and settlements, pockets of forest. We were in no mood to enjoy the views, no mood even to talk. We had to leave Brazil and had no idea what we would do next. We both felt stunned, let down, abandoned, and alone.
The staff at the missionary organization we worked with were not at all perturbed.
“Don’t worry,” they said, “This is Brazil. We have contacts, we can put in a word for you. It’ll soon be sorted out. Leave it with us, we’ll go into the city and speak to the authorities.”
Days passed and no word came. We carried on as if in a daze, caring for the kids we’d come to know and love. We played games with the older children and washed and fed the younger ones. We gave them a structure and routine to establish the secure boundaries children need. Most were just ordinary kids. What they lacked was personal attention; a family atmosphere and environment. We loved those kids. I had spent weeks repainting the rusty old climbing frame in the play area. We both spent hours with Matheus, a toddler with hydrocephalus. We talked to him in his cot and pulled faces to make him laugh. Every day we took him out of his cot to learn to walk. Eventually, he reached the children’s playground and climbing frame, gurgling and chuckling with delight. It was this kind of interaction and personal connection that made it all so worthwhile.
People often talk about a “calling,” a sense of vocation. Brenda and I had felt it since we first met but had no idea at that time how this would work out. She was a farmer’s daughter from Devon in the rural southwest of England. I was a Yorkshire coal miner from the industrial north. I left school with no qualifications and no prospects. I had no interest in learning or education. We both came from devout Christian families and met at an annual preaching convention in Filey on the Yorkshire coast. It was there that I sensed some kind of “call,” an impression that I wanted to do something more than simply earn a living, something that could make a difference. From our particular church backgrounds, the expectation was that this would involve missionary work or church leadership. Neither of us had any desire to do such things. All we knew was that we wanted to do something. On the strength of this vague impression, we left our mining village and enrolled at a Bible college in the English Midlands. We had no prior academic qualifications and no idea what we were going to do afterward.
After Bible college we worked for three years as houseparents in a children’s home. From there I would go on to qualify as a social worker, specializing in child protection, adoption, and fostering.1 Gradually we began to develop a clearer idea of what the “calling” might involve; something involving children and families.
So here we were, in Brazil, fulfilling what we then believed to be the outcome of that “call.” Hands-on intervention. Working with street kids in a rescue mission. It all seemed to fit our expectations. Suddenly it was all coming to an end.
We had come to a Christian missionary complex in São Paulo State. I had been to Brazil before, initially to Belo Horizonte in 1994 at the invitation of YWAM (Youth With A Mission), a short-term mission agency that was developing an interest in issues around adoption. They wanted me to tell them more about it, how it worked in the UK, how it might be developed in Brazil. I returned the following year, imparting more information, meeting missionaries and social workers. On those occasions, I visited during my normal vacation allocation from Leeds City Council. Then, in 1997, impelled by the news of street shootings and murders, Brenda and I both came intending to stay for a year, unpaid, to try to make a difference.
We had written to some twenty-five missionary or development agencies offering our services. We wrote to all the Christian charities we could find which offered some kind of child or family care. The response opened my eyes. Most replied, but in each case, the response was broadly the same. What could they possibly do with a social worker? I wish we had kept those letters. A quarter of a century on they would appear even more outrageous than they did at the time.
What were they telling us?
If you are a car mechanic, we could use you in the mission field. If you are in primary health care or are an engineer, we could use you in the mission field. If you are an expert in agriculture or irrigation, a bricklayer and can build, a teacher and can teach English—we could use you in the mission field. But a social worker?
Yet every one of these organizations had some form of work with children or families. That was the very reason we had approached them. What did this mean? That if you were any Tom, Dick, and Harry you could work with kids? That if you were a social worker they wouldn’t know what to do with you? A bricklayer or a car mechanic, then yes, we can use your skills. We deliver health care so we could certainly use a nurse—but a social worker? You don’t have to be a social worker or have any qualifications or experience to work with kids.
I found this massively insulting, but quite apart from the affront to my professional dignity, there were more serious implications. What did this say about the level of professionalism involved? It struck me then and it stays with me now. I realized that many of the people working with children through mission, aid, or development agencies were doing so with good intentions but without the practical or professional skills required. They were working from the heart, but with no real knowledge of how to respond to kids suffering from trauma or loss. The attitude seemed to be, “Right, you are a parent yourself. You understand kids.” But there was no real insight that this in itself was not enough. These kids had particular problems. They were suffering from abuse and neglect. They needed specialist help. Something had to change.
It was the day before we were due to fly back to the UK. The leaders of the mission complex had made inquiries on our behalf.
“There’s no more we can do,” they told us. “You will have to fly back home. But you can always come back. Apply for missionary visas, come back and join us . . .”
I lent dejectedly on the metal windowsill of one of the bare, simple office rooms and gazed out over the dusty parking lot. A man in a white shirt was walking across it. He didn’t look Latin American, but that was not at all unusual for multicultural Brazil, particularly within a missionary complex with regular visitors from around the world. What was unusual was how, when he looked up and saw me, he addressed me in a British accent.
“You alright?”
“Not really,” I sighed, my dejection blunting the surprise at hearing a familiar accent. In many countries, including Brazil, people who could speak English often spoke it with an American tinge.
“Why?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, do you want to tell me about it?”
We spoke for a few minutes through the window then the stranger asked me to come down to talk further in the parking lot. I did so and I told him who we were, why I was feeling so downcast, and asked him who he was.
“Does it matter who I am?” he said enigmatically. “I want to hear your story.”
We spoke for a long time, maybe up to an hour. I told him how we had come to work with street kids and how our plans had come to an abrupt end. He must have sensed my irritation and frustration. It was clear he understood it, but he also encouraged me to consider the wider context, to put things in perspective. So many aid workers or missionaries came in thinking they had all the answers. They tried to impose solutions from outside. Instead, they should work alongside and in step with the cultures and societies of the host countries themselves. This was their country, their history, their culture.
After a while, he stopped me and said, “I don’t know why I am listening to you, but I feel a prompting—and I believe it is from God—to hear you out some more. I’m busy right
