She asked me for help to find her father, who she had seen only once when she was 2. According to her information, her father was a sailor from the Bahia state, Brazil, who met her mother in Tijuana, Mexico in 1974, and his name was José Roberto Motta Farias.

Martha was then the result of the love affair between a Brazilian sailor and a young Mexican girl.

The message was showing a sad and almost desperate appeal. Believing in her story and moved by it, I decided to help in any possible way I could. She had written to various people in Brazil, via emails located through the Internet. Only two responded, and I was the only one who was willing to help her.

I started to do searches in my spare time, always via the Internet. I asked for help from newspapers and radio stations in Bahia and from TV network Globo. I never received a single response.

I searched on the Telebahia’s online phone book, but they had no José Roberto Motta Farias. I also asked a friend from Bahia to get information from the Navy office in Salvador, the capital city of Bahia, but they would not provide information to a non-relative. I also had sent an email to the Navy before contacting my friend. The message was never even acknowledged.

Figuring he could have moved to another state in Brazil, I also searched in the lists of all telephone companies of the country, always unsuccessfully. The man I was searching for looked like a ghost, what made me fear that he was no longer alive.

After all these failures, I embarked into a “wholesale” action, writing to all Motta and Motta Farias found in Telebahia’s list. I sent about 30 letters explaining Martha’s request and asking for information. That was on March 1, 1999.

On the morning of March 9, around 10 am, my cell phone rang. It was a call from Salvador, from a woman who identified herself as Ana Neri Motta Farias. She told she was José Roberto’s sister, and informed me that he was well and living in Salvador. Imagine my excitement to receive this news! I got goosebumps!

He was 46 years old at the time, was in good health and had a new family in Salvador, with five children. He did not know where Martha was or how to search for her.

Immediately, I emailed Martha with the good news. I can’t imagine her excitement when she read it. She called her father the next day and they talked with all the emotion accumulated in 22 years of separation.

On the evening of the next day, Martha called me to thank me. She could hardly speak, crying so much from happiness. When she told me she had a very sad childhood, rejected by her mother’s family and always dreaming to meet her father, I ended up crying together.

On the night of March 13, just four days, after that first call from Ana Neri, in Salvador, I received a call from the also very thrilled José Roberto himself. He could not believe, he said, that a stranger would be willing to help so much.

He told me about his hard life and how sorry he was for having lost contact with his daughter, for so many years. He told me he did not assume the relationship with Martha’s mother for fear of their families and also that he had long dreamed of meeting his daughter.

He thanked me several times for the unexpected opportunity to get this reunion.

Father and daughter had an exciting meeting on June 15, 2000 in San Antonio, Texas.

To give such an immense joy to father and daughter, I spent only a few hours of my time and a few bucks in Internet hours, envelopes and stamps. For a priceless result!

Below is the text of the email received from Martha on November 24, 1998:

Hi.

My name is Martha.

I hope you can help me. I am looking for my father. I have never seen him but once when I was 2 years old. I am 24 now. Of course I don’t remember him. His name is José Roberto Motta Farias. He is from Brazil. I know he lived in Salvador in 1974, his family lived there too. My mother’s name is Maria Guadalupe Camacho, she lived in Tijuana (Mexico) in 1974 and that is where she met my father.

Please help me. Maybe you know him or are related to him. Please e-mail me back and let me know if you know him or not. Yo hablo español tambien si usted conoce a mi papa, José Roberto Motta Farias. Por favor digame, lo estoy procurando. El estuvo en la naval do Brazil. La hermana de mi mama se llama Irma Camacho mi papa la conoce a ella tambien. Hasta despues y muchas gracias.

Martha Elva Motta

Hélio Shimada is a Brazilian geologist. You can contact him at helio.shimada@gmail.com

It’s not a museum but it is clever marketing – an experience restaurant in Botafogo in Cobal do Humaitá, a shopping and dining area with many cross cultural dining experiences.

Restaurante Rota 66 (Route 66) is a theme restaurant founded in 2001 which features great Tex-Mex food and an interior decorated to pay tribute to the United State’s first coast-to-coast highway, founded in 1926, Route 66.

Okay, so it actually only stretches from Los Angeles to Chicago (not really coast to coast) but that is how it is recorded in history.

Certainly Route 66 is an indelible part of American cultural history. People make treks to follow its remains, visiting popular sites along the route. Restaurants and stores along its route use it in their marketing. Considering that it passes by blocks from where I live in Saint Louis, finding such a place in Rio intrigued me.

Bianca and I found it when I was looking for a place where she could experience Mexican cuisine – a personal favorite native to the area where we will be living after our marriage next year. Our original destination was another Mexican place at Cobal do Humaitá, which was closed the day we went, so we wandered through and found Rota 66. Being a current resident of the Route, we just had to stop.

The interior of the restaurant, surrounding the large bar, is decorated with Route 66 memorabilia from Road Signs to Lady Biker signs to neon signs and various other items connected to the Route 66 theme. There is seating at the bar or at tables on two levels. Service was fast and efficient and the owner herself stopped by numerous times to be assured we were well taken care of.

Open from 11:30 to 4 daily for lunch and nightly for dinner, the restaurant is located on Rua Voluntários da Pátria, number 448. While it is priced for tourists, rather than Brazilians, the food was worth the price.

Appetizers include nachos with guacamole or various salsas or melted cheese, flautas, quesadillas and batata apimentada. They offer a variety of combinations for main courses ranging from tacos to burritos to enchiladas, to salads and sandwiches. They even have ribs and T-bone steaks as well as Picanha Texana.

Bianca and I went for a combination featuring flautas, tacos, burritos and enchiladas with an appetizer of fried potato balls and quesadillas so she could sample as much food as possible. It was a little more expensive than a simpler combo but perfect for two people and there wasn’t a single item that didn’t exceed expectations.

Drinks include pretty good margaritas, including strawberry and frozen, as well as soft drinks and a variety of beers and mixed drinks. And the desserts are impressive as well. But then who has any room left for dessert after the delicious food. Certainly this is among the best Tex-Mex available outside of the U.S. Southwest.

Our combination with margaritas, bottled water, sodas, and appetizers ran around US$ 38, which is not bad for two people. Quantities were sizable too and we both left feeling as if we could not eat again for days. In fact, we even took leftovers with us.

I do recommend one caution: for Brazilian palates unused to the spices common to Tex Mex, having plenty of water on hand is a must. Bianca had a few anxious moments waiting for the water to arrive to relieve newly discovered sensations about which she was still forming an opinion.

It was interesting to watch her reaction to the various differences between Brazilian cuisine and Mexican cuisine. It was certainly a surprise for her to note how different it was from her own culture.

Her reaction was favorable for everything but the burrito which I found mild, but she found too spicy. Given that her friend who lives in Mexico City had told her Mexican food was abhorrent, it was a rich experience to see her enjoying it so much.

For an American in the world of Rio, despite having visited Rio three times, it was fun to be in a place that seemed less unfamiliar and more like what I was used to. So often you find foreign cuisines represented differently than we are used to in our own culture when visiting representative restaurants in other countries, but that was definitely not an issue here. Everything tasted the way I expected it to taste and they even got the details right from guacamole to the choice of cheeses to their salsa.

Additionally, I enjoyed discovering Tex Mex cuisine of such quality in place I never expected and sharing it with someone who had never experienced it. So often you find foreign cuisines represented differently than we are used to in our own culture when visiting representative restaurants in other countries, but that was definitely not an issue here. You will too.

Restaurante Rota 66 – www.restauranterota66.com.br/

Bryan Thomas Schmidt, M.A. is the Founder and Executive Director of Anchored Music Ministries, Inc., St. Louis, Missouri, USA, which provides leadership development training in the worship arts around the world. He has traveled four times to Ghana, West Africa, four times to Brazil, and also worked in Mexico and the U.S. Anchored Music teams have also worked in Bulgaria, and Italy. His articles have been published in newspapers and magazines around the U.S. He has also served as guest lecturer and instructor in Missions at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. He can be reached at www.anchoredmusic.com.