My Birthday! and Poverty in Brazil.

06/25/11

Today is my 24th Birthday and it was definitely an amazing birthday! I have always wanted to have a prayer meeting and evangelism for my birthday and today I got both. Praise God!
At 8 in the morning I met together with Kings Kids at Maranatha Church and at 9 a.m. we left to go witnessing at the Lixao (the city’s garbage dump). We didn’t go witnessing literally at the dump itself, but there is a community of families who work at the dump and live about a mile away from it. Their houses are built out of cardboard, tarps, sheets of metal, and some of them have brick or concrete. All the paths are dirt paths and they have no electricity, sewage, or other utilities.
As we drove into the neighborhood it was so poor and underdeveloped that it looked as if we were driving into a poor, rural village in Africa. All the dogs there looked like the sketchiest street dogs you could imagine, but they were actually pets of the residents there. A couple of the families had ponys or chickens and some had vegetable gardens. All of their clothes were filthy, raggedy, and many were ripped and falling apart. None of them had cars or motorcycles, so I have no idea how they go anywhere because they are several miles outside of the city. They have no supermarket, restaurants, or any other kind of service you could imagine.
The reason neighborhoods like this exist in Brazil is not because the government does not want to invest in development and infrastructure, but rather because these settlements are illegal settlements. Poor people from rural areas of Brazil come to the city and invade private or public properties illegally and build entire neighborhoods there. In this instance, I believe that the land they were on was public property since it was close to the city dump and a huge state prison. If the government doesn’t do anything about these neighborhoods then they form into favelas, which is what has happened in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. By God’s grace, this neighborhood has not yet been taken over by any drug-trafficking group like the favelas around much of Brazil have.
Thus, we found out from the residents while we were there that the government has constructed free housing for all them in a location within the city and that within the next few months all of them were going to be relocated into this government housing. Then the government is going to bulldoze their entire neighborhood, but only after they have successfully moved to the new neighborhood. Surprisingly, it seemed like all of the residents we met had a positive attitude about the relocation and were willing to move.
Once we arrived there it was awkward for the first five or ten minutes or so because all the church people stayed in their cliques close to their cars and all the residents just stood there looking at us from the other side of the road. I decided to cross the street and meet some of the people and, eventually, most of the church people crossed over too to talk with the people while the sound system was being set up.
I first met Joaquim, who works at a construction site at the top of a small mountain that is about 8 miles away. He rides his bike every day most of the way and then his friend gives him a ride for the uphill part until the top of the mountain. He told me how his cousin had been shot and killed there a few months ago while constructing a house by himself. I asked him about his relationship with God and he told me that he is an evangelico (Note: In Brazil, Christians call themselves Evangelicals in order to make a clear distinction between themselves and Catholics because Christians here do not consider Catholics to be saved. So for someone to say they are an Evangelical here is a pretty big deal. It’s essentially saying that “I have given my life to Jesus and I am committed to a Christian church”). However, he told me that he no longer goes to church because the pastor at the church he attended caused him to become jaded with the church. By himself, he built a cistern for the church that was 15 meters long in only two days, but the pastor only gave him half of the money that he had promised to pay him. For an impoverished man with little work, that is a huge crime.
All the workers here only receive minimum wage, which has just been raised to $600 Reals a month. In Brazil, minimum wage is not an hourly pay, but a monthly salary. Also, now that the Brazilian economy is getting stronger and the dollar is getting weaker now 1 American dollar is equivalent to 1.6 Reals, which is really good. Therefore, now the cost of living in Brazil is virtually equivalent to most parts of the U.S. and in some senses it’s more expensive. Land and food are cheaper in Brazil in general, but cars, clothes, technology products, and anything else you could ever find in a mall is much more expensive in Brazil. For example, a new Honda Civic in the U.S. is $25k dollars while in Brazil it is $80k reals. In light of the cost of living in Brazil $600 reals a month is nothing. It could barely pay the rent of a small apartment in a ghetto part of town. This is why South America is the continent with the largest economic disparity between rich and poor.
I later hung out with some of the kids. They told me that a van comes to their neighborhood every day to take them to school.
Moreoever, while we were there one of the residents found a skull in the forest and brought it for everyone to see. He called the police and they took it to investigate the death of the person.
Finally, the Kings Kids group performed several dances and, at the end, performed a simple skit. Maranatha’s head pastor, DJ, gave a short altar call and the majority of the people came forward to receive Christ. We prayed over all of them and praised the Lord for what He had done. Then we served lunch with soda to the entire neighborhood. It was awesome.
Furthermore, Pastora Maria de Jesus from the Pentecostal church Igreja Bom Pastor (Church of the Good Shepherd) was with us also. She is a pastor of a church and head over a drug rehab center and she ministers in this neighborhood weekly. So it was great to have her with us because we knew that she would continue the work after we had left and that we were partnering with her in what she was doing instead of competing with her. This is a miracle because evangelical and Pentecostal churches here hardly do anything in unity, much like in the U.S.
This was an amazing site for me to witness because all the ministry that was occurring in front of me is direct fruit from my grandmother and grandfather’s life. You see, my great great uncle founded the First Presbyterian Church of Goiania. When revival came in the 70’s my family was kicked out of the church for speaking in tongues. So they founded the church Igreja Bom Pastor, which today is one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in Brazil. As the church grew it became way too legalistic and the Presbyterian church was seeking to plant a new kind of Presbyterian church that would be more relevant to the culture, so my grandparents decided to return leave the Igreja Bom Pastor after founding it and help found the Igreja Presbiteriana Maranatha, which is now a spirit-filled, modern network of Presbyterian churches.
So here were both of the denominations that my grandparents had founded working together to win a slum to Jesus. Hallelujah!
Even in this small slum of about 70 families there is a huge division between them and one side of the slum does not mix with the other. Thus, we had to go to the other side of the slum and do everything over again. We did the dances, skits, altar call, prayer, and lunch all over again. It was great. I had several more great conversations with the men and kids in the neighborhood there and I had the joy of praying over one of the men there.
I came home around 2 p.m. and ate lunch. Then I spent time with God for my 24th birthday and took a nap. Miraculously, Brooke called me from the Bahamas in the middle of the day. They were in the middle of the ocean traveling from one island to another and they wouldn’t have internet for 3 days. She told me she had been crying all last night and all day today because she couldn’t contact me for my birthday, so her mom bought her a cell phone from the Bahamas and a calling card that was 60 cents a minute for her to call me. Crazy right!? Praise God I have a wife that loves me so much and in-laws who are able and willing to pay money for her to talk to me. So we had a great time talking. I really, really miss Brooke and she really misses me.
At 7 p.m., we celebrated my birthday. It was a very simple birthday for Brazilian standards, but it was great. My cousin Natalia baked a double-layered chocolate/strawberry cake from scratch and we had a good amount of salgadinhos (Brazilian finger foods that you eat at parties). My family has the horrible habit of always watching t.v. while they eat as a family, so to honor me they turned off the t.v. during my entire birthday party. Praise God!
Then I asked my whole family to come to the living room so we could have a prayer and worship meeting. I told them that I didn’t want any gifts from them, but I just wanted to have a prayer meeting with them. I shared a little bit from my heart telling my cousins, uncles, and aunts that we have a great inheritance of revival in our family and that they were being like Esau throwing away their inheritance in exchange for worldly pleasures.
We had a time of worship and then we prayed for about twenty minutes. Then I went around the room, laid hands on each one of my cousins while speaking in tongues, and God gave me a vision and prophetic word for each one of their lives. It was amazing and it was a totally a step of faith for me. But God was faithful to give me a vision for each one of them. As soon as I would lay my hand on them and speak in tongues the vision would come with the interpretation. It was awesome! Thank you Jesus! The prophetic is growing in my life.