Thank you so much for your prayers for my trip to northern Brazil with my Brazilian housemate/good friend Natasha! We both left PQQ March 9th and I arrived safely back at the school about a week later on the 15th after many traveling adventures. The trip started by leaving the mission school crowded into a small boat with about 20 other people, a large dog, and everyone’s luggage weighing the boat low into the water. We arrived in town without sinking the boat and there Natasha and I waited until our bus was scheduled to leave at 7 pm for an overnight drive to her home city of Boa Vista about 12 hours away. The bus was very nice, a large 2 story coach with about 40 passengers on the upper level and the bags and driver down below. We sat close to the front and had comfortable seats that reclined almost flat with leg/foot rests and plenty of room. The ride was smooth through the city, but when we reached the 2 lane “highway” connecting Manaus, where we started, to Boa Vista, our destination, things changed dramatically. The next 10-11 hours were spent constantly weaving around or through tremendously large potholes or maybe I should just say craters where the road was supposed to be. Thankfully it was dark, quiet, and cool on the bus so I was able to sleep most of the time, or I would have been car sick for sure. The bus stopped along the way for a restroom break and food, and at the stop a guy noticed that the two of us were speaking English so he wondered where we were from. When he found out I was from the USA he said “That’s amazing!” and bought us a can of Coke… kind of random. Another stop was at the beginning of a Native Indian reservation we needed to just drive through. Apparently the area is very restricted so the Federal Police boarded the bus and checked everyone’s passports before allowing us to go on. They didn’t check us leaving the reservation or on my return trip at all though, so I think it was another random event along the way. Eventually the bus arrived in Boa Vista and we were happy to find Natasha’s father waiting with his car to take us to their house. Natasha’s parents are Brazilian missionaries with New Tribes Mission. They live at the NTM mission house in the city of Boa Vista and work as support staff for missionaries living in surrounding native tribes. Their daughters Natasha and Sasha are both very sweet, live at home, and attend a local university. Natasha had decided to use her summer break (Dec - March) to study English and that’s why she was staying at the PQQ mission school with me, working in the dining hall and attending classes to help her speak English better, although she started out with a good knowledge of the language already. So in March when Natasha needed to go home to start her university classes again, she invited me to visit her family and see more of Brazil at the same time. Her family was very gracious and hospitable, going out of their way to make me feel comfortable, showing me around their city, and practicing their English too. Here are some highlights of my time with the Mafra family:
- Riding around the city of Boa Vista on the back of Natasha’s motorcycle, seeing the sights, going shopping, visiting her university, and eating ice-cream for the first time in 2 months :)
- Taking a mini trip with the whole family into Venezuela for the weekend to do shopping where gas and food prices are better, visit the Gran Sabana Reservation with incredible waterfalls and mountain scenery, and experience more of Brazil there and back
- Calculating gas prices between Brazil and Venezuela… get this, gas costs the equivalent of USD $6.00 a gallon in Brazil and USD $0.04 a gallon in Venezuela. No wonder there were huge lines of cars at gas stations just over the Venezuela border
- Attending a Brazilian church service with the family on Sunday: singing familiar praise songs in Portuguese, hearing some great missionary speakers (one was even in English:), and meeting many of Natasha’s friends there
- One of her church friends was a dentist just out of dental school who was working in a local group practice, and when I met him on Sunday, I was very curious to learn about Brazilian dental stuff. Dr. Pablo was super nice and let me come to see his dental office when he was working on Monday, and it was surprisingly similar the office where I work… some differences were in their tooth numbering system and uniforms, but nothing major
- For my last lunch with them, Natasha’s family made an amazing meal of churrasco- BBQ beef Brazilian style- and other great Brazilian food, which we ate outside on their porch overlooking a river that flows by the house
As you can see, I really enjoyed spending time with Natasha and getting to know her family in Boa Vista, so the saying goodbye and leaving part was hard, especially because I was nervous about traveling back to the mission school by myself. But thank the Lord, my trip back went very well, and although I miss Natasha a lot, and my house is very quiet now without her, we keep in touch through email and I hope that someday she can visit me in the USA.
