2,500 mile journey to temple in Brazil

By Janet Wilcox
Contributing writer
With temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints dotting the earth in these days, it’s hard to imagine the sacrifice that early members in foreign countries had as they traveled to a temple in the 1990’s. 
Blanding dentist Andrea Twitchell recalls the distance, time and expense that her family and early members in Manaus, Brazil had as they set out into the middle of the Amazon rainforest to go to a temple for the first time. 
Her parents were converts to the church.  Her mother was from South America and immigrated to escape the dictatorship that existed in Chile. She found a job in Manaus about the same time her future husband arrived from southern Brazil in the 1980’s.
Members of the church in Manaus yearned to go to the temple but there were no good roads for much of the 2,500-mile journey to the nearest temple in São Paulo. The trip was expensive and often dangerous.
For most members, going to the temple was outside of their reality. Despite these challenges, mission president Claudio R. M. Costa worked with local members, including Pedro Acosta, to organize a caravan to the temple. 
Many families made financial sacrifices as they saved for the trip. Air fare was too expensive to consider and even bus and boat were still very expensive.
Many saved for months to afford the trip. Some sold their worldly belongings or took extra work to afford passage.
Finally, on November 25, 1992, 102 Latter-day Saints embarked on the treacherous, weeklong journey, traveling first in three boats and then in three buses. They ran out of water during the first leg of their voyage and the river water was too polluted to drink.
Their solution was to gather on the deck of the boat and pray. Leonardo Arevalo remembered that “heavy clouds gathered, the sky grew dark, and it began to pour.”
They collected the water in pans and buckets, the passing storm miraculously providing enough fresh water to last until they reached the next city.      
At various cities along the route, members of local branches provided meals for the travelers. The branch in Ji-Paraná welcomed them with a sign that read “Sacrifice Brings Blessings.”
Those in the caravan gratefully recognized that these members had sacrificed to help them reach the temple. Through these experiences, members of the caravan sensed they were an integral part of a larger community of Saints in Brazil.
On the sixth day, the travelers erupted with cheers when they reached São Paulo. After spending an entire week at the temple performing ordinances for themselves and for their ancestors, they could testify that “sacrifice brings blessings.”
Twenty years and many caravans later, the Church dedicated a temple in Manaus (a city of 2.5 million people) in 2012. That first caravan will forever symbolize the sacrifices that Saints in Brazil are willing to make to claim their temple blessings.
There are now ten temples in Brazil and 14 more under construction or in the planning stage. Currently there are 1,525,436 members in Brazil. This makes Brazil the country with the third-largest Church membership worldwide, behind the United States and Mexico.