Bar-Mitzvah In Brazil?

What it morning it was experiencing Jewish Culture here in Belem. One of Caleb's friends that attends his school is Jewish, and he celebrated his Bar Mitzvah this past weekend. He invited most of his friends from school to attend which included a grand reception afterwards.

The Jewish Synagog was tucked away on a little side street in the center of town. It had a nice size auditorium with two floors. The men congregated on the lower floor where the service was held while the women sat upstairs and observered it all from a bird's-eye view.

The two hour service was held in the Hebrew language which for my ten year old son, Josiah, it was a little too long to sit though. The most exciting part for him is when the ladies upstairs showered down candy at the boy reading the scrolls for the first time. They through down hand fulls of hard candy creating a rain fall of sweets.

Ellen asked one of the ladies why they threw the candy. She responded it was to remind them that the Word of God was sweet and it was sweet for them to hear. It was in enjoyable time ending with a large recepiton with a mix of traditional Jewish and modern rock music.

Wayne Patton - In Brazil

Closed Communities & Open Doors

In Brazil the cities are teaming with folks that have moved to these large metropolis for jobs and hope in a great future. The small country towns are left behind in this new cutural trend and have become closed communities because no new folks have moved in for years.

Most of the folks in these small towns grew up here, their parents grew up here and grand parents are buried in the local cemetery. All new people that move into the community are considered outsiders for years after they arrived. This makes it hard to develop relationship to share the Gospel. This is one of the challenges Luiz & Fatama face as they look to establish a new church in São Fransisco in the state of Para.

This past month they open a new corner fruit and can goods store across from their house. What a success this has been. Not in selling items but as in building in roads into the community. As you can see from the picture above the local media is interviewing Luiz at his new store. Fatama told me that she has tried to talk to a number of her neighbors for the past year but this has been very difficult. Now they her neighbors come and buy two or three tomatoes and talk for an hour. This small stand has oppend doors in ways they had never dreamed.

Pray that the Lord continues to make this new fruit stand the center of activity permiting them to build new relationships and opening opportunities for the Gospel to be preached.

Wayne Patton

Bus Strikes & Broken Glass

The buses here look like any city bus in any city around the world. Yet the culture here makes the bus ride a different experience than most places on the map. This past week the two city governments and eight bus companies are at odds over the price of the bus fair where we live, Belém Brazil.

The bus companies have gone on strike and like most plances the local court justice has ordered that the bus companies must run at least 40% of their fleet. This is where normalcy ends, because here the city streets are filled with broken glass.

As we drove home from church this past Sunday morning, we witness the breaking of the back window of a city bus. The people looked scared and confused, those in the back end of the bus. As the glass rained down on a car waiting for the bus to move, he quickly back up and took off like a dart.

Protesters, mobsters and the general public who do not want to see the price of bus fare raise are throwing rocks and busting out bus windows. Not just any window but the front and back windows. Why?

Well it ends up there is a custom here that involves bus drivers. The bus drivers are personally responsible for the front and back bus windows. If they get broken the cost to replace these windows are taken out of his pay, in monthly installments of course. So if you are upset at the bus driver, you just bust out the window for revenge.

In São Paulo they are having other problems but using the simular tactics. The gangs and mobs have been busting out bus windows and have burned out over 60 buses causing the bus companies to stop operating until the police can get control of the situation in the city. We are 1,500 miles north of São Paulo, so the situation is much different than here in Northern Brazil.

So next time you pass a bus remember the bus may look them same but buses here represent political power and a way to strick back against the political system.

Cell Phone Craze In The Amazon?

You are walking down the beach on the Amazon river. There are fisherman in small wooden boats, feries for small towns, barges with cattle and ocean going freightors. All of them have peoplke with the ir cell phones out, joined in on the cellphone craze.

As you look up the beach you can mark your position by where the cell phone towers are located. Cell phones are an important part of peoples lives here. Many of the poorer people own one, but have no phone in their home. If you have a small businees - you need a cellphone here. It is very inexpensive compared to a land line. Most people here use a pre paid card system.

The deals are better in the USA though, it is a technology that is very expensive but greatly desired. A large number of people have cell phones and not just the financialy well off.

So to my suprise I (Wayne) learned a hard lesson about friendship and cell phones. In a discussion with one of my friends he ask me the question. “Do you know why I do not call you any more on the phone?” His answered surprised me. “It cost me money to call you, most the time you kids answer the phone and you are not home. Get a cell phone and I will call you!”

It ends up after talking to a number of people the cell phone is an important device to build friendships. People here want to know you care and know that when they have you on the cell phone you are giving them your time and attention. They do not want to wait till you call back. It is to important. So you call them on their cell phone and get their immediate attention.

So what if they do not have the money to pay for the call. They call collect. There is a custom here. If you have the money to pay the phone bill your friends call you collect (from their cell phone) and hang up. On the cell phone you have caller ID so you know who it is. If you want to talk with them you call them back. If they are really one of your friends you call them back.

There is one good thing about this system. Everyone knows it is expensive. So most the time your conversations are short. And then there is the messaging service. You know sending messages over your cell phone. Well I am still trying to understand that world. Sending text in English is easy compared to trying to use the Portuguese charater set.

It is amazing you can be in the heart of the jungle surrounded by large trees, thick forest, and mud. Pull out your cell phone and call your friends to rescue you. Only in the Amazon.