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[Sister Alvear]

Sister A O Holmes has been gone quite a few years, but this is part of a testimony she gave at Bishop Bryan Taylor’s church after one of her travels to Brazil. Thought you would enjoy readying this.

Traveling With the Missionaries
(Excerpts taken from a tape of Sister A.O. Holmes at Brother Bryan Taylor's Church)
Brother and Sister Alvear met Sister George and I at the Airport at Sao Paulo, we drove about eighty-five miles to where live. That night we went to church. "They've got such a burden for souls; you don't get many rest nights with them." This was Saturday night. Sunday morning, we went to church, Sunday night we went to another church.
Monday morning, they said, "Everybody pack up your clothes, we are going to service across town tonight, then after service we will leave for Bahia in a little Volkswagen bus twelve years old. A little minivan. They had the motor over-hauled to take this trip. It was so rusted under the bottom that they had to take some steel and reinforce it, because the bottom was falling out. I thought, I don't have much confidence in these Brazilian body men. Because I hadn't tried them, and I thought, I hoped the fixed that good under there, because we would be going through some high mountains, and twelve of us got in that minivan!
We went to this little church and two received the Holy Ghost that night. Monday, I was more tired than I was when I got there on Saturday. So, on the way to church Monday night, I said to Sister Alvear, "Looks like it would be better for us to come home after church and sleep then leave in the morning. Sister Alvear said, "Sister Holmes, there is no way we could make it there on time."
I don't know why, but from the time Brother Jose had gone to Bahia, I had it in my mind that it was only about four hundred miles. I don't know where I go that idea, but I thought, my it isn't going to take so long to go four hundred miles, but I didn't say anything else. So, after church that night, we started out for Bahia.
Before we went to church that evening, Sister Alvear went to the grocery store, and bought some of that bread. (They don't wrap the bread up, I've seen truck loads pulled up to the stores to deliver, not a wrapper on it, just in a truck.) So, they bought some of this bread, some sardines, potted meat, crackers, and things.
Anyway, we traveled that night until the driver got sleepy, and we stopped in front of a big old bus station. (The bus business is great in Brazil, because so many people don't have cars. Out of the bus station in one city, five thousand buses leave every day. So, when you get down there, you are going to meet a lot of buses, and they are going as fast as they can around them curves. Some of them don't make it, and you see them keeled over!)
When we stopped, they got out and laid down on the benches and tables out there. I thought, it won't be long until the morning and we'll get there. So, I didn't get out, I just sat in the van. The rest of them got out and laid down. So, in a little while, we were started on again. We traveled the rest of the night.
About 10:30 or 11:00 the next day, they stopped in front of a little bus station, and it had a little table out in front, and they spread the lunch. They put the potted meat on that bread, took crackers and put those sardines in them, with the tail of the sardine hanging out of the crackers! We, Americans are so spoiled! I looked at that and thought, my stomach feels so good, I think it would feel better not to put that in it. I got a burden to fast! They said, "You're not going to eat, Sister Holmes." I said, "Don't seem like I'm too hungry."
So, I didn't eat. I thought, we’ll be there after a while. We traveled all day, then after it got in the evening, they stopped at these bus places. They don't know what a screen is over there, I do not care how nice the house is. I don't guess they even got any screens, and some of those places, to tell the truth, it doesn't look clean. When the others would buy their food, I thought, my stomach feels so good, and I don't believe I'll put that in it." So then it got night and we were still going. Now this is Tuesday night, and I got so hungry, oh I got so hungry.
Sister Alvear was driving now, and she looked at me and said, "Sister Holmes, you must be getting hungry." I said, "Well a little while ago, I was sitting here thinking about some people I heard about years ago, when I was just a girl. People that would tramp through the country, and I heard about this tramp, this hobo, he walked up to a door late in the evening and said, "Lady, I am so hungry, I don't know where I'm going to sleep tonight." And I said, "I was just riding around here thinking about what the hobo said." Sister Alvear said, "I don't know what you are going to eat, but I know where you are going to sleep tonight, you are going to sleep in this van.
We hadn't gone far until Sister Alvear said, "That looks like a good place to eat." We stopped and it was a real clean place, and I just filled up! So, we rode the rest of that night, and Wednesday until three o'clock Wednesday evening. We hadn't had a bath since Monday. They had sent Brother Jose a telegram to meet us at this little town park between 3 and 4 o'clock on Wednesday, and that is why we couldn't stop to sleep.
He came just a smiling, even though he lived sixty miles from there, and his family was at home, he had come to meet us there, and he had a house meeting out in the country announced for us that night.
Well, they rented us some rooms in what they call a hotel. Of course, the bathroom was outside, and the showers were outside. It had a little cot which looked mighty good to me. We got refreshed, a shower and some clean clothes.
Brother Jose got in the van (that made thirteen of us). When we started, I said, "How far is it?" They said, "It's about twenty miles, that is all." They don't have to have roads just trails. So, we got going a little before dark, we went as far as we could go, and ran into water. (It had been raining, which is very unusual. Sometimes, they nearly starve to death for water up there, because it goes for months without rain.) But it had been raining, and the roads were flooded. We stopped, and Brother Alvear said, "That’s too deep, that would drown out the van, so we can't cross that."
Brother Jose rolled trousers leg up, got out and ran across that water, and was out of sight. I said, "I wonder where he is going?" Sister Alvear said, "Brother Alvear, I won't be afraid to wade it, and Sister George said she wouldn't either." About that time a man passed by, and Brother Alvear called him and said, "Is there any snakes in that water?" that man said, "Well, I'll just tell you the truth, it's full of poisonous snakes." I said, "I'm staying on this side of Jordan."
Sister Alvear said, (you know she has been a missionary for a long time, and Sister George had her mind made up before she left home that she was to be one) They said, "Let us go, let us wade it, and go on across." Brother Alvear said, "Nobody's getting into the water." And I thought, I am so glad that you are the head of this house! That sounded so good when he said, 'Nobody's getting into the water.'
We thought that Brother Jose was going over there to tell the people we couldn't come. But we sat there, and we waited and waited. In a little while he came back, and he brought a donkey hooked to a little cart. It wasn't very big. Some little boards to build the floor, and some switches to build the sides. This man that was with him that had the mule and cart, and he had got a sinner man to bring a pickup truck on the other side of the deep water to pick us up, and they let the mule take us across.
I had a camera around my neck, and Sister George had a camera around her neck, and about the time she was getting ready to get into the buggy, she snapped a picture. It was dark out there, you couldn't see a thing, and I thought, I'll take Sister Alvear and Sister George's picture. They had already got up in there, and they told me to get in, and they would take us three across first. We filled up the buggy! I flashed my camera, and when I did, this man that owned the mule said, "Tell them not to take a picture, or the mule will run away." I thought, Had I known that I would have been taking that mule's picture.
We got in, and it wasn't like getting into a limousine, either. We had a little hill to go down right before you got into the water. We made it down the hill, but we were too heavy for the mule to pull. The man that owned the truck brought a little light to see how to get across the water, and the man that owned the mule had a stick in his hand, and he had the reins in his hand, and they were talking, "Jiby, Jiby, Jiby." I couldn't understand a word that they were saying, He started beating that mule to try to make him pull us. It wasn't the mule's fault. We were too heavy! The mule was doing everything he could.