Some Stories that Didn’t Make it into the Book

Anderson is a kleptomaniac. The first time I met him, I was giving out stickers. A little girl came running to me, returning the stickers that Anderson had just swiped. He looked at the ground and giggled.

Anderson lives with his mother, grandmother, four sisters, and five brothers. He is the youngest, and his mother doesn’t know what to do with him. His older brothers dabble in robbery and drugs, and Anderson is quickly falling in line.

Anderson greeted me and pulled up his shirt. A long, six-inch wound greeted me. “What happened?” I asked. “My brother.” He replied. Recently, Anderson gave Living Stones a jump rope. It was later identified as the one he had stolen from us two days earlier.

**

Bruno and Breno live with their grandparents. They look a lot alike and can climb palm trees faster than you can call their names. Breno climbed and picked me a coconut, and I asked him to show me how to climb up too. After a couple of suggestions, I made it two feet off the ground. All the kids from Living Stones came running, yelling, “Forca Mulher! Forca!” (losely translated—put your back into it woman!)

**

When Living Stones went on a field trip that included a pool, Cesar jumped into the pool and had to be rescued. He was pulled out unconscious, but as he was about to be given resusitation, he got up and walked away like nothing happened. That is Cesar for you. He is my favorite.

When we had their first trip to the movies, Cesar would turn to me, give me a hug, and then go back to watching the big screen, open mouthed. At home, Cesar is known as “satan” or “little devil.” His mother doesn’t like him. Most nights, he sleeps on the streets because the small cement-block house with a dirt floor is closed to him.

Cesar didn’t come the day I left Brazil, but his brother gave him a note from him: “Tia Rachel, I love you and will never forget you and also the party you had for us. I am going to miss you because you are leaving. It was very good with you. Thank you for all that you did for me.”

**

Eduardo, Marcone, Luciana and Mercia all come to Living Stones, from one family, living with their aunt and grandmother. Their mother abandoned them when they were little. When I got to know Eduardo, I asked him to write his name. He shyly picked up the pen and wrote. The Living Stones leader looked over my back proudly. Later, she told me he had just learned to write it the week before. He was nine years old.

Eduardo has a lot of learning problems and difficulties in school. I often caught him begging on the streets when Living Stones was over. Eduardo spent some time with the pastor of the church, who is also a psychologist, who diagnosted Eduardo as one of the most disturbed children he had ever met.

When I first met Marcone, Eduardo’s brother, I thought he was autistic, but actually he is deaf. Marcone has never been to school and doesn’t know any official sign language, just what he and his family have made up. Marcone’s life consists of finding ways to get attention. He has figured out that the quickest way to do this is to grab at people, and when they look at him, he flips them off.

Sometimes you will see, if you don’t let him know you are watching, Marcone slide up to one of the Living Stones leaders. He likes to lean on them slightly, and just be. I asked myself what ministry was. And today the answer was sitting still so Marcone could lean on me. He didn’t want to be hugged, or reached out to, but in his own time, he wanted to come closer.

Marcone fell asleep in the middle of 40 screaming children at Living Stones today, just leaning on me. He couldn’t hear them, but I could. I have never felt more fulfilled, sitting there, watching the kids play, and being leaned on. Doing nothing, but doing everything.

At the Christmas party we had the kids write a letter to Jesus. Marcone can’t write. He can’t read. He doesn’t talk. Marcone got one of the other kids to write something for him, explaining through guestures that he wanted them to write “Quero fala” (I want to speak).

**

Glecia told me that her favorite food was lasagna. After asking most of the other kids what their favorite food was, I found the two most common responses were lasagna and pizza. When I asked the Living Stones leader why she thought that was, she said, “Rachel, most of these children have never had lasagna or pizza. They have just seen it in movies or shows or in commercials. They are imagining it to be the best food ever.”

Concessao, a shy girl, whispered “Rice” when I asked what her favorite food was. It is hard to imagine a world where rice is your favorite food. Favorites don’t matter when you have nothing.

**

I met a boy. An older boy (around 15). What was so different was that he was actually still a boy. Most of the boys are so old, and seem older than me. After not knowing where they will eat or sleep so often, it grows you old. But I looked into Jadeilson’s face and it was clear. Innocent. Open. He still had that look that made me happy and sad and longing and scared all at once. Happy because he was a picture of the world as it should be. Sad because so much isn’t as it should be. Longing because everything beautiful makes me ache for my true home, and scared because we are so fragile and I cannot protect him. I can’t shelter him. And one day he will be broken. But today I met a boy who was still a boy.

**

When Joao Paulo was three days old, his mother walked down the main street of Paudalho with him in her arms and yelled out “Does anyone want this kid?” In these unofficial adoptions, the new parents take the baby to the government offices and gets the birth certificate with the new baby as their own. Since the baby was (often) not born in the hospital, no one is the wiser.

**

Iasmin drives me crazy. One hot, sticky day she had been a terror, and was asked to leave Living Stones for the day. With over 50 over kids, we could not keep up with Iasmin’s hitting and disruption. We walked her out to the front gate. She sat there, stairing back. Then she slowly walked back in.

My English class was in the church, where it was too hot to close the door. She came running in, making circles around or table, yelling and screaming as she went. With the sweat trickling down my back and Iasmin out of breath, I caught her and half-walked, half-pulled her out of the church, trying to reason with her. Iasmin was not to be reasoned with. She stood on her tiptoes and grabbed my neck, giving me sloppy kisses as I told her—begged her—to please go home and calm down. She spent the rest of English class making faces in the window. But she did stay outside.

Iasmin loves her little brother Moses. She takes care of him most days, since her mother is away or with “customers.” Iasmin was recently caught in an abandoned house with some older boys, doing just what she sees her mother do most nights.

**

Daniel’s father has leprosy. The disease in the Bible. The government will only give them disability payments when he is taking leprosy medication. But the medication is so strong that you can only take it for short times or it will kill you. When he has to stop, so does the money.

Leprosy is very treatable today, but if it gets past the beginning stages, it is incurable, and the affects are only able to be slowed down, not stopped or reversed. To try to help provide for his family, Daniel’s father works to harvest fruit when he is strong enough. The last time, he stepped on a thorn that went 4 inches into his foot. He didn’t feel a thing. While Brazil does have nationalized health care, it often takes a long time to see specific doctors, and the care isn’t always the best, especially for incurable cases such as advanced leprosy.

**

Emerson has three strikes against him: he likes being dirty, his family is poor, and his favorite color is pink. When his hair got long, his mom picked up scissors and started cutting. The result was a patchwork quilt. The kids erupted in laughter when he arrived at Living Stones. I walked him down to the barber shop. Ten minutes and $2 later, we walked back, with a normal hair cut.

Emerson hates taking showers, but he loves the attention. The smell got so bad that one of the Living Stones leaders took him to the shower we have in the church bathroom and scrubbed him down. He came out a lighter skin tone, beaming. The leader laughed and said, “I don’t know why he likes it so much, it took a scotch pad to get him clean this time!”

**

Standing at the bus stop in Recife, buying my ticket home, I saw a man. He was selling drinks and pipoca, roughly talking to a girl, about 12. He shoved her against the wall. She was begging and he was telling her to stay away. She mocked him: the thin girl in a sports bra, miniskirt, dirty hair, and barefeet. She said nothing. She walked away, and I watched her go.

The man continued yelling after her, “You dog! Dirty scum! Infecting everything you touch! Get out of here you animal!”

I was frozen to the ground. The bus pulled up, hiding the girl forever from my view. I had missed it. The opportunity to do something, anything. I had lost the chance to do something other than nothing.

I didn’t want to help. To become involved. I wanted to get on the bus and go home. I ached for her. I know I should not have let that man treat her like that—treat any human like that. But I was tired. Forgive me. I want to be the kind of person that steps up and speaks out and takes the time to be a voice in the darkness.

**

There are so many more stories. Most of them are too sad and tangled to tell. Life is complicated. Most of these stories are from 2008-11 when I was really working under two local leaders who poured their lives into these children. We would sit at the small wooden chairs after all the kids had left for the day, and they would tell me stories.

I made books where each child got a page, and then I would go up to each one, take their picture (and glue it on the page), and ask their birthday, favorite color, favorite food and so on. I then added (in English, to not embarrass anyone) the stories as they were told to me, or as we lived them over the next few years.

In 2023 I got to sit down with one of these ladies, who told me she still tried to check in on some of the kids (that specific program had been shut down in 2011, and I had gone to Cajueiro Claro to start a Living Stones program there with Flavio). We chatted and laughed about old stories, and cried over others. A large percentage of boys who had been on drugs in their teens were already dead. Some of the girls were doing really well, others were not. Most had children. It was really good and important for us to remember. It is really good and important for us to remember. It is an honor to remember these stories with you.