Railson & Heidi Gil
developing Brazilian community, building the body of Christ
Christian missionaries in Pará, northern Brazil.
Railson, native to Pará, is called to developing projects which exemplify the Kingdom in practical ways, specifically through communications development and digital integration (that is, making computer technology available to disadvantaged classes). Heidi is a pediatric nutritionist and English teacher from Oregon, USA. She enjoys putting the Gospel into practice as she counsels nutritionally needy families. Our gifts bring us into contact with people of all levels, which often leads to house visits and impromptu gatherings around the Bible. We love it when God surprises our unsuspecting visitors with the tangible sense of His presence! Here you will find our current and past newsletters as well as photos of our family and region. Have fun exploring our site!
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Nov 4
Things are a little better here (a few extra donations this month) so we are starting to feel our heads above water again.
The business Railson is registering has almost been approved, but he has to travel to Macapa again suddenly tonight to sign some more papers tomorrow. It is complicated!! Then he has to take a short course on how to be his own border agent. We feel like we are pulling a few tons of bricks behind us, but we are at least making some headway. We just need to get a financial flow going somehow.
My nutritionist friend from the hospital will be leaving in December and she wanted me to be able to take her position, BUT the city hall decided to have a Concursso (literally contest) to fill public positions (including the hospital jobs), and while I’d do pretty well on the test, you have to be Brazilian or Portuguese to get the job–go figure!! The nutrition clinic has brought in a whopping $287 since May, but I’ve met a lot of great people (problem is, I do too much for free, but then again, most really can’t pay much).
And then, I got my ID card. Yay! Except that in order to get my diploma revalidated (so that I can be an official nutritionist here and accept insurance reimbursements) I just found out that I have to cough up R$1738 to get the request started and another R$1738 to have the request completed (6m to a year later). Last year, it was a mere R$500. You see, corruption is everywhere! So, I will have to work without the legality, which isn’t very comfortable, but is fine as long as no one is keen on doing me any harm. As long as I’m paying taxes, the IRS won’t care. Even if I could offer the benefit of insurance coverage, the insurance company only pays $10.50 per consult! It’s laughable, but you can give 6 consults per patient a year, so it still makes a difference.
About the ID card. It’s not really the same as permanence, but it proves that I have a permanent visa stamped in my passport. In Brazil, one is required to have an ID card (mine being for foreigners), a CPF (social security) card, and a workers card. I finally have all three. But like I said, I am very disappointed that this does not translate into formal work in my area, being that it is so costly to get the nutritionists registration. Anyway, the process is like this (and I had to start it twice): request permanence, wait, return to get the visa stamped in your passport and solicit the preparation of the ID card, wait, return to pick up the ID card. Every time you read *wait* it’s like, 2-5 years! Nuts! But I did it!