Super Sabbath in Sao Paulo

Okay, I'm going to skip Friday except to say we went on a 5 mile food run. Each part of the food run has a picture on the Facebook album.

So Saturday, Sabbath, we woke up and walked from our hostel to a Korean Adventist church in Sao Paulo. I don't know how far it was, but it took us a while walking so it was probably a couple kilometers? I'm bad at estimating. Once we got there, we felt really awkward because we couldn't find anyone our age, but we asked an ajuma for help and she sent us upstairs to have worship with the youth. The program was in Portuguese, though, so a girl named Changmi came to sit with us and translate from Portuguese to Korean. We suck at Korean too, but it was still better than Portuguese. Later we found out that Changmi is cousins with Richard and David from Glendale (SO CRAZY! Such a small world). Anyway, we finished up the Sabbath school worship and went downstairs for the main service. It was in Korean, so we only understood bits and pieces of it, but we sat there pretending to understand. Once the service was over, a bunch of ajushis and ajumas came to us questioning us about where we were from, why we were in Brazil, where we were staying, and if we knew anyone at the church. We got asked these four questions about thirty times, and got a little better at answering them in Korean each time. The potluck was pretty good, and after we ate we went upstairs for another youth worship. More people came for this worship, and it was in Portuguese again but a new arrival, Daniel, translated from Portuguese to English for us. He's so good at languages, and he spoke the best English I had heard in Brazil since I had arrived. After worship, they asked us to introduce ourselves and share a little story/testimony, so we told them about our experience at the soccer game and about how amazing it was that God was blessing us so endlessly. They seemed to enjoy the story, and they took time to pray for our travels and for our presence at their church.

This really made me feel so happy, seeing how welcoming these Adventists were. I really hate the whole denominational emphasis that Adventists have sometimes, but seeing the brotherly love that we received, I am now a proud supporter of Adventist networking. This church was the most perfect representation of Christian brotherhood that I have ever seen, and their love for us was so touching. Not only did they make us feel so comfortable and welcome at their church, but they invited us to their meeting with another church and also told us that they were going to take us out at night to show us some more sights in Sao Paulo. They really planned their day around us and gave us so much help.

After the youth worship, they took us to another church right outside of Sao Paulo. It was our first time in a regular car since we started traveling, and it was a crazy experience. If you think driving in LA traffic is bad at all, wait until you see Brazil. Lane changing is so crazy, and I really think normal drivers would die here. No exaggeration. A really nice guy named Eric took us to the other church, where we sat down and listened to the speaker. We also met another girl named Carol, who acted as my personal translator for the night. Yoontae's translator was a really funny girl named Erica from the Korean church, so he got a Korean translation while I got an English one. The speaker was this awesome guy with a bright yellow shirt. His name was Donasote or something like that. He grew up in a violent home where his stepfather beat his brother and his mom, so one day Donasote threatened to kill his stepfather if he didn't leave the house. He left. As he got older, he got into the life of a criminal, robbing people, killing people, and he even said that he blew up an armored money transport truck with dynamite. As the money flew everywhere, he waited for people to pick up the money, then robbed those people later. He was so notorious that even the police were afraid of him, and one time when a cop had a gun pointed at him, Donasote put a grenade in the cop's pocket, saying that he would kill them both of the cop tried to shoot him. Eventually he got caught and was shot six times, declared dead for 16 hours, then came back to life as the mortician was about to cut him open with a scalpel. He went to jail, smoked weed everyday, and dealt drugs in jail until an Adventist pastor came to the prison and spoke to him. After that, Donasote changed his ways and now he goes around preaching. Amazing. I took a picture with him.

After the service, the Korean church that we came with took us to Brooklyn, the nicest area of Sao Paulo. There, they took us to the mall, showed us how nice the area was, and bought us Brazilian food. It was SO amazing. They all ate Subway and Burger King because they were sick of Brazilian food. The group was really fun and they kept us entertained nonstop. When it was time to go, Bruno, the youth leader, took us back to the Metro station. Erica, Yoontae's translator from earlier, was really funny and stayed with us all day and she became our good friend. She eventually stayed with us longer than everyone else when we had to leave because she took the Metro home too, and we said our goodbyes and came back to the hostel.

We started the Saturday not knowing what we would do after church. We expected a simple service that we would leave after potluck, but we got a lot more than that. These people we met were all so amazing and kind, and they made our stay at Sao Paulo so much more memorable. I really want to just take everything about them and bring it back to the States. So many times, we don't really include the visitors or really go the extra mile to make them feel welcome, but this church was just so perfect in everything they did for us. Not only did they help us to enjoy our Sabbath, but they made Sao Paulo better for us. We could have left the city thinking it was great and that we had fun, but now it's so much more. It's an AMAZING city, with so much more than we were able to see, and the people are so genuine and kind. AGHHHH I LOVE BRAZIL.