It had been 9 years since I first knew God had called me to do mission work in Brazil, and I was still in high school. Now, at the “mature” age of 25, I was married and had two small children. We had just spent 15 long, challenging months on the road, staying with people we had never met, in places we had never been, the perfect preparation for our new life in Brazil. We had come to the crucial point where more ingredients were about to be stirred into the recipe of our lives: a new language and culture, strange sights, sounds, smells and sensations, and we were not in charge of the kitchen. How would it all turn out? The proof of the pudding would be in the eating.
When we landed at NYC in the afternoon of March 23, 1972, we had only been gone a couple of hours from Chicago. Rachel (4) looked out the window at the city beneath us as we approached the airport and made the understatement of the day. Thinking it was Chicago, she said, “We just went up for a ride.” No, Rachel. Little did she know that our life-changing ride had only just begun, and it wouldn’t end with the 9-hour flight to Rio de Janeiro and the hour-long connecting flight to São Paulo, where.…
