Here's what I sent to our kids in an email on Sunday, March 23
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Part 1 covered 2 months. This part will cover 4.
I packed my bags at the end of February and traveled by bus for another Brazilian state, Rio Grande do Sul, where I would live for the next year, first as a seminary student in São Leopoldo, and then as a pastoral intern in Rio Pardinho.
I knew where I would be housed at the seminary. The Lord had arranged for me, through human means, to have a room at the seminary with Sérgio Sauer, in an apartment with two other fast-talking, faith-filled, prayerful young men, Jairo C*** and Jorge S***. I took the bunk in Sérgio's room that would have been João B****'s, another young Brazilian man who was now in the states on his pastoral internship.
I had gotten to know João in late 1981 during my first semester at Wartburg Seminary. Getting to know João had been the second way that the Lord had pushed me into applying for this internship exchange program, an exchange between Wartburg and the "Faculdade de Teologia," the seminary of the IECLB. All four of them, João, Sérgio, Jairo, Jorge, had been impacted by an evangelical Lutheran movement called "Encontrão." They all remembered Toni's "Brisas de Paz" (Winds of Peace) team that toured Rio Grande do Sul in early 1981.
(Lock this into your memory. I'll be using these abbreviations going forward: The "IECLB" is the Brazilian Lutheran denomination that my North American Lutheran denomination was connected with. "The Faculdade" or "FacTheol," now known as the "Escola Superior de Teologia," was the seminary of the IECLB.)
The apartment I shared with Sérgio, Jairo, and Jorge, on the second or third floor of an unheated apartment building, was located at the bottom of the large hill ("Morro do Espelho") which was the home of the Faculdade and other institutions of the IECLB. The headquarters of the IECLB are in Porto Alegre, the capital city of the state, about a half hour drive, or an hour plus bus ride, from São Leopoldo.
I would walk up and down the hill at least twice a day. Up from the apartment to the seminary in the morning, down for the large meal of the day (which the other guys and I would take turns preparing), then back up for the afternoon, and down later on. I did that for four months, from March through June, except for during weekends when I was away. We always had prayer time together at that main meal.
On three different weekends I was invited to the other guys homes: to Sérgio's ecologically sensitive and efficient family farm near Ijuí, to Jorge's family's house in Santo Ângelo, which wasn't far from the fascinating ruins a 1700s Jesuit mission to the native Guaraní and to Jairo's home in a Novo Hamburgo apartment building (not far from São Leopoldo). I visited João's family in Novo Hamburgo too.
I was blessed by my time with those three young men and their friends. When I moved from the seminary to my rural internship site, I would often return to the São Leopoldo area, because that's where I felt most at home. I was welcomed with open arms by them and by Richard Wangen, an American missionary seminary professor, and his family.
All three of my apartment mates were connected with the "evangelical faction" of FacTheol students. When I use the word "faction" I don't mean that these guys were completely separate from other students who were more "traditional" or more focused on "social-political" issues. But these guys were all more personally expressive in their Christian faith than some others at the seminary and in the IECLB. I'd guess that those three factions were about equally represented at the seminary.
Both Jorge and Jairo became more-or-less traditional pastors in the IECLB. (Sérgio, and João, did other things after seminary.) And all of these young men had their eyes wide open (they were "woke"!) to the poverty and oppression that the Brazilian social and economic order reinforced. The question that divided the factions was what action should be taken to address personal and social "issues." More about this later.
I signed up for two classes and one seminar at FacTheol:
One, a class in pastoral care, was led by Richard Wangen. We learned strategies for ministry to individuals, visiting hospitals, a combination orphanage and old folks home (Asilo Pella Bethânia) and the Porto Alegre morgue. At the hospitals I had two shockingly different experiences. As I wrote in a "Newsletter" that I wrote to my home congregation in Crystal, one was poorly funded, with "cracking plaster and rooms averaging eight beds each. There "I stood looking into the eyes of a seven-month-old child who had almost starved to death and was yet in danger after six months of intensive care." The other hospital we visited was newer, cleaner, and, being privately funded, expensive. At that private hospital we observed surgeries, including "a face-lift — the sight of which I will never forget."
The second seminary class I signed up for (but didn't finish) was one where we were studying the book of Psalms in Hebrew and Portuguese! That class was super challenging. The professor was from Germany. He spoke Portuguese better than I did at the time but that wasn't saying much. I did appreciate the detailed look we took at different types (genres) of Psalms, from laments to praises, both of personal and communal types.
The seminar was a preparation for internship led by Lothar Hoch, who was concerned that I wasn't yet fluent enough in Portuguese to begin my internship. About midway through the semester, he connected me with someone who could tutor me, one on one. That "someone" was the teenage daughter of the president of another Lutheran denomination, which had its headquarters in São Leopoldo. I walked to their home for lessons at least twice a week (as I remember now). I remember walking down a main road. Walking like hundreds of others, going to or from work.
By March or April, the guys in the apartment weren't laughing at my lame Portuguese as much as when I arrived. I hadn't realized how much slang I still didn't know, and wasn't aware of the regional differences in the Portuguese language. The southern "Gauchos" used different words, including some that had been adopted from the native Guarani people. Little did I know that when I went out on internship in July, I'd be going to an agricultural area where the people spoke more German than Portuguese. More about that adjustment later.
I did meet and befriend students at the seminary beyond the "evangelicals." I especially got to know other students in the choir and in Dr. Wangen's pastoral care class. Alas, I haven't kept in touch with any of them, though I do remember a few names. I got to know João's former girlfriend, Doris N****, who was almost as outgoing as João. She and the guys in the apartment organized a birthday party for me in May. About 20 young men and women jammed into out little apartment for the festivities. Doris even wrote a humorous song for me, including a reference to Toni not knowing everything I did there. (There was no scandal. I promise.)
At seminary, I remember going to, and enjoying, one day seminary retreat near a small river where we could swim. I remember getting to know the daughter of an American missionary at the seminary, and her two German friends. I don't remember going to chapel services at the seminary, though I must have done that. I did make it to worship at the Lutheran church in town a couple times.
Through facebook I've connected with Jorge and Jairo, and now and then Sérgio. When we were last in Brazil as a family, I visited both of them. After our semester together as roommates, Sérgio went to the United States as the second Brazilian exchange student/intern. I don't remember where he served his internship but he was close enough, in the fall of 1984, to be one of my groomsmen when Toni and I were married. Both Sérgio and João spent time in my parents' home in south Minneapolis.
Going back to what was going on with me "officially," Lothar Hoch had a hard time finding a rural internship site for me. He stuck out twice, and then connected with Rui Bernhard, a pastor from the "traditional" faction of the IECLB. Once that internship site arrangement had been made, I went to Rio Pardinho for a visit with a group of seminarians, none of whom I knew well at all. I think those seminarians were a sort of musical "team," but they were not of the evangelical or "pietist" wing of FacTheol. The non-evangelicals called my friends "pietists," which was not, for them, a positive thing. I remember how crude that group of seminarians were as we traveled to and from Rio Pardinho. While there, I must have met Pastor Rui and the congregation there, but I don't remember anything about it except the experience riding in that little VW bus.
While still at the seminary, I visited a suburb of Porto Alegre which was similar, I wrote, "to a refugee camp," where seminary professors and students volunteer their time. I also wrote: "Two of the guys in my apartment work at organizing and evangelism in another area which is flooded several times every year by the nearby river."
In April I traveled to Brasília. It was a 40-hour trip, by bus and train. In my newsletter I wrote that this trip was "a marvelous opportunity to see the full extent of the southern part of this country. It is a large and varied land. There are mountains and plains, dry lands and wet. Most any grain, vegetable or fruit can be grown somewhere in Brazil." During the trip I met families bringing all their worldly possessions, heading for an urban area to seek steady work. In Brasília I attended a meeting of the Secretariat for Justice and Non-Violence, a group dominated by social-politically oriented Christians who were going beyond "teaching the hungry to fish" to "recognizing that the banks of the river are monopolized by the rich and powerful." On the last day of that conference, I decided to worship with the Lutheran church in Brasília and was treated to "a solid sermon" by a pastor whose work combined social and community work with preaching and sacraments.
In late May and June, winter closed in. My apartment mates and I were bundled in coats and hats, scarves and long-johns, trying to study when it was barely above 40°. All of us came down with bad colds. The value of the Brazilian currency was falling too. Inflation was running at 20% a month. I was a privileged "Norte Americano," however, and I had dollars. At the end of my time at seminary I made another trip, this time to the southernmost tip of Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state, just north of Uruguay. I saw the ocean for the first time, but it was far too cold to swim. While in that area I visited a family of North American missionaries that I had met in Campinas.
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That's part 2. Part 3 will focus on the 7 months I spent in Rio Pardinho. I'll need to cut this down for Storyworth!
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