Letter to Lisa, 1969

Dear Lisa,

Grandma Biel wrote that you are sick.  I'm very sorry to hear that.  I hope you and your family are better now.  I'm on vacation now until the middle of February.  In Brazilian school I passed to third grade.  Do you have a school picture you can send me?  We had a storm which took some tiles off of our roof.  Many trees were blown over.  Two people died because of the storm.  I stayed for four days at friends homes while Mama and Daddy were traveling.

Merry Christmas

Rachel

Letter to Marian and Frank, December, 1969

 Rachel and Charles Biel

Iguazu Falls, Brazil, 1969

My Aunt Marian kept many of the letters my mother, Donna Biel, wrote to her.  She returned them in 2010.  Most are recorded here.  They were not entered in chronological order, so the best way to view them is by year, found in the index on the sidebar.

Dear Marian and Frank,

I had this letter written before Thanksgiving but never got any further.  We are busy with Christmas poems for Sunday School, two plays which include youth and adults.  This time of the year it is difficult to start practice early as the school year ends in December and many are taking final exams, but for those who did well all year, they don't have to take final exams or at least, not in the subjects where they did well.

This year we had Thanksgiving at our church with 90 people present.  Almost all who came have children that go to the mission school here.  Last year it was held at the mission school with 60 and it was crowded.  The school children gave an enjoyable program.  Of those present, one other couple are Lutheran, some Baptist and most are from the United Missionary Society.

The first week in December we were gone for four days to the beach where we had two days of business meetings with our mission representative from our Board.  Rachel and Charles stayed with members of our church.  We were not to take our children along, but took Helen and there was one little girl for her to play with.  We enjoyed seeing the other missionaries but had to travel one day to get there and another to get back.  On the way back, Helen had a fever and was vomiting. 

Helen will have her tonsils out on the 30th of this month.  We have a doctor who is a specialist in child anesthesia.  She will be at a Catholic hospital run by Germans.  Helen recently got over a light case of the chicken pox.  Last month she had the mumps.  Charles recently had German measles with a high fever for one day.  When he had the mumps, he was in bed for almost three weeks due to re-swelling and fever.  Rachel has been very healthy and hasn't missed a day of school.

The children continue to be much larger than those of their age.  In the small mission school, Rachel has to sit with the 4th graders who are her size and her classmates, the 2nd graders, sit in smaller desks in front of her.  Grades 2-5 are taught by one teacher in a large room.  There are fifteen-  five of these are second graders.  Rachel's teacher says that she is reading very well. 

A few days before Christmas Charles graduates from the nursery-kindergarten school.  Hopefully in August he will start first grade at the mission school.

In January we will go to a family camp called "word of Life" which all but two of the mission families from our church will attend.  Some of the families I hadn't seen for three years as we went on furlough, then they did when we got back and we live too far away to make a visit unless we take a vacation.

Cliff continues to travel often.  Recently, a week at the Bible Institute in Cianorte, three days to a pastor's meeting in another state.  This last month was one of confirmation of nine in the country church, 11 in the city church and almost the same number in a neighboring city plus a class to be done this month at a chapel where he goes twice a month.  For five weeks we had a girl from our country church doing confirmation as family is moving soon.  When Cliff was traveling, I had three lessons a day with her.  It seemed like there wasn't much time left after preparing for women's Bible studies, taking and getting the children from school, going to sewing class for two hours every day.

At the end of September, I went to a four day retreat for women held in Londrina,  a two hour drive from here.  Two women from the country church and three from here went.  It was the first retreat held in this area- we had 65 women.  It went well except for problems of language as some older women understood only German and others understood only Portuguese.  We feel that German was used too much and hope they will gradually will use it less as the youth prefer Portuguese and soon these will be a part of our women's group.  In the morning our Bible studies were divided into groups of Portuguese and German and the rest of the program was given in either language.

In the end of October, we had our yearly festival in the church with dinner of barbecued steak and potato salad, cakes sold in the afternoon plus a bazaar of clothes.  This year everything was sold.  Now with this money plus money that the members have pledged we plan to finish the church tower and put in bells.  I helped with the bazaar held for Charles's school.  They are working on the construction of the Japanese Methodist church where services are held in the same building.

We have applied for a three month furlough from June to August in 1971.  Then we plan to come back to Maringa.  Time seems to be going very fast and before we know it, we will be visiting with you.  Soon two of our neighboring missionaries will be gone on furlough and the only American of our mission nearby will be Gaylord Grant in Londrina.  We have become good friends with the German missionaries in Campo Mourao, an hour drive from here.  The only other American missionary in this state where we have our church is a nine hour drive from here and the rest are 12-30 hours drive in other states.  This state was where our mission work started but now that we are a part of the Lutheran Church of Brazil and many of our mission churches don't exist or only remain only as preaching points, we can go to wherever we receive a call.

Cliff has become a good photographer.  He takes photos for weddings and confirmations and makes the copies that they want, thus he didn't have time to get our pictures done yet from the vacation in July. 

 Wedding at Querencia do Norte

We went to see the waterfalls of Iguacu which are higher and greater in volume than the Niagara Falls.  They are in our state, a seven hour drive, mostly on dirt roads.

Sete Quedas with Kathy Fedde

By the time you get this, Christmas will be over.  We hope you will have had a joyous one.

We haven't gotten your new address.  How do you like your new home?  I suppose that by now, Erik is a busy little toddler, getting into things.  Does he walk yet?  Here there is never a dull moment. 

If things don't go right, Rachel says that I don't love her.  She's very emotional.  At times she tries my patience.

It seems like a long time since we have heard from you, but I realize you could say the same to us.  Hope you are fine and will write soon.

Love,

Donna and Joey

Letter to Marian and Frank, June 1, 1969

 Leadership classes in Londrina, Parana, Brazil, 1960's.

My Aunt Marian kept many of the letters my mother, Donna Biel, wrote to her.  She returned them in 2010.  Most are recorded here.  They were not entered in chronological order, so the best way to view them is by year, found in the index on the sidebar.

Dear Marian and Frank,

we have had some cold weather.  We had a few days down to 5 centrigrade in the house, then it got quite warm with 5 days of rain in a week.  I appreciate the clothes dryer that I have.  I don't know of any Brazilians that own clothes dryers but most of my neighbors could afford them if they wanted them.

Rachel has finished the first grade Calvert school with me.  She has learned to write very well at the Brazilian school which she goes to every morning for five days and will go until the end of June.  In August she starts second grade at the small mission school here of the United Missionary Church.  It is a five minute drive from here.  A Baptist missionary family who lives near us will take turns with us to take their boy and Rachel to the school.  There are a about 30 students- the high school is a correspondence course.  Charles goes in the morning to the school he and Rachel went to last year.  It is a school  directed by a Japanese missionary of the Methodist church.  He is busy practicing writing numbers up to 10 and playing with the boy next door.  Next March, he will start first grade in a Brazilian school and if the Mission school here doesn't have first grade, I will teach him (as of now that mission doesn't have any children his age so they won't have first grade unless a new family comes with someone in his grade.)

Helen has three friends that she plays with, then they go to nursery school in the afternoon.  Of course, she thinks she can go to school, too.  She seldom takes a nap for then we can't get her to sleep until 10 p.pm.  She insists on dressing herself and screams if I help her but yet, though she tries to be grown-up, she still isn't completely toilet trained.  We have many cars that zoom by our house.  It seems like I spend a lot of time watching the children and yet Charles ran across without looking and a car barely missed him.

Cliff is busy planning for activities in July when there is a month off in the school year.  For the first 11 days, he will be in Londrina, two hours from here for Bible camp and for a course for teachers in Sunday School. 

 Mauro and Edilma at Leadership school in Londrina

Cliff is the representative for youth work in the Northern part of this state.  He went to a meeting in another state to plan various types of Bible camps.  One is on music, another on Evangelism and another on the Church's social responsibility.  Some camps are too far away for our youth.  After that meeting four pastors from around here and the director of the hostel in Londrina were at our house for dinner and an afternoon meeting for planning the Bible camps. 

 Square Dancing at the Leadership School

Londrina, Parana, Brazil

Last week Cliff was gone for three days to a meeting in the Southern part of the state.  It was a nine hour drive one way.  Each church was to take two representatives.  One of our representatives was waiting in a nearby town for Cliff.  While he was crossing a street he was hit by a car.  Cliff spent the afternoon with him in the hospital.  He was taken to the hospital unconscious, but fortunately, the head wounds were not critical and he is recovering with a couple of broken bones.

This Thursday we will have women from neighboring cities and I'm sure there will be a good turnout of our group to hear the wife of the pastor who lived for 27 years in a nearby city of Rolandia and formed most of the churches in this area.  Unfortunately, I won't be able to understand it for even though the pastor's wife has been in Brazil for 30 years, she speaks only German.  This weekend Cliff has exchanged parishes with a German pastor.  They do it once every two months in order have German services in our parish.  The pastor and his wife frequently stop here when traveling.  Their oldest daughter, almost six, came along this time to play with Rachel.

For one month, Manuel from our church in Londrina, lived with us.  He is a 25 year old man who was waiting for a work permit in Germany.  He is not of German background.  He has spent one year in the State's on scholarship.  While here, he helped his sister teach English at the Fisk school.  We enjoyed having him with us.  His mother is helping care for the missionary children at the the hostel in Campinas.

A few days ago, Cliff was 33 years old.  We bought him a shirt a month ago.  He acted as if the present were a surprise but later said that Helen had showed him where I had hid it the day it was bought.  In spite of getting older and Cliff is much grayer now, we are continuing to be blessed with good health.

When do we get some pictures of your children?  These pictures we are sending we made four for each brother and sister, Aunt Martha, two sponsoring churches, for our parents and scrapbooks of ours- it came to over 100 pictures.  It certainly comes out much cheaper doing it ourselves and we can blow up the best part of the picture.

Today it was 42 degrees at 7 a.m. and 50 degrees in the house.  We heated the kitchen and Joey heats his office.  A cold spell usually lasts three to four days.  This kitchen has a door on it, leading to a hallway which goes to other rooms.  Our other house in Loanda didn't have a door going to the hallway, so we used a bedspread to keep heat in the kitchen.

While making this letter and developing pictures, we caught six mice in the oven- all small.  As soon as we got one, we threw it out and used the same bait.  Since then, I caught two more and had gotten three big ones on a previous day- total of eleven.  They seem to like the oven in the cold weather-  the nest must be underneath the grill but we can't find anything.

All for now,

Love,

Donna and Joey

Letter to Marian and Frank, February 5, 1969

My Aunt Marian kept many of the letters my mother, Donna Biel, wrote to her.  She returned them in 2010.  Most are recorded here.  They were not entered in chronological order, so the best way to view them is by year, found in the index on the sidebar.


Dear Marian and Frank,

We have read in the TIME magazine that the peak of the Hong Kong flu was in January.  We hope that those of you who had it have recovered.  There have been a few cases here but since it is summer, it has been no more than a cold.  So the newspaper says.

We had a nice rest at Bible Camp for our missionaries.  Bible students who are on vacation and work there during the summer take care of the children in the morning while we had Bible studies or listened to lectures.  In the afternoon there was swimming.  There were volley and basketball courts.  Cliff and men played against youth at a youth Bible Camp 15 miles from our camp.  The food was excellent but we had to wait up to 45 minutes to be served after we sat down and it was late by then- 1:30 for lunch and 7:30 for supper.  A couple of times Helen fell asleep before the food came.  There wasn't room for all of the families on the main grounds so four families had to be 1 and a half mile away.  We were the only ones with very small children and it was inconvenient as we only returned there just before supper.  One day, Rachel was sick with a fever and the next day she had diarrhea.  The camp is located in the mountains by Sao Paulo and was cool in the evening and excellent for sleeping.

On our way home we had car trouble and spent a total of 7 hours at a gas station in the country while Cliff went to a city to get different radiator.  It had a clean bathroom and eating place.  We got home at two in the morning.  We had a 20 year old youth with us that was going from the Missouri Lutheran school in Sao Paulo to near our city.  We met this youth when we went to visit missionaries of the Missouri church that are studying Portuguese in Sao Paulo.  One family is from Brownton, Minnesota and have met my sister, Olive, who lives there.  They spent part of one day with us at Bible Camp.

The church in New York where Cliff interned wrote and asked him to find a work of art to be presented at the end of April for churches in the Eastern States that have been promoting missions and that have mission interest.  It was hard to find something but Cliff got a primitive art of Jesus and disciples around a triangular table with flowers in the middle.  Above them is a curtain with gaudy ribbons to pull the curtain back.  The colors are vivid and the painting is simple but we found several things that are meaningful such as a table shape that could signify the Trinity, flowers for the ressurection, and the curtain could represent the sin which separates us from God and the red curtain could signify Jesus's blood which took away our sin, etc.  They wanted to spend $50-$80, but it cost $130.  Now we are going to wrap it for air mail and hope we can send it or else find an American going there soon.

While at Bible camp, we had a birthday party for 4 children that had birthdays that week.  I went to the nearest city and bought things to go with the cake that was made at the camp.  One girl was 2, another 5, Charles 5 and Rachel 7 and besides them, two adults and one teenager had birthdays. 

Since we got back two weeks ago, we have had someone for dinner almost every day.  The first few days other missionaries came through on their way to their homes, then a Brazilian boy from our former parish came here for three days and traveled two days with Cliff when he had services, and other Brazilians, mostly youth, have come on the other days.  We had Vacation Bible School here last week with about 26 children.  Next week it is in our country church.  This week Cliff is gone to another state for meetings on Evangelism.  He is near a beach and we could have gone along but I didn't think it would be much fun if the children couldn't be with cliff, as he has meetings all day and in the evening.  In two weeks he will be gone for 5 days for Bible camp in Londrina which is the time that many Brazilians celebrate Carnival before Lent starts.

The last two weeks we have been going to a dentist who is our neighbor.  Cliff had most work done- one tooth had an abscess and had been hurting but most dentists were on vacation.  Rachel and Charles had their teeth coated with fluoride.  I had some work done and Charles had two large and two small cavities.  In the States, Charles was given medicine to make him sleepy so here he almost didn't let the dentist work but with medicine on the gums he didn't feel the shots but it was hard to convince him of this.

Rachel starts Brazilian school in two weeks and we will continue with Calvert for English.  For her school she needs a white duster to wear over her clothes so that all the children will be dressed alike- some schools use uniforms. In August, we were told the American School plans to have second grade so we can send her then.  During vacation we have gotten some library books from the American School.

It is still very hot- 90 to 95 every day, but I have started to think of winter clothes as May last year was our coldest month.  I have taken apart some of my skirts that haven't been used for years and am having them made for slacks for the girls.  The many dresses we brought along for the girls are out of style for they don't use dresses with full skirts that tie in the back and for this hot weather, straight dresses are cooler but with material from full skirts, dresses can be made.

I read in the newspaper from my hometown that a girl who I at times babysat for when I was in high school, was elected as one of the representatives of the Lutheran Church of America for a meeting to be held in Brazil in 1970 of the Lutheran World Federation.  We hope that she will be able to visit us in our home.

We have given three male puppies away but have Luci, a white female and the mother.  Last week, a friend of Rachel's gave us a kitten but it doesn't like the dogs and has had to be rescued from a tree, the roof, and inside the attic of a bedroom.

We got pictures of Ricky and Shannon.  When do we get one of Eric and Lisa?  We have to try to get some pictures taken soon.

Love,


Donna and Joey

Letter to Marian and Frank, March 23, 1969

 Mom, Charles, Rachel, Velvet and Helen

Dear Santa,

Your presents arrived safely and we thank you very much.  We paid just $.50 duty on it.  the children were thrilled to get the package.  I just finished reading the book you sent and enjoyed it.  I often saw Orthodox Jews in New York.  I learned a lot from the book and thought if only we as Christians would spend that much time studying the Bible!  It was very impressive to see how much time and effort they put into study of their holy books, however, I can't imagine the Jew of today doing as much.  Joey hasn't had time to read it yet as it came 2 days ago.

Last Tuesday Helen started vomiting in the morning but didn't vomit until night time, but then I called a doctor as I was worried of dehydration.  We are having another heat spell- 92 to 94 every day, very dry, and terribly dirty.  The doctor said she had pus on her tonsils.  I gave her 2 shots and other medications.  She is fine now but we can't get her to eat so I'm giving her Vitamin C orally.  She had worms and took medicine for that.  In all, she has lost about 2 pounds - her face and abdomen aren't so chubby anymore.  She likes to go around singing, "I'm a little flower of Jesus, open your mouth to sing and close your eyes to pray."  She dearly loves the 4 cats we have now- acquired most of them this last month.

Charles is busy getting into everything imaginable.  He is terribly stubborn.

Rachel enjoys the Brazilian school from 8 to 11:30 the from 1to 3 she studies with me.  In 2 more months we will be done with her correspondence course then in August she will go to the American school.

 Mom home schooling Rachel.

A lady in our church teaches sewing.  I told her starting in July that I would like to study sewing.  It would be 2 hours every day- hopefully I wouldn't have to go more than 2 to 3 months.  I hope to make some shorts on my own but I need more practice.

 Mom sewing.

For a week after carnival I was without a maid as she ran away with the husband of the lady who cleaned the church on Saturdays.  They were neighbors.  A neighbor lost her maid during carnival when she ran away with her boyfriend.  Now I have a married lady who for $20 a month works 7:30 to 4:30 or 5:00.  She lives far away so if we want to go out at night (which is very seldom as Joey has most meetings or church services at night) then a girl from our church will come.

Today I took the children to see "Uncle Tom's Cabin".  It was over their heads but I tried to explain some of it to Rachel.  Joey just got back from church services out of town- 9:30 PM and decided to go to the movie- first one we have gone to in about 4 months.

We just got a letter from Harvey.  He says Frank has been traveling a lot.  Sounds like there will be quite a flood this year.  When we were home there wasn't hardly any snow.

Starting tomorrow a 23 yr old Brazilian lad will start to live with us for 1.5 months while he awaits his papers to go to Germany for a year.  He is not of German descent but has spent one year in the States and now wants to go to Germany.  He is from our church in Londrina and his sister teaches English here in this city.  They both speak English very well as she lived in Londrina with some of our school teachers.

Love,

Donna and Joey

 Donna Biel