6 AUGUST 1999

It has been a summer of long delays for obtaining approvals necessary (with the Mozambican government and others) to make a shipment from Brazil. A week ago approval finally came. Now I am less than 30 minutes from arriving in Rio.

As always in these times of traveling alone, to do things with which I am less familiar, and with strangers, I feel uncertain. I re-read the poem by Edgar A. Guest: "Can’t" to strengthen my resolve and courage. And I pray that with God’s help, all will be well.

Now, at the end of the day, I write my evaluation. It was a mix of good and bad as most days are. I met Dona Pedentrina at the appointed time and it was a good reunion. We were both glad to see each other again. She is my hostess and so far the mainstay of our project here in Brazil. We arrived in Petropolis and, after lunch, went downtown to see the cache of books. But first, she took me to meet the Padre who runs one of the local radio stations. He wasn’t there. However, a radio announcer was. She liked the story of what we were doing and immediately put me and Pedentrina on the air in an extemporaneous 30 minute interview. We discussed our organization and project on the local radio at 3 p.m.

Then I finally went to the church where the books are stored. I have still not come to grips with what I found. On the good side, it seems much better organized than I expected. Books are counted and categorized as I requested, everything written on the boxes. But, there is no way that these boxes amount to 20,000 books. Rather, there are at most 5,000. I won’t know for sure until tomorrow because the janitor was eager to close up and go home.

While this would be enough to meet all of our commitments it means also that I have paid far too much for this shipment. We will not fill a container as I represented.

I am quite disappointed, and struggling to understand, why Pedentrina could not have sent me a list of types as I requested along with the numbers? How could she be so far off? I am not angry. But I don’t understand. Dona Pedentrina is honest, and she is intelligent. But this just doesn’t make sense. Even today on the radio she represented us to have 20,000 books.

What to do now? Can we recoup part of our over-investment in this shipment, which is the minimum flat rate for a container? This is just another shaft in the whirlwind of opposition. What to do? Oh well, I had better sleep on it.

One more thing, I was able to meet many of the principles in our collection project today. It appears that most are willing to continue this campaign in the coming year. (More good news.)

Tonight I went to an amateur theater and saw mainly bad performers and a few good ones. A very full day. I am dead tired. Have not slept well for a long time.

 

7 AUGUST 1999

Once again I am having some difficulty in converting from Portuguese to English. I find that I am naturally thinking in Portuguese and it is necessary to translate my thoughts into English in order to write this. I went through this same experience last year. It takes a couple of days to accustom myself. Hopefully by tomorrow, I will be able to switch more easily from one language to the other without so much difficulty. I met several missionaries today. Most were Americans. I was surprised that no one, except the Brazilians wanted to speak English.

We were successful today in getting into the church. It took three of us six hours (from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.) to count the boxes, verify the number of books in the boxes, reconstruct the boxes needing it, and put the books back in the storage room. Also, each box received a specific number. There were 125 boxes in all, containing a total of 8,458 books. While this is about 3,458 more than I thought last night, it is still a far cry from the promised 20,000.

What happened? I may never be sure. Pedentrina has said that many people, both of our church and from outside have had access to the books and more that ½ the 20,000 were stolen. This was partially verified today by other people, not involved in the project. One person said she saw some people enter the storage room and take some of the books, even though they were not especially needy. However, I doubt that this is a complete explanation. It would take either a lot a people or a lot of work to remove that many books. (Eventually the books were moved to a room with a lock and the thefts were stopped.) I think the main problem was that an exact count was not kept as the year and the donations progressed.

On a more positive note, I am confident that much of what we have will be very desirable to the schools that receive them. Of course, there are some that perhaps should be thrown away rather than sent, because they are in poor condition. The vast majority that I personally examined were in fair to excellent condition. Most are school books of the primary grade - Portuguese, English, History, Geography, Mathematics, Science, some boxes of children’s literature, encyclopedias and dictionaries. Counting the 250 or so books that we are sending from the U.S., we are sending a total of 8,700+ books. That will be 8,000 more books than last year. This is progress, nevertheless, the fact remains that because of this inaccuracy, this shipment is costing far too much. We must do better.

Later this afternoon, I visited with Sister Regina Bostos. I was instrumental in baptizing her into the church. She is having some difficulties now because of her husband’s infidelity. Her heart is broken. Pedentrina and I are doing our best to give her comfort. I returned home tonight and finished the count started today. Also, I planned the coming week with Pedentrina, and made treats for my host family.

I am very thankful for all that Pedentrina has done. She is the keystone of our program right now; but she is weak and needs much more help. I am also thankful to Valeria Felis Martins. She has also done very much. One of the things that I need to do is find someone who can take the torch from Pedentrina’s hands, and move the work forward. Pedentrina is old and tired, not in the best of health. We need to train someone to take her place when she is no longer able to carry out this work.

One of the missionaries that helped us today is Elder da Cruz, the Zone leader. He gave me his complete name, address and phone number and asked if he could do a project like this in Curitiba when he returned home. He sounds enthusiastic and very sincere. I hope we may get together and join forces. We will see.

But one thing I have learned (or re-learned) this last year is the tendency that many people have in making commitments and then not fulfill them. Many people made promises to help us last year both in the U.S. and in Brazil. But only a few have come close to doing all that they have promised. I am learning again to discount all commitments that people make. Many people become exalted in the joy of planning to do something wonderful for the welfare of others and in having adventure/excitement all at the same time. But then when the road becomes tough and tedious, and the sun gets hot, many wonderful commitments fall by the wayside. It takes a wonderful, special kind of person, to keep commitments, even as difficulties arise, even when nobody seems to take notice.

8 AUGUST 1999

According to popular rumor that I started hearing from various sources since arriving here, the world is suppose to come to an end, this coming Wednesday, the 11^th day of August. (I had better get my books sent off before this happens.) I don’t know the source of the prophecy. Some have said it’s the Baptists; others say it’s Nostra Damas. An interesting rumor. News of this is on TV and in the papers.

I spent today resting by attending church all day. This was a very full and satisfying day. The Brazilians sing with only one level of volume-at maximum triple fortissimo. No one sings with more spirit than these wonderful people.

9 AUGUST 1999

On this date, we finalized our arrangements for the pick up of the shipment on Wednesday from the church, beginning with the inspection at 9 a.m. I also faxed the packing list as requested to the shipping company. I may send a hand drawn map as well if need be. I will find out tomorrow.

The visits today included: (1) a school in Val Paraiso supported by the Pentecostal Church, a Pentecostal church member, by the name of Marlene, who Pedentrina knows will follow up with her minister’s commitments from last year; "The Third Age" (an old folks group in Petropolis); Jorge Estrella (a law professor at the Catholic University); Mr. Luame Benin and Lamar Rela Adumar ( who are both connected with the socialist group, Pan African Congress).

This evening I attended the local meeting of "O Partido Trabalhador" (The Worker’s Party, another socialist group whose emblem is a red star.) The State of Rio is represented, in part, at the federal level, by Senator Geraldo Candido. He is a member of this worker’s party. I met him tonight and attended a meeting in which he spoke. I attended this meeting specifically to meet Mr. Benin of the Pan African Congress. We conversed briefly about our projects. At first, he sounded very interested in helping our efforts and offered to help. But then he backed away from making commitments. I don’t think I accomplished much by attending that meeting. Also, I was a little uncomfortable. Most of the talk was about local government issues and was pretty uninteresting stuff, and seemed pretty harmless. However, on the walls were red stars, pictures of people making the clenched fist salute and slogans like "If the government doesn’t help us solve our problems, we will cause problems for the government."

We have much more on the list of things to do. Tomorrow promises to be another full day. Before going out today, I prayed extensively that God would lead me by the hand and show me what I need to do. I have the impression that if I continue to do my part, God will make up for my lack of ability and we will succeed together in the end. Today, I finished the Epistle to the Galatians. In the last chapter, verse 9, is this passage: "And let us not be weary of well-doing; for in due season, we shall reap, if we faint not." Very applicable I think.

10 AUGUST 1999

This was a very slow and discouraging day. We accomplished very few of the things that I thought were needful. I took extra precautions to insure that both inspector and shipper will find the Church tomorrow morning. (We decided that this had to occur tomorrow instead of today because of the Feira downtown which completely blocks access to the Church from the street.) Much time had to be spent, understandably I hope, in accommodating Pedentrina’s outside agenda. Although this is all understandable, predictably necessary and inevitable, it was very frustrating just the same.

After arriving home at the end of a long, long day, the phone rings. It is Valeria. She says she has 3,000 more books in 20 more boxes. (That many books would require at least 40 boxes but that’s another matter.) She says they came from the College of Rue Barbosa, and they are all ready, counted, boxed, everything. All we need is to transport them to the church. What am I suppose to do? I have no idea how to get them moved in so short of notice. I begin to thank her and say, however, that this may have to wait and be part of our shipment for next year. But Pedentrina stops me, comes to my rescue and says leave it to me. I will get the truck.

I still have grave doubts that this is going to work with such short notice. I don’t know how we will get these extra items ready on so short notice, and I must not compromise the process for the sake of these late-comers. But let’s see what happens. With the world coming to an end tomorrow, according to Nostra Damas, it can’t hurt. Well, maybe it’s been a pretty good day after all.

11 AUGUST 1999

I was close. There were 3500 more books in 42 boxes. I arose early and left early for the church where the books are stored. I arrived an hour early and the inspector arrived 45 minutes late. In between, another truck arrived with the 42 boxes and two missionaries. I still don’t know how Pedentrina arranged this transport or how Valeria was able to get these books, organize and box them in so short a time.

So we did not get the 20,000 books that were represented. But, by our best count, we loaded 11,800+ books into that container, in 167 boxes. The inspection agency approved the shipment and sealed the container. The books are on their way to Africa. The container was about 1/3 full. But the books are on their way. We didn’t do much else today because Pedentrina, on her own, decided to fix a big meal for the movers and the missionaries at the church. We spent most of the afternoon cleaning up. (Missionaries were at the church for their preparation day.) Also, we received 5 more boxes of magazines, today, too late for this shipment this year. It will have to wait until next year. But the shipment is on its way. And 11,8000 is much better than my gloomy expectation last Friday of only 5,000.

I am inspired by the faithfulness and diligence of those who are helping me. I will always be grateful. Following my disappointment of last Friday, I was tempted to give way to despair. However, God has buoyed me up and given me hope. Certainly the passage of scripture, found in my reading two days ago, helped also:

And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. – Galatians: 6:9

12 AUGUST 1999

On this date, we gave our thanks to the four principal schools involved in our efforts to gather books. We visited each school, gave cards to each director expressing our sincere thanks, and requested renewed efforts for the coming year. I am hopeful that next year will be even better than this one has been. We know of specific schools that will participate. Also, our members and collaborators in Petropolis know much better than they did before what has to happen in order for things to work out smoothly.

For example: We needed a better count, and we needed to know more specifically what the shipment contains. When the inspector came, he opened three boxes to see if the contents corresponded with the number of books stated on the packing list. We almost failed the test because in the case of one box, there were fewer books than what was stated. Only 127 books out of the 140 books listed were actually in the box. Why was there such a miscount? I don’t know? But I think that Valeria, (a woman who we are beginning to rely on more in this project) was so embarrassed, that I don’t think we will have this problem again - not in Petropolis.

And that’s another thing that is very encouraging. We have Valeria, and she is competent and has a wonderful desire to advance this project. We may have similar opportunity in one other gentleman who wants to open a similar project in his home town of Curitiba, Parana. We also have at our disposal to haul books, a truck and a man, Joao Paulo, from the Prefeitura (City Hall) Programma Socias (Dept. Of Social Programs).

Today was also a little tedious. We executed a power of attorney to the shipping company to enable them to process the shipment out of port and to see to the payment of export duties. (We don’t have such a tax in the U.S. because they are specifically forbidden in the Federal Constitution.) I hope we did it correctly. We don’t need any more delays.

 

 

13 AUGUST 1999

Today we are in Sao Paulo to attend to personal needs and to meet other people who may be in a position to assist our project.

We arrived by 6:30 this morning and spent a peaceful day. We were able to talk to many people about our project in Africa, including the Area President, Kent B. Jolley and his counselor, Pres. Athos Amorim. I believe a fair assessment of our meeting would be to say that the area president was genial. However, President Amorim was quite enthusiastic, offered to help, gave me his card and invited me to write him more about this. He is a retired general in the Brazilian Army and has many friends.

We return to Petropolis tomorrow. Then for the rest of the weekend I will attend church as much as I can, to meet and get to know more people, and to thank our friends who have helped so much.

14 August 1999

I spent the day mostly traveling from Sao Paulo to Rio, then to Petropolis. As I was leaving the bus station in Petropolis, a man had just fallen down (drunk I think), had cut his head on the concrete and was bleeding profusely. He seemed nearly unconscious. People were trying to stand him up and didn’t seem to know what they were doing. I thought to myself, "Pete, you’re an Eagle Scout. Take charge of the situation and see to it that this man gets the help that he needs." With the help of some bystanders, we got him to a bench and sat him down. (He wouldn’t lay down.) He seemed to have a concussion. I took his pulse and found it strong and normal. He was also breathing normally. I wiped away the excess blood from his wound with a clean handkerchief. The bleeding had mostly stopped, and the police who were overlooking the situation, had called the ambulance. At that point I left the scene.

This evening, I am attending a Music Festival at Luana’s high school - Rue Barbosa- a major contributor of books to our organization. I’m having some fun with it. A girl group is singing now. A samba school just finished up and it was pretty good. One young man keeps coming over to me periodically to ask me questions in English.

I find it is impossible for me to melt into the population. Nobody mistakes me for a Brazilian. I stand out like a sore thumb. I just had a very friendly greeting by a drunk. He was just shown the door by one of the chaperones.

15 August 1999

We attended meetings of my church today. We also circulated the news among church members who are involved in this endeavor (Wings of the Dawn)about a meeting that we will have on Tuesday, August 17 at 1 p.m. Several have promised to come and help us plan the campaign for the coming year. We can only hope for a good turnout. Afterwards, Pedentrina’s grandchild, Gisele, and Alex her husband and Lucas, their son were there to take us to Sao Jose do Vale do Rio Preto, a two hour journey by car. After arriving, we had a wonderful reunion, visiting until late into the night, discussing everything from our project, to families, religion, politics, the English language, aspirations to possible immigration to the United States.

16 AUGUST 1999

This is the best part. I am enjoying a good rest here in Sao Jose with this family. We have exchanged small gifts and they seem to genuinely enjoy my company. The sky is so blue, the air is so cold and clean. The house is open to the outside without completely enclosed glass windows. The dining room simply has an iron grill. My bedroom has shutters but has glass windows. The house is drafty, and since it is winter, I was cold last night, shivering until I climbed into bed with 4 blankets!

But it is certainly pleasant here in the daytime. Nobody has central heating or air conditioning, or even a hot water heater. There are so many different kinds of fruit here. It seems to be almost impossible that anyone can starve. Fruit trees are everywhere bearing bananas, jack fruit, avocado, yellow plums, papaya, and passion fruit. I was introduced to a new one today, jabuticaba. It looks like a black grape or olive, which grows right off the trunk or branch of a tree. I took a picture of this tree with its fruit.

Today, I am resolving what I hope is a minor discrepancy with the documentation of our shipment by telephone, fax and mail.

17 AUGUST 1999

After sending out the fax and mailing the materials requested by the freight forwarder, I concluded my day yesterday by visiting friends and family of my hosts, Alex and Gisele Scherer. (Gisele is Pedentrina’s grand daughter and Odilie’s daughter. She is the same age as my daughter, Mindy.)

Today, before taking my leave of Sao Jose, Odilie showed me around. He showed me his farm, his friends farm, a house he was building for a smuggler/money launderer (nice place too) and a new coffee plantation on the top of the highest mountain in the area-beautiful view, over 1600 meters in altitude. It was a fast tour. I told both him and Gisele, "Now that you have showed me Sao Jose do Vale do Rio Preto, I am in your debt. I am obligated to show you Washington, D.C." They both laughed. But I think there is a great chance it will happen someday. I love that family. I want to spend more time with them.

The last thing I did before returning to Rio to board this plane was hold a meeting with our Petropolis Chapter. All four of our principles were present: Joao Paulo, Barbara Xavier, Valeria Martins and Pedentrina Fernandes. (Valeria, was the only person invited last Sunday who showed for the meeting.) We discussed all that has happened to us both here in Brazil and in the U.S., what we had accomplished, what went wrong, what went right, how we can improve and what our goal should be for the coming season. I came away from that meeting with the satisfaction of knowing that we have a small corps of people who are very happy with what they have accomplished, and who want this work to grow and succeed well.

 

 

18 AUGUST 1999

Today, I am happy because I will be home again with my wife and family. We will celebrate daughter Amanda’s eighth birthday tonight (a day early) and we will be seeing Jacob off to college at Ricks. This will be a very busy day for everyone, especially the mother.

But now, I have this long lay-over in Miami. For a few minutes I want to write an evaluation of this trip to Brazil.

There is no question that this trip was necessary both to see to the petty, technical arrangements for shipping of books, enhancing of public awareness and relations, and for instigating more collections and setting higher, yet realistic, goals with our members and collaborators in Brazil. In addition, it was necessary to teach them about the problems we encountered, and the lessons we have learned in avoiding them.

In our meeting yesterday, we discussed several problems. Everyone knows that we must do better in counting and categorizing the books gathered in, and sending accurate information. Besides Pedentrina, we have one very devoted member, Valeria Martins who is also very competent, and who has had and continues to have the time and energy to help us with these details. She is also well connected with the youth of our church in this area and can enlist them to assist her when necessary.

Next, the storage place was less than ideal. It was a class room in a Mormon Church Building which shared space with janitorial supplies. The limitation of space, together with the lack of an accurate count, discouraged making further collections before we had collected even half of the original goal of 20,000 books. Pedentrina has made the solution of this problem her top priority.

Next, we must have a packing list with corresponding numbered boxes along with a break down by category of all the books we gather in sufficient detail to satisfy the government’s of Brazil and Mozambique, to give advance information to our clients, and to our members and contributors. This will also be helpful later for distribution once the books arrive in Mozambique. Again, I am confident that Valeria will stay on top of this.

Next, we need more people to help and more prospects for future projects in Brazil. The members in Petropolis are committed to recruiting more help. Also, we have several excellent prospects for help in other cities - Athos Amorim in Sao Paulo, and Elder de Cruz in Curitiba.

Finally, we need to gather more books. The container has a capacity to carry more than 32,000 books in 500 boxes. It would cost us the same full or empty; and in the case of this shipment of 11,865 books in 167 boxes, it was just a little over 1/3 full. So I asked the question, "What should be the goal of the Petropolis Chapter for 1999/2000?" I was determined to let them set their own goal this time, rather than set the goal for them as I did last year. I would accept their decision even if they set a goal for as little as 10,000 books. After some discussion, the consensus of the group was that they would gather 30,000 books. I asked how they would do this? They noted that there were 127 schools in Petropolis. They would visit them all if necessary and other institutions as well. But considering the fact that the bulk of these books came from only three schools, everyone thought that this goal of 30,000 was well within reach. Also emphasized was the need for books of more variety-novels, etc. Not just school books.

As I did last year, I emphasized with them the need to meet often, at least monthly to report on what had been done by them since the last meeting, regroup, make assignments, and keep everyone working together. The chapter agreed that they would meet on the last Tuesday of each month in the afternoon or evening. The next meeting was set for Sept. 28.

I closed the meeting by sharing with this one little group of corps members the passage I found the other day in Galatians 6:9. We should not be weary in well-doing. If we do not faint, we will succeed to a bountiful harvest. Yes, I was disappointed we did not get 20,000 books. But we have succeeded in gathering and shipping 11,865. This is not a small number. It is actually more than enough still to fulfill all of our promises heretofore made in Mozambique.

When we first began this project, we didn’t have any idea really of what we were capable of doing. But we decided this was worth the effort. Even if we succeeded in bringing a few things to these people in great need, we would still be blessing their lives with more than what they already have. Our hopes and expectations are, I believe more than satisfied. We will grow and get better.