BMS workers Mike and Daveen Wilson are involved in church work and rural development in the small community of Trapiá, north east Brazil – one of the poorest regions with one of the highest infant mortality rates.
Their major emphasis is on training people to carry on the work both in the church and through development projects.
Daveen gives us a glimpse of how God speaks to her through her afternoon walk:
My walk
Every afternoon, I try to walk our dog, Fluffy, for half an hour. Everything is still luxuriant from the rains, but signs of drought are appearing – the ruts in the road are rock hard, and the pinhão (jatropha) bushes are drying out.
I turn left and walk past my neighbour Enilde’s house, trying to control Fluffy – whose dearest wish is to fight their dogs.
We meet Vera and shy little Vanessa, riding her bike without training wheels for the first time – she looks so proud of herself. Vera used to play with our daughter, but got pregnant at 14 and had to move in with the lad and look after the house for him and his dad.
She stopped coming to church then, but has come back now, and Vanessa is in the Sunday school.
Houses
Then a couple of abandoned houses – the cursed rubble of the house where Ludimira’s old grandfather set fire to himself and Mike had to take the still groaning body to hospital.
Then the house we helped Nilcélia build with so much hope, only to have her go off with another man, abandoning all but her youngest child. Her oldest two have now moved back, and Jeú is even trying church again.
Just before Tontonho’s house, the sun is making sparkles along the edges of the row of carnaúba (copernicia cerifera) trees his father-in-law planted long before we came here. I can see the light of the telly through the open doorway of the scruffy mud house, and the huge antenna, like a ragamuffin with an Ascot hat on her head. The family used to all be gathered on the porch talking to each other – now they spend hours everyday in faithful homage to their new idol.
The last house, overshadowed by two magnificent algarroba (ceratonia siliqua) trees, belonged to Mãe Julia, who was sure Mike was her brother who’d moved to São Paulo years ago. She made her own dresses, complete with embroidered initials on the breast pocket, with only a razor blade and a needle and thread.
We follow the road round to the right, skirting the edge of the limestone pavement, whose water holes are the reason for the community being here. It stretches out a kilometre wide and about five long, acting like a huge sponge holding the rain water and slowly releasing it into the twenty or so holes throughout the dry times.
Curving round to the left now, we arrive at Pedrinho’s house. I explain to his mum about the invitations to our church’s fifth anniversary that I want him to post in town tomorrow, while an orphan kid sucks my legs and a puppy bounds round Fluffy, biting his ears.
Flowers
Across the road, the fields are covered in yellow flowers, like miniature sunflowers. I think there has been too much rain for people to weed their crops and they haven’t sprayed poison either, plus maybe our bees have helped.
Lilac morning glories have carpeted the ground, climbing up the abandoned maize plants, and spreading over rotting wood, like snow covering a multitude of sins, only more beautiful even than that.
The sky
On the way back, the sun has now coated the undersides of the soft silver strips of cloud with intense pink. It gets brighter and brighter and then spreads out further and fades until there is just one smudge left.
All along the horizon to the west, there is a strip of gold underneath the huge darkening sky. Paul’s friends cycle past, two or three to a bike, carrying a guitar. They’ve been playing football on the church pitch and are rushing to get home.
Juninho, especially, is getting very good with the guitar – Jason from Wales has been teaching him new techniques this morning.
A quarter of the way up in the east is the almost full moon – the poor man’s electricity, they say here. As with so much, I wonder if the rich really have it better – never seen a light bulb that splendid... and even with reflected light, it illuminates half the planet at a go.
Animals
The birds are sorting their roosts for the night – “téu! téu!” calls a curlew as it dives into a tree. Sparrows twitter loudly in a juazeiro (zizyphus ondulata); a swift swoops down towards Tontonho’s water hole.
The pastor over at the Assembly of God sings sadly over the loudspeaker system. The air is so still, I can hear some children shrieking on the other side of the limestone pavement. Dorivan bikes towards us, singing in his rich voice, carrying milk from his dad’s cow – the same one our milk comes from every morning.
Some cattle amble across the road. Antonio Raimundo cycles past – I ask if Preá is better – Cláudio had to drive her to hospital on Saturday, as she was losing a lot of blood from her yearly pregnancy – number fourteen now. Four donkeys stand and stare at us, their ears erect and their noses white in the moonlit dusk.
Wonderful God
I feel I’m part of a community. I’ve felt rough all day, plagued by asthma that won’t let me sleep, but on this walk I’ve seen the marks of God’s creative work, in creation and in our community, and I am grateful.