My first area, it was a really poor area, probably one of the most dangerous areas. There was an alleyway in the favela, which is like the slums, that we would walk through every day to go to where we were teaching, you know, and the people there told us that we went through the alleyway and everybody was all on guard and they said that that morning they had found a body in the alleyway and that someone had been killed the night before.
My first area in Brazil, on my mission, we were climbing up this pretty dangerous area. It was in a neighborhood, they call them favelas. There was just like this big staircase that led up the hill in between houses and stuff. And I didn't really understand a whole ton of Portuguese, but we could hear people talking up at the top using their walkie-talkies. They basically were saying, hey, you got two guys in white shirts coming up, get ready. So then my companion, who was Brazilian, was like, you know what? We're actually not going to go this way. So then we left and later found out that that neighborhood and another neighborhood were in a war with each other. And so probably a good thing we didn't go up there.