Crashing a Wedding and a Bike Ride

So I have yet again met another crazy brazilian SDA pastor. This particular pastor was one of my students. With him, it is more about improving his conversation skills, we spent most of the time just talking in English. Most times, I am hanging out with him and his family. His wife is a phenomenal cook so I loved going to their house because I knew I would be well fed.

This pastor was determined to take advantage of every opportunity to speak in English so whenever I was available he wanted to practice his English. In an effort to get some conversation practice, he invited me to a wedding he was officiating. I did know the people having the wedding but I decided to go anyways. I probably would never see these people again, anyway. The ceremony was scheduled to, start pretty late, at 7pm and there would be a reception after.

As with most weddings, this one did not start on time, but to this day I still don't understand why this wedding started late because everyone, including the bride and the groom, was there just standing around. When the wedding ceremony finally started it lasted probably 30 minutes. This wedding was very different for many reasons. To start off, the bride did not seen as happy as brides usually are. She was not sulking but she was not smiling either. It just looked like the wedding was a common day affair nothing spectacular or special. I also found the appearance of the bride somewhat different too. It looked like the bride just threw on whatever she could find. I am not trying to look down on the bride and her dress but I really feel that most women on their wedding day would wear something special. There was also no music. Nobody sang, there wasn't even a hymn from the hymnal. Pretty stranger if you ask me. At the reception it seemed obvious to me that more effort and planning was put into this part of the evening. They had pretty good food and they even had rented tables and chairs. They didn't have a cake though, another oddity for me.

At the end of the night, I had a better understanding of why the bride and other people at the church were so cavalier about the whole service and why the service and reception was atypical. The bride and groom had actually been living together for probably about 10 years, they even have 2 children. They however, had recently gotten baptized into the SDA church. So, the wedding ceremony was actually a ceremony to recognize their union in the church.

Several days later, the same pastor who officiated the ceremony wanted to show me one of the project the church co-partnerships with the Mayor's Office in a close-by city. The catch was I had to go with him by motor cycle because his car was having not working. At first, I was not too sure because I saw how motorcyclists rode in the city and I saw how reckless some of the drivers were. I was worried about getting hurt and possibly losing my life. But then I remembered that the driver was a pastor, he had to have some value for life since he is a pastor. Plus, I really did not want to miss the opportunity to say I had a motorcycle ride in Brazil, so I decided to go.

The morning of the ride, I was not sure what to wear. My biggest question was, should I wear long sleeves because of the breeze? I decided to wear short sleeves because it would soon be hot anyway and opted against wearing my glasses. When the pastor showed up, he was dressed like a biker. He had a leather jacket and his helmet matched his outfit. I immediately felt unprepared for the ride, but I nothing else to wear and the pastor was in a rush to get back to Goiania before lunch. I had to wear what I was wearing and hope for the best.


The ride through the city was fine but a little scary at times, because we were going sometimes a little faster than I would have liked and we were sometimes a little too close to other cars for my liking. Several times I actually felt was was going to hit my knees on the cars we passed by, but thank God I was injury free. One thing about many of the places, I have been in Brazil is the presence of sleeping policemen on the main road. I know these help to decrease the speed of the drivers but once while we were riding the pastor forgot that there was a sleeping policeman and he had to brake suddenly. That was not too nice of an experience to say the least.


When we got on the highway, I was cold because we were climbing a little and there was a lot of breeze. Another thing was the helmet I was wearing did not have the usually glass/plastic which protects your eyes from the breeze and I didn't have my glasses so the breeze was just blowing in my eyes. Fortunately it was only a 40 minute drive so it was not too long.

The visit to near-by city Senador de Canador was a nice one. We visited the Projeto Amar which the SDA church runs with the Mayor's Office of the city. This is a school for at-risk children. I met some of the children and the staff. They were so happy to have visitors. The visit reminded me of the work I had done in Mimoso. After we visited a project run by the Mayor's wife. It is a program for women who are getting married or are recently married. The women are taught basically how to run and take care of a home. They are taught how: to cook several typical Brazilian dishes, to clean, to iron clothes and other basic household skills. The program is housed in a very cool building which has several rooms set up like a house, with the different furniture and appliances. These rooms serve as models for the students.

All in all, I had a good time exploring several parts of Goiania and Senador de Canador on a Motorcycle. I was not as dangerous and scary as I thought it would be. I especially enjoyed getting a better view of the mountains and scenery. I felt really close to nature and the outdoors. I would definitely go for a bike ride again for an even longer distance provided that I have a jacket and a better helmet.