Cactus Flower

Uncle Byron is not at home this week because he is at a conference for missionaries near his old stomping grounds in the state of Pará.  I know that you boys have met Granny Atha and know that she had been a missionary once with Granddad Atha, but you probably have never heard that much about Uncle Byron's time in Brazil as a boy.  He could tell you all about his pet sloth that was so slow that never had to worry about it running away.  They just put it in a tree in the middle of the back yard every night.  Each day it would make for the back wall of their property, but never made it very close.   He could tell you about some of their pet monkeys and the one time he carried a little monkey in his arms on a 24 hour long bus ride from Pará back to the missionary boarding school.   He could tell all about the neighbor who had pigs that would all roll over whenever the man walked by.  He had them all trained to roll over and get their bellies rubbed....

When Uncle Byron, Greyson and I went down to the capital of our state, Salvador, to pick up William and Kerri from the airport, we got to eat at a Burger King.  We were really happy to get to go. Few restaurants here have free drink refills.  Burger King does!  And of course, there are Whoppers! Finding American food in a foreign country can be a difficult task for missionary families.  In our house we don't really eat all American food but we don't eat beans and rice everyday either.  We eat some of both and some things are crazy inventions based on what ingredients we can find. So, going to a real "American" restaurant from time to time is fun.  One time when we lived in Fortaleza, I heard about the grand opening of the very first McDonald's there.  There was an article on the evening news about the big event.  My understanding of what was said in Portuguese was that it was a "Grand Opening."  In the States, when someone talks about a "Gran...

tribunadoceara.uol.com.br         Years ago when your Uncle Byron and I first came to Brazil, we started working with a small church whose missionary pastor had gone to the States for furlough.  We didn't have a house of own or even a car.  We rented a small apartment near the MK school where we both taught some classes and rode the bus or walked wherever we needed to go.  That included going to church.   The church wasn't real far away and the bus we had to take went right near our apartment and let us off very close to the church.  Then it continued on its way around the city.  It was called the Grande Circular I.  That means Big Circular.  It was called that because it made a circle around the whole city.  Now Fortaleza is a very big city.  Currently it has a population close to three million people.  I always felt like I had only seen a little part of that big city - the American school, the beach and th...

Some people "hit and run," that's an accident with a car where someone hits another vehicle or pedestrian and then leaves the scene.  Once Aunt Michele did a "hit and wait."  When we still lived in Fortaleza, I did my best to avoid driving in rush hour traffic and especially tried to not go into the downtown area.  Fortaleza is a large city of close to two million people.  If I was going to go shopping by myself downtown or to the doctor, it was better to just go by bus.  I would often take all three of the boys from our house to the MK school by bus.  We would take one bus out of our neighborhood to a big terminal and then catch a bus to another big terminal.  From there we would have to catch one more neighborhood bus to get to the school.  Usually the boys were very good and even enjoyed the rides. When William was about 5 and Dalton was around 3 and Greyson was just a wee little thing, one of the little boys at our church got very sick.  ...

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 ...

Today's story is about a little boy and some little "untruths," otherwise known as lies.  When a certain one of our three boys was a wee little thing, I decided that I didn't want a house full of cave drawings with crayon and markers like I had seen in friend's homes where small children lived and reigned freely.  So, I was very careful to supervise all coloring book activities and kept the crayons and other marking devices like pens put away when not in use. Uncle Byron and I were living in a rented house in the neighborhood of Fortaleza where we were working with a small church congregation.  Prior to this house we had lived in a different house for every year of our first term in Brazil.  Each of the other three places had belonged to missionaries on furlough and had furniture. (One even had a dog! Remember I wrote about the dog that ate poison a while back.) This time we moved into an empty house and had to scrounge around rather quickly to get some furniture....