July 2006

Dear Friends and Supporters,

This is, we’re sorry to say, our last newsletter from Brazil. The plan is for us to return to the United States on August 2. We’ll stay with a wonderful friend in suburban Chicago for the month of August, visit our daughters and old friends, and get caught up with doctors and dentists. After that we’ll move to Mission Haven in Decatur, Georgia, for the rest of the year. The Worldwide Ministries Division of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is busy planning a series of mission interpretation trips for us, and those should keep us very busy. In December we hope to see our son in Boston.

We’ve been blessed with friends here in Salvador. Our next-door neighbors, the MacAlisters, whose ancestors came to Brazil from Scotland several generations ago, are especially close. Like most Salvadorans, they are spontaneous, fun-loving, ready to party at a moment’s notice, and just a wee bit crazy. Life back in the United States may seem pretty quiet without them. Keiko has also met a lot of great people through her participation in a 70-member Tai Chi club that meets every morning in the local park. They’ve treated her with extraordinary kindness and affection, and a small group of them have been studying English with her every day for months. The people I’ve met through volunteering at CESE, an NGO that sponsors and monitors small projects throughout Brazil, have also been very good to us. We’re definitely going to miss them and in particular our pastor Armindo and his wife Sonia, who from the very beginning of our stay here in Salvador have been the kind of friends who listen well and understand us. When you leave your home place, what you miss most are friends. God apparently knew that and so set all these good folks on our path here in Salvador.

The focus of our efforts here over the last two years has been ITEBA—The Institute for Theological Education in Bahia. It’s an organization that on a regular basis comes perilously close to extinction but somehow manages to survive—and sometimes even thrive—thanks to the faith and iron will of the women who run it and the firm support of United States Presbyterians. ITEBA deserves continuing support, both moral and material. Without a school like ITEBA, there would be no ecumenical space for black people (who are 80 percent of the local population) to study theology at the B.A. level or get any genuinely liberating education. The school system in Salvador is rigged to deny access to those who need it most, and ITEBA is one of very few schools that buck the system and give black people an affordable chance. For these reasons I enjoyed teaching at ITEBA and felt I was making a difference. Working with disadvantaged students, I learned to celebrate small victories, but surprisingly not all of these were so small. For example, in just two years one of my students went from the 0 level in theology to writing a coherent and persuasive research paper on continuity and discontinuity between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. One of my advisees is writing a very fine dissertation on the Gospel of John as historiography. These are examples of what educationally deprived students can do if given a chance and enough stimulation. Students like these are the future of Brazil, the best hope this country has to emerge from its racist, slave-based past and come into the modern world.

Keiko and I will miss the people we worked with at ITEBA: Marlene, Lourdinha, Aguinelza, Patricia, Helena, Edilson, Catia, Djalma, Ana Emilia, and all the students. We hold them in our hearts and ask God’s richest blessing upon them and upon ITEBA.

Trusting in God that we will be called to another mission,

Bob and Keiko Butterfield

The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 45