You Are There:
Friday Night in Rio De Janeiro, Looking for Inactive Members
by
Geoffrey Biddulph
São Paulo Brazil Temple
Copyright 2002 IRI.
It’s a Friday
night, and it’s time to look for inactive church members in the
Jardim Botanico ward in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
One night a
few weeks ago, I accompanied the ward’s Young Men’s President Nilson
Marcos Elias de Jesus to Cruzada Sao Sebastiao, a sprawling apartment
building complex on the edge of one of the nicest neighborhoods
in Rio.
By U.S. standards,
Cruzada would be considered one of the worst possible slums. The
apartments are tiny, the size of large closets in the United States,
and six-person families usually crowd into them. But in Rio de
Janeiro literally millions of people survive in festering, crowded
rickety slums built along the sides of stinking canals that have
become open cesspools. In comparison, Cruzada looks like Beverly
Hills.
Drowning
in Temptations
Friday
night is party night in Cruzada. Scores of children play in the
streets weaving in and out of broken-down cars while their mothers
sit drinking liter bottles of beer and their fathers hang out with
friends. Drugs are sold openly. An occasional drunken brawl breaks
out.
There are dozens
of inactive church members in Cruzada. Most are people who felt
the Spirit briefly and, in a burst of passion, decided to get baptized.
Keeping them active is extremely difficult in a ward with a small
group of priesthood holders -- and so many temptations.
President Nilson in the Leblon neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro.
President Nilson
says it best: “They don’t want to break the word of wisdom, but
there’s smoking and alcohol all around them. They take one drink,
and they’re gone. They just say to themselves that they can’t go
back to church at all. Sometimes we can convince them to repent,
but it’s hard. They convince themselves that they never felt the
Spirit after all.”
Of course, there’s
another factor: Cruzada is only three blocks from one of the most
beautiful beaches in the world, Leblon. In Leblon, and on other
nearby beaches, every sunny day offers the lure of men and women
lounging in nearly nonexistent bathing suits while they contemplate
azure seas and play soccer or volleyball. There is so much pleasure,
and so many “good things” to enjoy. Why spend Sunday at a church,
especially a church that asks you to go to three hours of services
and says you can’t drink draft beer like everybody else and can’t
drink Brazil’s famous coffee like everybody else and, worst of all,
says you shouldn’t have fun on Sundays?
Rio is, after
all, a city about having fun. The Carnival, usually in February,
is a week-long party that involves nearly naked people filling the
avenues to dance the samba, Brazilian street music. It is a late-night
city where restaurants do not usually open until 8 p.m. and the
cafes, bars and discos stay open all night. When Brazil won the
soccer World Cup on June 30, the streets of Rio were literally packed
with people drinking beer, waving Brazilian flags and celebrating.
Church meetings had to be postponed for safety reasons, but it meant
that hundreds of thousands of Saints in Brazil were watching the
World Cup on a Sunday morning rather than going to church.
Beauty and
Affliction
Rio
is a city filled with so much beauty. Soaring above the city are
majestic 2000-foot cliffs that look like Yosemite. Green jungles
decorate the hills below the cliffs. And above it all stands the
famous “Christ the Redeemer” statue, His arms spread wide as He
ponders the mixture of sin and beauty below him.
Cariocas,
the people from Rio, are famous for their unrelentingly positive
outlook. The traditional Brazilian greeting, “Tudo bem?” (All is
Well) fills the streets of Rio, and the people are almost never
grouchy or depressed. After all, they say “God is Brazilian” and
they cite as proof the fact that Brazil does not have any natural
disasters, no tornados, no earthquakes and no hurricanes.
Rio is one of
the most beautiful cities in the world, but it is also one of the
most afflicted. Its poverty is staggering. Even the nicest neighborhoods
are literally surrounded by slums that cling to the cliffs. The
slums are completely dominated by drug gangs. In June, the drug
gangs got upset with the local authorities and decided to send a
message: they calmly drove up to City Hall and opened fire with
machine guns on the building, breaking dozens of windows and leaving
hundreds of bullet holes. Then they drove away. None of the bandits
has been caught.
A Spiritual
People
Still,
Brazilians are among the world’s most spiritual people. I know
of only one atheist or agnostic among the literally hundreds of
people I work with. Studies show 93 percent of people belong to
an organized religion. Nearly every taxi or truck carries a bumper
sticker saying, “Jesus Saves” or “God is taking care of me.”
The fastest-growing
religions are the large evangelical Protestant churches and the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There are now four
temples in Brazil, and Portuguese is the third-most-popular language
spoken among Church members. Driving around Brazil, you see missionaries
walking the streets nearly everywhere.
But Rio, with
its beauty and its temptations, is a special challenge. More than
15 percent of the people in Rio, compared to seven percent nationwide,
say they do not belong to an organized religion, by far the highest
percentage in the country. Rio is first in worldly things and
last in heavenly things.
The missionaries
are certainly doing their jobs. A few years back, missionaries
penetrated one of the crime-ridden slums near Jardim Botanico and
baptized nearly 140 people in a few months. The current bishopric
and missionaries in my ward have been unable to locate any of them.
As far as we can determine, all of them are inactive.
In the last
year, the missionaries have baptized nearly 40 people in my ward.
Only about 10 of them are active. Many of the inactives live in
Cruzada. President Nilson and I, and many other priesthood leaders,
missionaries and sisters in the ward, try to visit them regularly
to keep them coming to church.
Close to
My Heart
One
of the families that is closest to my heart is the Guimaraes family.
About nine months ago, the father, mother and a teenager son and
daughter all got baptized at the same time. They came to church
for four Sundays in a row, all of them together. They said they
were so happy to join a church as a family. The son and daughter
participated in Mutual events. The son helped the ward win the
stake trophy in a soccer tournament in which President Nilson served
as coach. The son was so proud as he held that trophy.
And then one
Sunday, I noticed that the father had the smell of cigarettes on
his breath as I went to shake his hand. The next Sunday, nobody
in the family showed up for church. President Nilson called the
family, and home teachers went by the visit. Some of the sisters
in the Relief Society also went. I went to see them twice. They
were not there, but there were rumors that the father was unemployed
and didn’t have time for church.
It’s been six
months since anybody in the ward has seen them.
On this particular
Friday night, President Nilson and I tried to visit the Guimaraes
family again. We knocked on the door to their small apartment,
but no luck.
Pedro
We
did have luck visiting Pedro (not his real name), an 18-year-old
semi-active member. Five years ago, Pedro got introduced to the
church and was immediately impressed with what he learned. Pedro’s
mother was dead-set against his baptism, but he was firm that he
wanted to join the church, so she relented. For four years, Pedro
went to church nearly every Sunday and went to seminary regularly.
Then, Pedro
joined the rowing team of a nearby club. They held out promises
that he might make the national team, so Pedro, a dedicated, athletic
and studious young man, took his rowing seriously. But the coach
said rowing required complete dedication, including regular practices
on Sunday. That was more than a year ago. Since then, Pedro has
stopped going to church regularly.
There are at
least eight people in the ward who visit Pedro regularly. He looks
healthy and is filled with his usual good humor. He always says
the same thing: “next Sunday, I will go to church.” And he rarely
comes.
When President
Nilson and I visit Pedro, we note he is unusually thin. He was
on a diet to get below 150 pounds (Pedro is about six-foot-two).
He was happy to see us. He assured us he would go to church on
Sunday (he didn’t go).
He was chatting
via the internet with Leandro, a former missionary who is at BYU
Idaho.
Pedro felt it
necessary to explain himself. “You guys know I love the Gospel,
don’t you?” President Nilson and I said yes.
“I talked to
the coach, and I can’t get him to cancel Sunday practices. But
I read the scriptures on my own. I am strong, very strong, in the
Gospel,” he said. Nilson and I nodded.
“You know, there
are so many temptations out there. You guys saw all those people
in the streets outside. They’re drinking and smoking and doing
drugs. I don’t do any of those things. I just stay in my room,
away from the temptations. I have to get up at 5 a.m. to go rowing.”
“We know you’re
a strong young man, Pedro,” Bishop Nilson said. “But Satan is everywhere.
He’s trying to convince you that the things of the world are more
important than the things of God.”
“You’re right,
but I’m not doing anything wrong. I am firm in the Gospel,” Pedro
says.
We both give
him a hug and turn to leave. He sits back down to his computer,
and clicks on a few windows. I glance at the computer briefly and
see, “Brazil’s Best Pornography” displayed on the screen.
The enemy truly
is relentless. Pedro avoided the temptations to do drugs like
his friends, to drink and smoke like his friends. His living situation
is filled with chaos and stress, yet he’s going to school and trying
to do his best. He literally hides in his apartment to keep away
from the temptations of the world. But the enemy gets to him,
through one of the few portals left, the Internet.
There are so
many temptations in Rio, so many reasons to go astray. It’s a
constant struggle with a wily, persistent adversary. And the adversary
seems to win so often.
Fasting Weekly
It
can get discouraging for the small group of active church members
at the ward. But something very interesting has happened in the
last few months. Several of us have been fasting almost weekly
and specifically asking the Lord to help our ward grow.
It is working.
We have four missionaries, up from two a few months back, and lately
there has been a baptism nearly every weekend. Just two months
ago, another family, a mother, father and two daughters, got baptized.
The Gaertners are ecstatic to be in the church together, and they
come to church events several times a week. In June they fasted
together as a family for the first time and said it was one of the
most spiritual things they had ever done. The mother and father
and the oldest daughter, 18, have all taken church callings and
are extremely dedicated.
About the same
time, another family moved into the ward. The husband, Francisco
Valim, was a bishop in southern Brazil and had been offered a new
job in Rio. He and his wife have three children. Just a few weeks
ago, the stake president named Brother Valim bishop of the ward.
He has brought a new sense of optimism and a special Spirit to the
ward. Many members have commented they can feel the Spirit during
sacrament meetings.
Is it accidental
that these things happened when we started fasting and praying for
them?
Oh, I almost
forgot: on Sunday, Pedro came to church.
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