September 2006

The Messenger

Our life goes on in São Paulo, Brazil. Linnis has told you about her work in a recent letter. My work is rather specialized these days, in a graduate school preparing people to be seminary professors. As former students of mine have taken over much of what I used to do, and as I have had an easier schedule since my cancer treatment, my work is even more directed at assisting their continuing education and professional development. The city we live in is constantly changing in little ways. One of them is the appearance of new churches, many of them Pentecostal storefront churches with imaginative names. I wish our efforts in theological education could reach more of their leaders. Actually, there are some bright spots.

On another subject, a messenger on a motorcycle came to see me recently. Our insurance agent sent him to receive from me, in cash, the whole premium for a year’s car insurance. Here in São Paulo one doesn’t pay one’s bills by putting a check in the mail. The mails are fairly safe, now, but Brazilians tend not to trust them too much. One of us goes to our bank and stands in line to pay the rent, the light bill, the gas bill, and the phone bill. If we owe money to somebody, one of us usually goes to the other person’s bank and stands in line there to pay it. Nineteen years ago, when we first came to Brazil, we used to spend a lot of time in those lines. It was one of the things we liked the least about being here. Today the banking services are more efficient, and the lines are shorter. There is even a fast-service line for seniors, which we are now old enough to use. The insurance agency, for reasons of its own, doesn’t work that way. They preferred to have me pay cash to the motorcycle messenger.
 
We live in an apartment house in the central part of this big city. I was expecting him, the interphone rang, I went down to the lobby. He was a tall young man, probably in his 20s, and very neat. The building staff left him and me alone. I gave him an envelope with the cash. He counted it carefully and carefully wrote out a receipt for me. Then he stowed it in a sort of heavy envelope or folder, which he carefully zipped inside his black leather jacket. I stayed with him until he was done and said Boa viagem, meaning “Have a good trip,” which is the usual thing to say.

He replied with a loud Amen. It seemed that I had said something more important than I intended. I am sure he was an evangelical protestant, from the way he said it and from the fact that he didn’t cross himself. He could be Presbyterian or Methodist or Baptist, but he was more probably Pentecostal. He went to his motorcycle on the sidewalk, picked up the helmet he had carefully stowed on the back of it, put on the helmet, and was on his way. That was all. This is the big city, where no one has time for chitchat.

Most of my encounters with motorcycle messengers are very different. I will be driving in heavy traffic, crawling along slowly when a motorcyclist comes up from behind, honking his horn continuously to make way as he whizzes between the lanes of cars. He is followed by another motorcyclist, and then another. I wouldn’t stick my elbow out of the car window unless I wanted it lopped off. Then one of the cyclists will execute a dangerous maneuver to get around the car in front of me, almost falling off his vehicle, or so it would appear. I thank God I have never hurt one of them — yet. On another occasion I will be walking and go to cross a street. A block away, a light turns green and a phalanx of cars starts to come toward me. They are far enough away, but then I see a motorcyclist who has pulled out ahead of the cars, much closer and coming toward me very fast. I am thankful none of them has ever hit me — yet. There are swarms of motorcyclists, many of them messengers. It is impossible to drive or walk in São Paulo without encountering them often.

I keep saying “Wow!” at the chances they take. A psychologist once wrote a column in the newspaper saying, “They don’t love life enough.” Of course, the ones who really look like daredevils are a minority, and stimulus-seeking is not what it’s all about, for many of them. Their work is dangerous, and many die of work-related accidents. I had a driving job once. They, at least some of them, really are professional drivers who are under pressure to make time. The city depends on them to deliver all sorts of things faster than they could be delivered by car or by truck. Also, if I had to ride a motorcycle in that traffic with that much cash inside my jacket, I would want to reach my destination before getting held up, and I would do everything to get there as fast as possible.

I add my Amen to his. May he live to make deliveries another day.

Arch Woodruff
Mission Co-Worker, Brazil.