In the summer of 2003 Ann Gel Fairlie reluctantly allowed her two teen-age children to travel to Brazil with the youth group from their church. They weren't traveling as vacationers, tourists or students. They were going to Nova Lima, Brazil, a suburb of Belo Horizente, as missionaries.

In a time when most parents are afraid to send their children to school by themselves in the morning, Fairlie allowed her then 18-year-old son Conrad and 15-year-old daughter Helen to enter a world where the most affluent homes are without walls and roofs, slums are controlled by drug lords, and 10- 12-year-olds with hand guns traffic drugs and patrol the city from rooftops to protect their turf.

Fairlie became so fascinated and inspired by her children's stories of their work in Brazil that she accompanied the youth group this past summer as a housemother. She recently talked about her children's journey, her decision to go and how her two-week stint as a missionary changed her life.

Q. How did you come to terms with allowing your children to travel without you last year to those crime-infested, unstable areas of Brazil?
A. I know the people who organize these missions and I believed they would never put my children in harm's way. Last year five adults accompanied 12 teen-agers. But more than that, my children talked to me about their desire to help children who are less fortunate. I've always told them that it's important for children and adults to get out and help others, and that's what the trip was all about.

Q. How did your trip to Brazil originate?
A. My children and I are members of The Lamb of God Church in Montclair, a nondenominational community that has an incredible youth group, and Conrad and Helen are members. When they returned from their trip last year they told me it was a life-altering experience that they wanted to share with me. When I saw their photographs and heard their stories I wanted to help those poverty-stricken Brazilian children, too, so I volunteered to go as a housemother.

Q. Who funds these trips?
A. The kids all raise the money to pay their own way. My son is an artist so he auctioned his paintings while my daughter, a photographer, pasted pictures on small wooden boxes, laminated them and then sold them. I remember the night she sat at the dining room table to count the money she earned for the trip. She needed $700 and raised $707.

Q. What kind of problems did your group run into?
A. It was disastrous when we arrived. The place we stayed in was way out in the jungle--total isolation. The nearest grocery store was two hours away. We were supposed to use public transportation, but because we were so far out we had to scramble for rental cars. It was freezing, there was no heat or hot water, there was no bottled water for cooking and one of the toilets broke the first day. We tried not to consume the tap water when we brushed our teeth, but it sneaks in. Almost everybody came down with colds and stomach problems. The kids were incredible. Not one of them complained, because they all knew this wasn't a vacation. It was hard work, wonderful hard work.

Q. What personal discoveries of Brazil did you make?
A. I expected to see a poor world full of melancholy homeless, helpless people. What I found was that no matter how impoverished these people are, they have the ability to find more joy in life than our richest celebrities, and that they always find some gesture of giving back. People kept giving me pennies; a poor woman scraped up what little food she had to bake a cake for us; and a little girl took off her earrings and tried to give them to me because I told her how much I liked them. I also discovered how to break through a language barrier. I don't speak a word of Portuguese, and most of the people we met spoke no English, but we communicated through smiles, hugs and kisses.

Q. What was the most meaningful aspect of your trip?
A. Coordinating a street fair that went on for several days. We had face painting, cotton candy and thousands of hot dogs, and we set up a trampoline we brought with us that was a big thrill for the local children. They had never experienced anything like that before, and thousands of kids walked great distances to be there.

Q. Tell us about a typical family you worked with in Novo Lima.
A. We visited one woman with three children ages 8, 4 and 6 months. She had no toilet and the stench of her home was sickening. Her hair was matted and she had a tiny stove. But she didn't have an opportunity to light it often because there wasn't one crumb of food in the house. When we gave them clothes and several weeks' worth of food the woman burst into tears. The pastor who runs the church there told us there was a tremendous need for shoes and underwear. Clothes, he said, were a bonus. When that family turned out for the street fair, the mother was proud as a peacock and paraded her kids in their new clothes and shoes, hair washed, up and down the street showing them off.

Q. How did this experience alter your life?
A. I recently had a terrible mold problem in my home and as a result we had to get rid of almost every possession and most of the clothes we owned. After witnessing the joy and love that emerges from poverty in Brazil, my kids told me not to worry, that it was just stuff and that we had each other. As for me, I will never again take for granted having shoes on my feet in the winter. The Brazilian children we met taught us that it's possible to be happy when you have nothing and that a piece of candy or a hug can invoke incredible joy.

Q. What are your plans for next year?
A. We're going to Belfast next summer. The challenge there, I've been told, is that children in Belfast are raised to hate Protestants and Catholics. Most of them don't even know why. The new scenario will be working through the hate.

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