Friday, Apr. 29, 2005

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UMC team works with Brazilian family

By KRISTINE FORTUNATO
kfortunato@TheCitizenNews.com

As he clicks through the hundreds of pictures of past mission trips loaded on his laptop, Randy DeGroot struggles to find the right words to describe his experiences.

He finds it difficult to adequately describe the beauty of the country, the poverty of the people, and his passion for international missions.

A captain with Delta Airlines, Randy has taken three trips to Brazil with his church, Peachtree City United Methodist, starting back in 2001 and most recently this past March, when a team of eight spent over a week in the hills surrounding Rio de Janeiro, working to improve the quality of life for one special family.

Rio de Janeiro is a city well known for its ritz and glamour, beautiful beaches and international vacationers.

Overlooking the city high on the mountain Corcovado, meaning Hunchback, is the famous statue Cristo Redentor, or Christ the Redeemer, with outstretched arms visible from all over Rio down below.

While names like Copacabana and Ipanema bring to mind vacations and fun in the sun, the shantytowns covering the hillsides around Rio are hard to ignore.

More than one-third of the city’s population dwell in these shacks clinging perilously to the mountainsides. Because all their resources, water, food, furniture, must be hauled up the hills manually, the poorest families often live the highest up.

It was one of these families, living high on a hill in Santa Barbara near Rio, that the Peachtree City United Methodist team focused their ministry on.

A previous mission trip had begun the work of restoring the house, and the construction mission continued this past March.

Carlos and Christina and their four kids had been sharing two small bedrooms, with not enough beds to go around, forcing some children to sleep on the floor.

The mission team purchased new mattresses for everyone, hauling them up the steep slopes by hand.

Randy described the living situation this family faced everyday: “To arrive at their home you must go as far as you can on a paved road, then walk down a tiny dirt road past garbage and trash. It is at this point the road truly ends, and you begin a steep descent, followed by a sharp climb,” he explains.

The house comes into view, plainly made of local bricks and mortar, with an old rusted door to cover the shack and barbed wire to keep it safe.

New appliances were delivered, and running water was diverted to the house, easing the burden of carrying water up by hand every day.

“One of the most amazing things was bringing water to them,” Randy says. “They had carried it up the hill for years, and now they could just turn on a faucet. Think of the hours that were spent merely transporting water up that hill.”

The team was also able to tap into local electrical wires and properly run electricity into the home.

Another improvement came from laying the concrete foundation for an extra room attached to the house so a mother-in-law could move in and be cared for. Randy says the team was rewarded by seeing the entire family join the local church.

“We were able to take a hopeless family and give them hope, change their lives,” he says. “That is what mission is all about, being able to touch someone’s life, even if you live 5000 miles away.”

One of the hardest parts of these mission trips happens at the end of each one, when Randy struggles to convey his experiences to people back home in America.

“It is hard to relate to that kind of poverty here in Peachtree City,” he says. “In Brazil, you can’t escape it or look the other way; you are forced to face it and find ways to deal with it. Here, it is so easy to avoid the bad parts of town and ignore the problems.

“After returning from a mission trip, you don’t look at the world in the same way. You almost feel like you don’t fit in anymore. Buying that $4-Starbucks coffee is a struggle, knowing the poverty you have just seen.”

Trying to explain this, Randy feels he walks a fine line in opening people’s eyes to the world around them without making them feel condemned for the wealth Americans enjoy.

He is quick to point out that mission fields exist everywhere, and that everyone can make a difference right where they live. “Everyone should have that life-changing experience of helping others,” he says. “We can all do the same work, no matter what country we are in. It doesn’t matter where you are or what church or mission you are with, because poverty is poverty, hunger is hunger. We are all called to help others.”