Our Trip to Brazil: A Reflection

I have worked for Maryknoll Lay Missioners for over 23 years. Almost from the beginning I have wanted to go see the missioners where they worked, but I couldn't afford to go.

Personally, however, it remained very important to me, more so as the years went on. So now, on the verge of retirement,  I can finally afford to go. I planned for months, and I talked about it with my close friend Marci. She said, "This is more important to you then the Camino, isn't it?"

 

I knew she was right. The Camino had been a powerful experience, but it was up to me to derive the meaning from it. There was no direct connection to my life. This pilgrimage, to Brazil, was deeply personal. I came to MKLM to do meaningful work that would make the world in some small way a better place. My job was part of that, but indirectly. I would meet the missioners and hear stories about their work, but I longed for direct exposure. Now I would finally make the journey with Mary by my side to see what all my efforts had been supporting. Was I helping to make the world a better place?

 

We spent about 9 days in Brazil from October 14th to October 22nd, and the whole time I felt like I was in Heaven. As I reflect on those days, the thing that strikes me the most was the kindness and generosity of the missioners who basically took care of us while we were with them. They welcomed us into their world and helped us see what they were doing there.

It is very difficult to find people in Brazil that speak English. I thought that people who worked at hotels and restaurants would speak English. This was true to some extent in Rio, but not in Sao Paulo, Joao Passoa or Olinda. The few who spoke English didn't speak it very well. It led to some comical situations. I called the front desk to say there was a problem with the television. The clerk asked, "Do you want two?"  That puzzled me, two televisions? When help arrived, it was an employee carrying two towels. Fortunately, he knew how to fix the television.

The missioners were always going above and beyond in helping us with the language hurdle. When we first arrived in Sao Paulo, Joanne spoke to the clerk about checking us in early. She resisted, as the lobby was filled with people waiting to get into their rooms (it was a holiday weekend). Joanne pointed out Mary and told the clerk that Mary wasn’t feeling well and really needed to lie down (Mary was actually just tired from the 9 hour flight). The clerk checked us in, and the manager cut the early check-in fee in half.

After spending the day with Margarita at the favela where she worked, she took us to our hotel, and then she came in to speak to the desk clerk because we were having problems with our Wifi (critical in keeping contact with the missioners). When they told us we would have to move to another floor, Margarita came up to our room and helped us pack and move our belongings to the 12^th floor. When she left, she asked us if we needed anything else or if she could do anything else for us (the standard parting from all the missioners in Sao Paulo).

We kept Kathy busy in Joao Pessoa with arranging our day trips for us (not that we asked her to). We wanted to go to Olinda (a very scenic town overlooking the Atlantic Ocean), which was a two-hour drive from Joao Pessoa. She contacted Franciso at our hotel to find us a driver. He found one, but once the driver found out we didn’t speak Portuguese he refused to take us. More phone calls and bargaining from Kathy.

Eventually, Francisco, who had the day off, drove us back and forth for a six hour day trip. We all had lunch together at a restaurant Kathy had chosen, which had an incredible dish featuring fish in a cream sauce baked in a pumpkin. We ate the pumpkin as well as the fish, and we needed three people to finish the dish. Franciso also drove us to the Mirante Skybeach to see the sunset from the tallest building in Joao Pessoa, again thanks to Kathy’s work.

And it wasn’t just the missioners who treated us with the utmost kindness and generosity. A small woman with glasses was our waitress at the daily breakfast buffet at the hotel in Joao Pessoa. We would fill up our plates at the buffet, and as long as we were seated she would come by with other plates of food for us to try. With the help of my Google translator, I told her that everything was delicious, and her face lit up as she pulled me by the arm over to the omelet chef to let her know what I had said. The next two days she would rush over whenever she saw us and continue to bring us plates of food. When we left after our last breakfast, I wrote her a message on my translator: “Today is our last day. We just wanted to thank you for your kindness to us. You brought joy to us each morning. Richard & Mary.” She grabbed my phone and wrote the following: “I call myself Andrea. You two guys have been a prayer to me.” The translation could have been better, but we got the message. She shook my hand and Mary gave her a big hug.

There are more stories I could tell, so many kind and loving gestures from the missioners and others we met. I believe God has called on us to love each other and help each other.

 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor? … The one who had mercy on him.” Luke 10: 36, 37

That’s what I received through this trip, a feeling of being loved and that there were people looking after us. If we all treated each other this way, what a wonderful community we would be.  

 

We Are Called

“We are called to love tenderly.

We are called to serve one another, to walk humbly with God.”—We Are Called, hymn by David Haas.

 My view of mission was initially shaped by stories of missionaries such as William Duncan and Marcus Whitman: The white man carrying his Bible into the wilderness, bringing salvation through the Word of God. I was very cynical about this type of mission.

Since I have worked for the Maryknoll Lay Missioners (MKLM), my view of mission has improved considerably.  The organization sends Catholic lay people—single adults, couples, and families with young children—to serve in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each year, MKLM missioners who have finished their first three-and-a-half-year contract return to our headquarters to reflect on their experiences before either renewing their contract or leaving MKLM.

For me, the best part of this process is hearing their stories of mission.  One missioner, Kim Fischer, who is serving in Brazil with her husband and three children, spoke about how they struggled to find mission work that really fit with their skills and abilities and was meaningful.  A Maryknoll priest in Brazil told her that it was not so important what they did in mission, but rather how they acted in all areas of their life: both there in their mission work and in their private life.  The example they are to others, the relationships they build with the people they serve; that is what really matters in mission work. Kim felt this advice had a profound impact on her, and it has helped direct her mission life.

Another member of this class, Richard Ross, who served in Tanzania, said he was frustrated in his attempts to learn the Kiswahili language.  He shared his feelings with another missioner, Erik Cambier, who had served in Tanzania years before.  Erik told him that he still could make an effective contribution in mission even if he never became fluent in Kiswahili. He said, “You possess the most powerful language of them all. You have the language of love, and that, my friend, overrides everything else.”

Richard spent his entire mission at one location: The Lubango Center in Nyashana. His job title was Maryknoll Lay Missioner Advisor, and he shared his job description with me. He had a lot of duties—but perhaps his two most important duties were to welcome students to the Center and to be a “blessing” for those who came to the Center.  He told us he joined MKLM because he wanted to spend as much time as possible playing with children. This did not seem like much of a mission, but he showed a video of his farewell from the Center. The children lifted him up and carried him like a baseball player who has hit the winning home run.

I asked Erik why he felt Richard had such an impact, and he explained that in Tanzanian culture, childcare is seen as strictly women’s work.  Men have little or nothing to do with their children after they’re born. Richard treated the children of the Center with love and attention, which made Richard a very special man indeed. Perhaps his example will affect the behavior of the male children he worked with when they grow older. Spreading God’s love is what mission is all about.

Janice Fuquay, a missioner I have known for many years, tells a story I find particularly memorable.  She is a veterinarian, and she worked with men and women in the border region of Peru and Bolivia. They were raising llamas and alpacas to supplement their incomes. She would hold regular gatherings where they would share their experiences and give each other advice on how to deal with problems that arose. Janice spoke of how eager she was to read their evaluations at the end of the sessions, looking forward to finding out how successful they were at raising the animals and how much more money they made. What she found, instead, were testimonies about how much better they felt about themselves as persons.  One woman spoke of how her husband had grown to value her opinions and was proud of her accomplishments.  Another man wrote of how people turned to him for the first time as a source of knowledge and wisdom. “Of course,” Janice thought, “That’s what it was all about! It’s not about raising more llamas and alpacas; it’s about making them feel better about themselves and each other.” Janice showed them that they were people who had knowledge and abilities to share. How she behaved toward them would have greater long-term impact on their lives than their success or failure at animal husbandry.

The Book of Common Prayer in the General Thanksgiving, spoken at Morning and Evening Prayer, includes the following, “We pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to your service. . .” Some missioners I know are doctors, lawyers, and engineers who provide desperately needed health care, who help with uncaring justice systems, and who build wells to bring fresh water. Yet Christ calls all of us to mission, no matter what talents we possess. You can’t always change people’s lives, but what you can do is be present with them, share God’s love and accompany them on their journey. That is mission, too.

Originally published in the Episcopal New Yorker.