Lost and Found

Your Aunt Michele first visited Brazil in 1985.  Uncle Byron and I had been dating for a year or so when he announced that he would be traveling to Brazil that summer to see his sister graduate from the school for missionary kids.  He asked if I would like to go along.  Somehow he convinced me that it would be a great trip.  I could meet his family and see Brazil.  He was also sizing me up to see if all my talk about wanting to be a missionary would hold up under the pressures of actually going to a mission field.  So off we went with strict orders from Grandma Beckner to NOT get married on a Brazilian beach somewhere.

We drove to Miami to catch our plan to Fortaleza.  It saved us a lot of money, and money was in short supply.  We made the trip in a little yellow Honda Civic with no air conditioning.  On the way down we stopped in Pine Mountain Valley, Georgia where we spent the night with friends of the Atha family, Owen and Grace Riley.

In Miami we were to leave the little Honda at a certain church and the pastor was to take us to the airport.  We had a really hard time finding the church, we got really lost.  But eventually we did locate the place, got something to eat, took baths after a long, hot car ride, and got dropped off at the airport.

When we arrived in Fortaleza, I remember thinking this was one crazy city as on the way to the Fortaleza Academy the taxi had to stop once for a donkey in the street and another time for a big cow.  But there we were and everything seemed so incredible.

As soon as we got out of the taxi, a student come running across a big soccer field towards us.  Byron thought, Oh, Boy!  Some old friend.  But the fellow started calling my name and ran up to hug me.  It was Walter Gordon!  My home church, Chamblissburg Baptist, supported Walter's family and we knew each other.  His family had just been in the States for furlough, too, so it hadn't that long since we had seen each other.  It made me feel very welcome and not so lost in the strange, new place.

One of the things that Byron arranged for us to do while in the area was to meet up with a missionary pilot to fly to an interior town in a small plane.  We were to go to a certain airstrip outside of Fortaleza where he would meet us.  All the plans were made and off we went on a big bus.  Byron told the bus driver where we wanted to get off and the driver said he would let us know when.  After an hour or so, he called us to come and get off.  To me, it seemed like the middle of nowhere.  It was at a crossroads.  The bus driver explained that we needed to walk a little bit on the road to the left and we would find the airstrip.

Ok, there we were in the middle of nowhere walking down a quiet road looking for an air field.  We walked and walked.  Finally we saw some other people and Uncle Byron asked if they knew where it was.  They pointed towards a dirt road off the "main" one we were on.  More walking.  But finally we saw a runway.  There was a caretaker in a small house near the runway who came out and talked to us.  He invited us to come and sit on the porch while we waited for our little airplane.  He seemed a little surprised and mentioned to Byron that he hadn't seen the missionary in a long time but that yes, sometimes he did land there.

And so we waited... and waited... and waited.  The set hour came and went and Uncle Byron wondered what we ought to do.  I suggested maybe we should call someone.  But this was way before cell phones and few Brazilians could afford a phone in their houses at that time.  And so we waited some more.  In the mean time I started feeling really sick.  The lady of the house made me some orange peel tea and gave me some crackers to eat.  And I found out what their bathroom looked like.  It was clean and had a toilet but no way to flush as there was no water tank.  To flush there was a big bucket of water that each one had to pour into the pot.  It worked and I got quite good at the process as we were there for many hours.

Finally the man asked if there was someone we would like to call.  Byron said that was a good idea and asked where he could go to use a phone.  The man said, Well, come on in!  And took him in the house and showed him their phone.  Seems their daughter worked for the phone company and had gotten them a phone for a gift.

To make my long story short, we were at the wrong airstrip and by then it was too late in the day for the missionary to come to where we were.  So the dear little couple walked we us back to the big road while we waited for another bus to take us back to Fortaleza.

Moral of the story:  Ask about a phone before you sit for many hours on someone's porch in the middle of nowhere. Ah, and don't underestimate the wisdom of a dumb American girlfriend.