My First Month and Nova Jerusalem
After this “grand” entrance at The Children of God, my first month seemed like a dream. We lived in a small apartment with a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom. We were 6 boys and 1 Spanish girl, and I was the oldest one, 24 years old. The boys were from various nationalities being at least one from Angola (apart from me). All the boys slept in the living room and the girl slept in the room. |
| About one year after I joined |
She would wake us up in the morning by playing usually the same tape starting with the typical song “Good morning God’s children, take a look outside, it’s a brand new morning, it’s a new life”. The girl was called Nova Jerusalem1 (There was a custom of choosing new names and that was the name she chose for herself). She was cheerful, had long curly black hair and a happy disposition. After a slight meal we would all leave to the streets of the Porto, two by two, to approach people and hand them the so called MO Letters and ask for a donation. (MO Letter: short publications that the founder of the Children of God, David Berg – also called Moses David – wrote to members and the general public).
I often went out with Nova Jerusalem and somehow I kind of hid behind her communicability with people. It wasn't hard for me to deliver the MO Letters, but asking for a donation was another story. I resisted it, but I had to swallow my pride and do the best I could.
At noon we would make a break and get together again in a simple restaurant downtown for lunch. My lunch was usually accompanied by a glass of wine. We would use some money from the donations we had received to pay the lunch – nothing fancy. I remember that on the very first day, after the lunch, I ordered a coffee and with the coffee I craved a cigarette. I looked around and no one was smoking so I just decided to forget about it. Well, that was the last time I craved a cigarette. It was that easy to stop smoking, because for me it was a whole new lifestyle with new friends and new way of looking at things so it wasn't hard to leave the addiction for cigarettes.
I want to tell you something funny that happened to me that day just before lunch. When I first went out to the streets to deliver leaflets a policeman suspected I was either drugged out or peddling drugs on the streets. So he stopped me and told me to get into the police car parked close by to be questioned at the Police Station. When Nova Jerusalem saw what was happening she came and got into the car also. And off we went to the Police Station.
At the Police Station she wasted no time, she got all the policemen together and told them about Jesus and before long we were all holding hands in a large circle to pray and ask Jesus to come into our lives. No wonder I liked her. I was a bit in love with her but I couldn't even think of having a romance because that would be a distraction. The most I ever got from her was a peck on the lips with the words "I love you!" It got me on cloud nine, but that happened one or two weeks later.
One day Nova Jerusalem and I hitch hiked out of Porto. When it came time for lunch she suggested to enter in a restaurant and ask for a meal. I thought, "Oh no, not this please. Now we’ll ask for food as regular beggars? "I tried to dissuade her but to no avail. We entered the restaurant and she asked to speak with the owner. When the man came, I kind of hid behind her while she explained to him our missionary work and asked if he could be so kind as to give us a meal. He cheerfully accepted our request and told us to please sit down and order our meal. I was so embarrassed that would almost have preferred that he'd said NO, but I admired him for his good will in the end showed him my thankfulness.
She would spend a lot of time with me, answering my many questions while reading together dozens of MO letters and related portions of Bible. I was dazzled with the wisdom of the words we were reading; it was like I was satisfying an accumulated hunger of years of searching. It was a wonderful month I spent in that little apartment. All people were special to me and often I would also go out on our witnessing trips with some of the boys and it was at least fun. We became very good friends, but the truth is that I never saw any one of them again. A couple of them went back to their homes and others moved on to other countries, including Nova Jerusalem.
Nova Jerusalem accepted an invitation to move to Lisbon and I felt a bit helpless. This beautiful apartment that gave me so many fond memories closed and I was invited to a Training Centre for new members in Espinho (30 Km away) where things were a bit more down to earth, there were more rules and less spontaneity. The express train Porto-Lisbon would pass a few feet away from the back wall of our house with a deafening ROAR which surprisingly I got used to after a few weeks.
Of course I also have fond memories of the people there, we were about 10, and the couple responsible for the Centre was Branch (Swedish) and Vida (Spanish) with whom I lived later on in Brazil.
Well, I guess it was necessary for me to learn that life cannot be just inspiration and excitement; I also had to learn tenacity and perseverance to keep alive the dream that it is possible to live a life of joy, freedom and sharing.
The dream is still alive.
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