money is not in the account, it is a long night in the Scout. Frazzled. I will have traveled 1000 miles for something I didn’t know what to expect and everything so far has gone wrong. I am miserable, tired, and Colorado now seems another planet.

When we arrive, I enroll and get my wristband. While the boy enrolls, I asked myself once again what I got myself into, why am I here and I cannot come up with a good answer. After he joins me, I look for my wristband and I cannot find it. At this point, I am feeling Old Testament-like. I want to tear at my clothes, my hair, whatever is in reach. I am, I’m sure, a pathetic sight and all I want is to be home right now.

Thankfully, the boy finds my wristband in with the other freebies we are handed. After a deep breath, I put it on. I feel unprepared for this meeting and I don’t want to go in–I am not feeling “spiritual,” whatever that means. However, God had other plans.

I cannot explain in human terms what happened the very instant I walked into the stadium. Something knocked me back on my heels and instantly all the cares of the world went away. All the trials now are a distant memory. The peace from the Holy Spirit overcame me that instant and it was much like entering another dimension. I knew instantly I was meant to be here, with the boy. We both learned that weekend what no man should be without.

That same feeling I got in Brazil, only it took a few days.

Kites Over Itaquera IV

I never knew what a Godly man was while growing up. My dad peeled out when I was three, leaving my mom all alone in a foreign country. It nearly overwhelmed her but she perservered. She was never the same, though, from what I hear.

Few pictures of me exist. There are a handful of them that must have been shot by my dad. He is not in any of them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

John Weaver, one of the missionaries overseeing our trip, loves to take photographs. While in Brazil, he shoots constantly. Easily, he takes more pictures of me than all my years. I can’t remember if I ever sat down for a picture in my adult life. School pictures ended in the 8th grade. The only way I remember is somebody said I wore the same clothes for my 7th grade picture.

I never stepped into a studio for a photograph nor do I want to. I don’t even own a camera.

It must be universal for children to smile for photographs. From the few that exist of me, I smile freely. The children in Brazil take it to another extreme. Everybody in Brazil is photogenic and wants to impress the little man in the camera. They like the results in the LCD.

For me, I would rather remember and hold a moment as special. I don’t want to take a picture and then file it in a drawer somewhere only to be jarred by a long-lost photograph. I would rather have the moment take hold in my permanent psyche, if it is that important.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As I looked at my childhood photographs, I wished I could go back to the days of youth when we played whiffleball or flips with our baseball cards. I still prefer a good game of basketball to cleaning the house and I’ve played many a game of basketball. However, I wandered back in my life, unwinding the paths I have taken and thought about how things might have been, especially with a father.

Like some binary operation in the flow chart of life, I sometimes wonder if just one small turn long ago would have changed my life drastically. But I cringe. I cringe over the paths I should have taken, if I even took a path at all. I still can recall all the dumb mistakes I’ve made, no shortage there and I remember each to exact detail. I cringe over what might have been with a father I never had.

I consider myself fortunate, though, on second glance at those photographs. I made a lot of mistakes since then but it was part of a growing process. In retrospect, I don’t think I have any regrets, just good hindsight.

I came across pictures of my brother almost two years older than me and he had an easy smile, although a little more timid. He turned out a little different than me. After a second marriage faltered and his back gave out, he decided his answer came at the end of a barrel, a shotgun barrel he used to take his own life.

He had more difficulty than I did growing up, I remembered when we were young. My dad chose not to be a part of our lives and my brother was the one who needed his father’s love the most. I could see it in the pictures, now that I look back at them.

Kites Over Itaquera V

For pilots and passengers, the hard part to flying is take-off and landing. Seeing the ground shrink beneath me on take-off frightens me like nothing else. I’d rather be on the ground petting anacondas.

Sleep was a rare commodity leading up to the trip. I had plenty of unfinished business and I take some of it with me to Brazil. I started packing after midnight the night before we leave. All I do is throw stuff in the suitcase and carry-on bag and hope I got everything. I hate packing, though, since it means I am going somewhere.

Five of us from church are on the trip, about the right size, I came to find. We meet at church at 4:30 after a frenetic day of work. Fifteen hours of travel await us and I’m already bushed.

Brad East is the Associate Pastor and heads up the trip. He is good with details and has been to Brazil for advance work. He makes only one mistake on the trip: he tells us the on-board meal to Brazil is breakfast and I bring two pounds of grapes to hold me over. Only minutes later, the stewardesses wheel out dinner and I can’t resist. To me, there is no such thing as leftovers. I eat what is in front of me, no matter what. After dinner, I feel pregnant and can’t bend forward in my seat. I find I will not be hungry until we leave Brazil.

I napped for what I thought was a long time and wake up thinking surely we are close. I am rudely jolted when I look at my watch. My nap was only an hour and there is still eight more hours to go. Worse, I cannot get back to sleep and I am both tired and gorged beyond belief. The movies are no good but they do have GPS, which is both good and bad. I don’t have to ask the stewardess if we are almost there yet and I know exactly when we fly over the Amazon.

Also accompanying Brad from the staff is Tren Groat. He is the College and Career Pastor and will head up a follow-up visit in June. He barely looks old enough to even have graduated college. A John Lennon pre-hippy hairstyle makes him look years younger. His dark hair can pass for Brazilian but his skin is very pale. He stands tall and deliberate like most Brazilians; nobody slouches in Brazil.

The only woman on the trip is Jean Oye. She is a widow and has been on this type of mission trip several times since her husband died. They don’t come any sweeter than Jean and she is extremely affable. She is also tough, having been on a mission trip down the Amazon. Thank you for your obedience, Jean, better anybody but me.

Greg Bryan works in the printing office at church. He is unassuming and deceptively funny. He enjoys beating me at ping-pong but won’t say it. Let the record show I beat him once.

We left St. Louis and it was 32 degrees. We arrive in Sao Paulo and it is in the 80’s. Already in one respect I love Brazil. But I am still miserable from lack of sleep.

Immediately apparent are the loosened mores of Brazil. Advertisement after advertisement throughout the airport contain women about ready to catch cold. At least there is strategically placed clothing. I learn on the trip Brazilians are not immodest because there must be immodesty to be immodest–they just don’t care.

Missionaries John Weaver and John Johnson greet us at the airport. I was expecting tall, bookish types with reading glasses as they blended in with the kiosks. Instead, they seem like good car salesmen. I should know since I am a Product Trainer for a domestic manufacturer. Like a good policeman, they know how to passively take control of a situation.

John Weaver has a slight build and deserving of his Grasshopper nickname. He barely knows how to stay in one place long enough. He sticks out in Brazil because of his reddish-blond hair, almost as blond as mine. John Johnson, on the other hand, is unhurried. With dark hair and dark eyes, he falls in my Brazilian template and he even sounds Brazilian when he talks to the Brazilians. When he talks to me, I learn quickly he is from Texas.

We have two interpreters joining us, Natan and Dalete Sampaio de Aquino, brother and sister. They stand straight with narrow bone structures. Natan looks graceful and amiable. Dalete has sleek, elegant lines–bonita. Immediately, I see they are transparent, without guile, and I know I am no longer in America. I don’t know if it is the car business or American culture in general, but everything in America seems to have an angle. We hide behind visages or facades, rarely showing our true selves. Already at first glance, I want what the Brazilians have.

We ride in two cars to Pastor Rubens house to drop off our things. Immediately, we get to work.

Kites Over Itaquera VI

Sao Paulo is a city of 19 million people, counting the metropolitan area. Only 6% are evangelical Christians. Brazilians are an open people–open also to everything spiritual. Spiritism is growing among the middle and upper classes. For the 938 favelas among Sao Paulo, many put their faith in the instant including drugs, alcohol, and crime–not unlike many American cities, only much more of it.

Our mission is evangelismo por amizade–friendship evangelism–for Pastor Ruben’s church. After dropping our things off at his house, we get started. I travel with John Johnson and a Brazilian girl named Valeria. She is a black girl with a powerful sprinter’s form. Blacks, I find, are more assimilated into the culture than in America. I witness no outward signs of racism but they assure me it is here.

However, Valeria speaks no English and I speak no Portuguese so I cannot find anything about her. Later I find she is 32 years old but looks ten years younger. Many, I also find, think there is no reason to speak English since they will never visit the English world or consign themselves to working class jobs. The English world, however, comes to visit them and to most it is a delight.

They scarcely come more Aryan than myself. I have blond hair with a hint of red, blue eyes and stand around 6′2″, far above most everybody else if I don’t slouch. As we get started, I sense everybody senses I am American. Some call me Alemao–German.

John Johnson’s Portuguese is very good, almost native. He can mimic the intonation perfectly, which is very difficult. He has been in Brazil for eight years, five in the Amazon. To me, that means he is entitled to demigod status. He fills me in on the status of the area we visit. It is the poorest area we visit the entire time. He warns me not to touch the wire baskets in front of the houses–that is for trash. Worse, the plumbing cannot handle toilet paper and it is thrown out with the trash. It is my first real culture shock and it nearly makes me ill.

Nobody has a doorbell in this neighborhood–this is for affluence. Instead, we clap our hands at the gate and shout “oh, da casa!” or “to the house.” The second culture shock was finding out what constitutes a house. I see inside some of them and it seems little better than the dirt-floored shacks of the deep South, only stacked one on top of the other and squeezed tightly.

I know why I am here, or at least what I told myself, and I tell nobody. In America, I do not do well approaching strangers. However, I seem to be a magnet for total strangers, including every Amway salesman in St. Louis. I know I have to jump this hurdle of fear if I am going to be an effective witness and what better way to learn than practice 6000 miles from home.

Nothing could prepare me for our first stop. I’m kind of hoping nobody is home but a woman answers the door. My heart starts to pound out of my shirt as she lets us inside her home. She offers us to her couch which I am happy to sit on. Her couch, though, is a thinly padded rock, I find after sitting too fast, jarring every bone. She tells us her son is in the music business. I get the feeling he is wayward from how she talks. I also feel now, and many more times later, that parents in Brazil expect intense loyalty to themselves and let the kids go about their own devices.

I have no idea what will come out of my mouth until I start talking. I don’t use the tracts supplied because I am not happy with some of the English words used, the writer in me. I still can’t remember what I said to her, though. I can’t remember what I say to anybody the first day, only it never comes out the same way twice. Thankfully, they are all receptive, they listen, and then turn me down–or God.

I know good salesmen when I see them. I see them work first-hand as part of my job as a trainer and I was in sales for many years. I also see the reasons why salesmen fail, three of them. Either they:

1) don’t ask for the sale
2) cannot perform a cohesive, quality sales presentation
3) are out of their element when working one-on-one with a customer

I also have seen salesmen slaughter a presentation but still ask for the sale–and get it–probably because nobody else has. I don’t understand my customer in Brazil, at least not yet, but I still ask for the sale. No responses, but I still ask.

We are almost done for the day when we decide to make one last stop. An elderly man lets us in. He is receptive to the Gospel and we lead him to Christ–more like John does. I let him take over because I think tranlsating would take too much time and distraction; surely we would lose him–I still think we are in America. In sales, never give your customer the chance to say no.

It is a split deal in the car business. I closed and John did all the paperwork. He opens his Portuguese Blble to what looks like Romans and then flips through as he talks. Maybe he takes the Roman Road but I never ask because I never learned it, although I can recognize the verses. I am embarrassed sitting next to John as he talks. I am more embarrassed when I realize I don’t know how to use the Bible to lead somebody to the Lord. I fly 6000 miles to overcome a fear when the problem turns out to be a lack of a quality presentation.

A good presentation to selling a car starts at the front. For those of you who have a good salesman, please follow along. It continues to the passenger side, the rear and then the driver’s side. A salesman must highlight five points on each side and adapt for each customer. Afterwards, the salesman seamlessly opens the door for a test drive–halfway home to making a sale. Since faith comes by hearing, the salesman must ask for the sale but has to earn the right to ask it. The customer has to make a decision then on eternal life.

At least we had some success the first day, but the day is not done yet. We go to a mission church for services and are greeted warmly. It is a small, narrow building with no glass in the windows. We are privy to everything happening outside although we can’t understand. Natan translates for Brad.

While everybody leaves after services, we hang out as a group by the front window. Power lines are easily within arm’s reach. One wrong move and my marshmellows are toasted. Either they are haphazard with electricity or they greatly respect it.

Wrapped around the power lines are strings, countless strings as I scan the neighborhood. Sometimes the string has a stretch of gray garland. The lines are the final resting spot for the kites until rescued by an enterprising child. I start to see Itaquera in a different light.
We go to Pastor Ruben’s house for the night and not a moment too soon. I am exhausted but I still need to get my work done on the web. His computer is dreadfully slow, making dial-up seem instantaneous. It is normal, he says, for Brazil. However, the site comes up as unavailable.

I need to access the site by Monday and there is nobody to call. Though I am dog-tired, it worries me the rest of the night and I don’t understand what just happened today.