“We have seen how you like to help people. Have you considered helping Rafael and Lana?” one of our neighbors asked Edie last year while visiting.
Edie and I knew nothing of the two elderly siblings, even though they lived a quarter of a mile from our house. Our neighbor walked with Edie along the narrow sandy streets of our city on the way to see Rafael and Lana, but they were not home. The cyclone of 2017 damaged their house. It now consisted of jagged brick walls and no roof, except for a few scrap metal sheets covering one bedroom. The veranda had a crumbly cement roof with rusty rebar protruding underneath. The rest of the house was open to the sky, and a little tree grew from a crack in the living room floor.
“Lana is not home, but she will return soon,” their next-door neighbor told us. “Rafael is living on one of the city streets and begging for food. He sleeps on the porch of the elementary school at night.”
A few days later, Edie saw Lana lying in her yard on a woven reed mat under a mango tree. When Edie tried to talk to her, she pretended not to know Portuguese and conversed in Xitswa. A neighbor came and translated for Edie. Eventually, she allowed Edie to enter the house. When Lana opened the door to her room, Edie saw a small bed with a mosquito net and a few personal items. Scrap metal covered the window opening. Mosquitos buzzed everywhere, enjoying the dark, cool and damp environment. Edie left her some food and was determined to find Rafael.
Edie and I drove all over the city looking for Rafael but couldn’t find him. He was not at any of the places Lana told us he frequents. A week later, Edie returned to see Lana and instead found Rafael lying on a woven mat in the thin strip of shade provided by the veranda. When he saw Edie, he sat up and looked expectantly at her. At his side was one of our evangelistic books introducing the Seventh-day Sabbath. He spoke perfect Portuguese and had a pleasant manner about him. His legs were swollen because of a heart condition, and a white cataract covered one of his eyes. Standing to greet Edie, he leaned upon two sticks to keep his balance. He said he was enjoying the book she had given him a couple of weeks before when he was living on the street. Edie did not remember giving him the book — of course, we have handed out hundreds of books.
As Edie continued talking with Rafael, she asked where he slept when at the house. He opened his sister’s room and pointed to the sand beside her mosquito net. When it rains, the water enters under the door and puddles in the sand where Rafael puts his mat. He confided that sometimes he sleeps in the other bedroom, the one with no roof, because he and his sister have relationship problems. She hurls all kinds of verbal abuse his way, acts unkind, accuses him of being lazy, and tells him he is cursed. It is no wonder he chooses to live as a homeless man on the street. Edie asked what he does during the rainy season, and he just remained silent.
At this point, Edie got me involved. I went to look at Rafael’s living conditions and realized that we needed to put a roof on the other bedroom of the “house” so he would have a dry place to stay, a place to lie down in comfort, a place to call his own. He also needed a bed and a mosquito net. Rafael used to be the captain of a fishing boat, but now his legs barely move as he shuffles his feet from one room to another, leaning against the wall to keep from falling. My heart ached with sadness watching him struggle.
The next day we hired a friend to repair the bricks in the walls of the second bedroom. Then we had wooden trusses fitted in the bricks at the roofline. And finally, we nailed corrugated metal roofing over his bedroom. But we didn’t stop with that; we fixed the hole in the cement floor, installed a door with a lock and repaired the window. The work took two days to complete. When we showed Rafael the completed bedroom with a lockable door, bed, pillow, blanket, mosquito net, and flashlight, he was stunned and very happy! Since his sister Lana already had a bedroom, we gave her what she wanted, a cooking pot. When Edie gave her the small aluminum pot, she grabbed it and started dancing up and down, singing “panelinha, panelinha,” which means “little pot, little pot.” We were astonished at her excitement.
Twice a month, we take a bag of groceries to Rafael and Lana to help combat their hunger. But we are not interested in their physical well-being alone. We check to see how they are getting along with each other. Each time we bring food, Edie reads the Bible and prays with Rafael, who listens very attentively and thanks Edie for worshiping with him. Lana also joins the prayer. We believe Rafael is almost ready for Bible studies.
On one visit, Edie arrived in time to see Rafael bending over and blowing on the coals of a small cookfire. As he blew, he lost his balance, and his head fell into the fire. Immediately Edie grabbed him away from the flames. As Edie voiced how Rafael almost got severely burned, Lana spewed a long stream of abusive curses and condemnation at her brother. What has hardened her heart so much?
Yesterday, Rafael walked all the way to our house using his two walking sticks to request his own cooking pot. Will Lana not share her “panelinha”? Please pray that these two siblings will learn to live in heaven’s peace.
