Our wilderness--

On New Year’s Eve, we were invited by friends to the first farm where we first experienced Brazil. As we drove up the long overgrown driveway with tall trees on either side, we saw the small houses that had long been abandoned. The farm was in Guedes, our first wilderness experience in Brazil that would make or break us. When we arrived at the top of the first hill, we saw a table filled with blood, they were butchering a cow! Our friend, the caretaker of the farm waved a greeting to us, and we saw that they had many family members with them there to celebrate the day. We went further up the drive to the house where we first lived. It was a primitive house with no glass windows, nor floor, where we had found a poisonous snake, our first year. Even though it was the most difficult, painful time of our lives, we knew that God had called us to stay in Brazil. While we lived on this abandoned farm away from civilization, we found something precious. It was a friendship with the couple who were caretakers there who to this day remain friends. They were as poor as could be, and lived a simple life, but held such joy in their hearts not found in material things. The love of Christ flowed from this couple to the four of us, at a time when we didn’t understand any Portuguese, and didn’t know the ways of the culture. They are devoted to Christ in small and faithful ways that made a big impact. After we went home that new year’s day, we all four of us felt such a gratefulness for what we have now, and what we had learned during those difficult first years, our wilderness time.