9 ~ (1987—1992)
Manna and Quail
Brazil had conquered David’s heart from the time of his first visit, in 1984. Born and bred in Bolivia, Dave had always expected to spend his life in a Spanish-speaking country, but Brazil became like a magnet for him. In God’s providence it would take us six more years before we were able to move there--we couldn’t think about it seriously while Karis was so sick—but meanwhile Dave managed to visit Brazil at least once a year.
The astounding tricycle morning in April of 1987 convinced us that Karis was well, and that God had released us to search for a mission board. We were looking for one that valued accountability, teamwork and family. My sister Jan and her husband Steve were enthusiastic about their mission organization, so in January of 1988 David and I (eight and a half months pregnant with our fourth child, Valerie) flew from Michigan to California to learn more about OC International. At our interview I stated that my greatest fear was that Karis would get sick again and that in Brazil we might not have the resources needed to care for her. We were told that OC would back us up in caring for all of our children, whatever their needs might be. This was the assurance we needed. That summer the whole family, including our feisty five-month-old Valerie, returned to California for ten weeks of training at OCI’s headquarters.
We devoted the next few months to discovery of financial and prayer supporters and visa applications, a whirlwind of travel, church meetings, filling out forms and visiting the Brazilian consulate in Chicago. Our support team came together quickly, and we started packing, hoping to arrive in São Paulo in time for Danny and Karis to start school at Pan American Christian Academy (PACA) in August of 1989. However, our visa process dragged on, and on, and on. We lived poised for action, ready to move as soon as the consulate gave us a green light.
During this waiting period, Karis was growing normally and developing all kinds of skills and interests, as well as occasionally showing us the strength of her will and something of her character. One day in kindergarten, her ileostomy pouch came loose while she was playing at recess, creating a very embarrassing situation for her in front of her classmates. As she recovered from her shame and the sting of the other children’s reactions, she said to me, “Mommy, it’s because they just don’t understand. Will you go back to school with me and explain to them why I have this bag?” Karis herself showed the kids some of her scars, and told the children they were a sign that God loved her, because she could have died but God used doctors and surgeries and things like tubes and ileostomies to help her live.
One day when she was in first grade, Karis came home from school very upset, angrily stomping her feet and slamming doors. Her complaint? “The English language does not make sense, Mom! It’s not fair! Why do they make rules at all if they’re just going to break them all the time?!”
When Karis brought home failing math grades, with an unhappy note from the first grade teacher, I asked her to explain. “Well, Mom,” she said, “math is totally boring. How many times do I have to tell the teacher that two plus three is five, and three plus four is seven? Anyway, the teacher already knows the answer, so why is she asking me? I think it’s a waste of my time, so I don’t even look at the problems—I just write down whatever number comes into my head so I can turn in my paper and have time to read my book.” Very reluctantly she agreed to humor the teacher by giving her the right answers.
Karis and Rachel adored their baby sister, and couldn’t get enough of playing with their “living doll.” Valerie was amazingly tolerant of being dressed up, dragged around, and included in all of their make-believe. The most traumatic event of Karis’s life up until then was the day she allowed a swinging door to hit baby Valerie’s head, requiring stitches. Karis was devastated, even more than when she severely burned her hand by leaning on an electric burner. She was able to tolerate physical pain herself, but hated seeing others suffer.
We lived half-packed for an entire school year. Finally, our visas were granted. In June of 1990 (with all four kids recovering from chicken pox!), we said goodbye to our friends in Port Huron and boarded a plane for Miami and then São Paulo. Danny turned nine the month after we arrived in Brazil. Karis was seven, Rachel five and Valerie two and a half.
Our first year in Brazil was devoted to learning Portuguese, immersing ourselves in Brazilian culture (deliberately avoiding Americans), and making Brazilian friends. Both Dave and I had grown up in Latin America, so some adjustments were easier for us than for teammates who before had only lived in the US. What was tough for me was “city shock.” The largest city I had lived in before this had 50,000 people and São Paulo was home to twenty million! Driving in this megalopolis left me trembling with relief every time I made it back home safely, but after some scary experiences on city buses with my kids, I still preferred driving. Stories abounded of all kinds of crime, including kidnapping—and blond children were said to be the most desired.
Once when the kids and I were lost in the city, driving round and round without managing to figure out the way back to our apartment (David was there but we didn’t yet have a telephone), Danny said, “Don’t worry, Mom. Of all the cities in the whole world, we’re in the right one!”
During that first year in São Paulo, we lived in an apartment around the corner from the Sepal office (OC uses the name Sepal in Brazil), but this meant a long and miserable bus ride for our kids to Pan American Christian Academy, their bilingual school. I started looking for a house within a kilometer of PACA. Realtors just laughed when I described the kind of house I wanted for the money that was available to us. We found one that was a possibility, but our mission team counseled us against it, concerned for our safety. Disappointed, we submitted to their guidance. After several months of prayer, the team approved a large house just a ten-minute walk from PACA, available for exactly the amount of money we could spend, and a much better situation than the other house would have been. It was a great lesson for us in interdependence—trusting God to guide us through the wisdom of people committed to us.
We moved to our house on June 19, 1991, exactly one year from the day we had arrived in São Paulo. That day there was no electricity in the apartment building, so we had to walk all of our possessions, including two frightened cats, down nine flights of stairs to the truck we had rented for the day. Our new house served all kinds of hospitality and ministry purposes. Living close to their school was helpful for all of our kids, and would prove invaluable for Karis in the years to come.
Our first Sunday in the new house, God blessed us with a “house warming.” We returned from church to find most of the neighborhood gathered at our house, having broken down our gate to put out a fire! From the camaraderie that developed as we treated the whole neighborhood to ice cream to thank them for saving our house from severe damage, a Bible study and a weekly children’s Bible club were birthed. A few months later, when a neighbor was killed at a bar up the street, sixteen people from our block met to seek consolation from God. David wrote for them, and later published, a series of study booklets to use with seekers in small groups.
In those days, despite the frequent warnings given us about our vulnerability to assault and robbery, kids still played in the street and neighbors chatted on each other’s doorsteps. We grew close to our neighbors, and invited them all to a Christmas party at our house, which became a yearly tradition.
I had not adjusted well to apartment living and was delighted to be able to walk straight out of the door of our house, without having to wait for an elevator or maneuver a car in or out of a labyrinth of basement parking. Soon after our move, David plunged enthusiastically into ministry, traveling often to other cities. The first time he left me and the kids alone in the house, my mind was flooded by all of the dire warnings about break-ins that we had received from friends. They were convinced that we had made the wrong decision by living in a house instead of a closed and guarded apartment complex. Too tense to sleep, I reacted anxiously to every sound, straining my ears and my emotions to discern whether someone was breaking through our gate (which our neighbors had proven to be all too easy!).
Finally I fell restlessly to sleep, but jerked awake in a panic when something large and heavy struck my chest! It was just our cat—I had forgotten to let him outside before I went to bed. As I gradually stopped shaking, and was able to laugh, I realized that my own fear had overplayed its hand. We had moved to this house “for good,” my husband would travel frequently, and I simply could not live with this kind of tension. I let the cat out, knelt by my bed and told God I was not going to get back into it until he traded his peace for my fear. I am so grateful that God honored this contract, because during the sixteen-plus years since, we have not experienced a single break-in (even though most of the houses on our block have been robbed). What a waste of nervous energy had that fear ruled our lives!
On one of David’s first trips, he skidded on gravel coming around a curve and the car flipped over and over again as it plunged down the side of a mountain. Part way down, a small tree halted its tumble. David found himself hanging by his seatbelt upside-down, with praise music still jubilantly playing on the car’s cassette player, thinking “Debbie’s going to kill me!” When he was able to extricate himself from the car, he saw several other vehicles further down the slope whose passengers clearly had not fared so well. He climbed back up to the road, and flagged a bus, which took him back to the city. A friend kindly put him on a plane back to São Paulo, after taking a picture of the way he had emerged from that accident, torn and bloody, but intact. Thereafter I requested that he travel by bus or airplane, rather than risking the treacherous Brazilian roads—and that way when David traveled, I got to use the car that we bought to replace that first totaled one!
God cared for the kids and me through a variety of stressful and frightening circumstances. I have a collection of “angel stories” from those first years in crime-ridden São Paulo: Help when we ran out of gas. Help when we had a flat tire. Help when, again and again, we got lost trying to get from point A to point B in that enormous city. Repeated protection from robbery and assault, which seemed common fare for everyone around us. Provision when we just could not make our finances stretch to the end of the month as austere measures were imposed to control runaway Brazilian inflation.
Gradually we grew confident of being able to really communicate in Portuguese, and enjoyed the pleasure of genuine mutual friendships. Dave’s ministry expanded quickly and stretched us beyond anything we had ever done up until then. We had to depend on God’s daily provision for us as we trudged through unknown territory—and He was faithful.
Through all of the challenges of those years—finding a mission board, discovering our support team, packing and moving to São Paulo, adjusting to a huge city, a new language, culture, friends, school, church, and mission team, finding, purchasing, and moving to our house—we enjoyed the enormous blessing of good health for Karis. Along with her brother and sisters, she had time to grow comfortable with Portuguese, with Brazilian friends, and with her new school. Inexplicably, she began to have tummy problems again in January of 1993. God had given her, and us, a six-year window in which to accomplish a huge transition and start to put down roots in our new life in Brazil.
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