The Best Christmas Ever

When our family gets together at Christmas, we eventually start remembering good times in Brazil. And after 50 plus years of marriage and three middle-aged sons (how did that happen?), we have a lot of memories. So somebody will say, “Remember Barra Velha?”And everybody smiles and says, “Oh yeah.”

Now for some context. We’re talking 1980 or ‘81, the middle of our third term. We were living in Curitiba, lovely capital city of Paraná state, and deeply involved in ministry. I was mission leader, director of the Alliance Bible Institute, and we were planting a new church on the other side of town. We both taught at the Bible Institute and Judy was also the registrar and librarian. And we had three growing sons to fill in the empty hours. In a word, we were over worked, under staffed and out of gas.

Our boys, Tom, Randy and Phil, were roughly 15, 12 and 6. Judy and I were in our late 30s and she was rail thin but slowly on the mend from severe acute and chronic gastritis. Knowing that our stress level was high, the struggle to maintain a balance between family and ministry seemed impossible. We just couldn’t get away from “the work;” we even lived in the “mission house;” so we decided to get away for Christmas. And we did.

A British Baptist couple in Curitiba owned a little beach house in Barra Velha, a pretty beach town south of Curitiba in Santa Catarina state, and we were able to rent it for a week. “Simple” describes well the place: three small bedrooms, a living/dining room, functional kitchen, and lots of shade on the porch where the hammocks hung, no frills but comfortable. On the other hand, it was just a block or so from the beach, which was “yuge,” as one might say today. Clean, pale yellow sand, pounding surf, and sun all day long because Christmas is summertime in Brazil. As soon as we got out of our little VW wagon, the boys got their bathing suits on, down to the beach and into the water. And that is what we did for about a week: swim, body surf, toast in the sun, easy-to-fix meals, read a good book, doze in the hammock and chill. Best of all, no people and no phone! Church, mission, Bible Institute – all that stuff was back in Curitiba and we were in Barra Velha, just us.

But wait, there’s more. Two teenage girls from our church had heard about our beach plans and said, “Oh, we would love to be there with you. Would it be OK if we just dropped in for Christmas?” Thinking that the odds that they could scratch up the cash for the bus ticket were slim, we said, “Oh sure, no problem” without a great deal of enthusiasm. So life had slowed down, rest and relaxation were having their desired effect on our taut nerves. Then wouldn’t you know it, Eliete and Edna showed up a day or so after we got there in time for Christmas, with our family ritual. Judy was nice and I was at least civil. We shifted the boys around so that the girls had a bedroom and we “shared” our Christmas.

One day some time after lunch, Randy wanted to go to the beach so Judy and Phil followed him down. Tom and I held down the hammocks and read and dozed. Life was good. Eventually, I figured I should go down to see how the family was faring, and when I got there, surprise, surprise. “You should have been here to see what happened” greeted me. So Judy, who had just come back from a long walk with Randy, gave me a summary: “I had just gotten here with Philip. The girls hadn’t arrived yet. Randy had been playing in the surf but was yelling for help as I arrived. The undertow had pulled him out to deep water and he was in trouble. So I ran into the surf, fell flat on my face, got up and pushed through the waves to get to him where I could just touch bottom. He grabbed me and got a strangle hold on me. I wasn’t able to get him back to the shallow water and felt helpless. I just prayed, ‘Lord, help us or we’re gone.’”

Meanwhile, back at the beach, Edna and Eliete arrived, saw what was happening, grabbed Phil who was running out to help Mom, and began to scream and set up a howl! Just as Judy’s strength was gone, three life guards came pounding through the surf, grabbed them from the clutches of the rip tide and hauled them back to safety. And our family was saved.

Chagrined at not being there when Judy and Randy were in such peril, I was grateful to God for the girls, and also very ashamed at my less-than-gracious attitude, I profusely thanked them for being there when I wasn’t. They made the difference between life and death for my wife and both sons. And as we celebrated the birth of our Savior, we sat around our “Christmas tree,” (the top of a scrawny little palm tree bedecked with cotton balls, cheap straw ornaments and strings of popcorn, which made Charley Brown’s tree look majestic), we realized that our best “present” that year was “presence.”

First, there was the presence of two young girls from poor homes whose Christmas likely would have been pretty slim. Secondly there was the presence of our family, having time to spend with the boys and them with us, to make lasting memories. And most importantly, the presence of the One who came to rescue us from the riptide of sin, from sure death and destruction, who gave us life and hope. For the Joneses, we were saved from tragic loss because we shared something precious, our Christmas. And the girls? Glad you asked, we still are “friends” through Facebook, and they are still “friends” with Jesus.