This weekend I, Dave, took the boys from my group to a farm 2 hours drive from Belo Horizonte. The environment is completely different from what they are used to with a lot of open space and quiet and they are also able to experience new things like milking a cow, swimming in a river, horse riding and night walking. The most interesting thing for me was the night walks. The boys are 'tough' kids - streetwise, have many scars, are used to fighting and living in a hostile environment. However, during the night walk they were actually scared. In the favela it is never dark (unless there is a power cut) and there are always people and noise around day and night so when the boys were experiencing darkness and quiet they became like 'normal' children. They clung onto our arms and seemed timid. It was really cool to see how much they trusted us in the darkness and, for me, illustrated a little bit of why I was there - to help them in their darkness.
Another group leader took some video footage of the boys during our time there and he's going to make a short film which will be posted on Youtube. When it is done, I will put it on the blog so you can have a clearer idea of what we are doing.

On Thursday we celebrated Josiah's birthday. He found it a bit strange having a birthday here, but there are lots of good things such as 'doce-de-leite'. Also the Brazilians like to make great cakes for birthdays, big and gooey. We also went into the centre and had a good time, buying a few things with his birthday money, and rowing a boat at the park. It's been great that so many people have remembered his birthday. One of his highlights was being able to view a video on u-tube from Y-Friday wishing him a happy birthday.

We're all really enjoying the Brazilian winter here. It's lovely and warm by midday but also cooler in the evenings and mornings. We have been blessed today to have a group come from the "Masterers commission" in America. They have arranged a day of beauty (including inner beauty) for the women from the slum. Everyone was thoroughly blessed.
One of the hardest things at the moment is family birthdays. It makes us very aware of the distance, particularly not being able to see my Mum on her 60th birthday, and Josiah having his 12th birthday in 2 days time. It's only really at these times we are aware of the sacrifice of being here. Josiah is much more positive now though, even telling me all of the things he would miss when we return (this is a really good change).

this is a photo from my new group. It was during a really nice session about Noah, which we finished with origami boats and animals. The children were really focussed on what they were making. The work is really good, although Dave and do have frustrations with the language; my group (who are really little) just assume that I can understand them, and they ramble away. Daves older boys know that he doesn't speak much Portuguese, so unless he speaks to them, they ignore him. This makes us realise just how impatient we are to learn Portuguese. Our new tutor is great, and we are having 2 sessions a week, plus homework. Dave is also enjoying the challenge of maintenance work, including how to creatively mend things with different (or almost no) materials.

This photo shows what it is like to live in a favela house. We've had a really good week, and are enjoying the new routines. I was a bit unsure how it would be to enter into an already established team, but it's great. The team here consists of 4 Brazilians, 4 Dutch, 1 from New Zealand, 1 South African, 1 American and us. So it is a very international team.

This weekend we decided to walk into the city, it's quite a long way, but I (probably the only one) really enjoyed it. Part of the walk takes you down an old road, which is now used as a jogging track, with exercise posts along the way. This is used by the more wealthy Brazilians who like to keep fit, the really strange thing is that this immediately turns into an area where several homeless people live. So, once again you go straight from wealth into poverty and the smell really hits you.

Today, there was a special service here for parents, in celebration of fathers day. It was a lovely service, but sadly there wasn't one father here. This is such a huge problem here. The men just don't stay with their wives or children, these children are used to having men coming (for a short while) and then going. What can be done to reach these men? They seem to be so closed to the gospel. What can be done to encourage the value of family? How can these children really understand that God is a Loving Heavenly Father, when they have no worldy understanding of this?

We have begun our work!!!! Today we chatted through what we'll be doing and it all seems quite manageable. Dave will be with the oldest boys in the afternoons, plus one afternoon for maintenance. I will be with the youngest boys in the mornings. We don't have a totally full program which means that homeschooling will be much easier, and we'll be able to really focus on learning Portuguese. Please continue to pray for our language learning ability, it is coming on, but we'd like it to be much quicker.

Dave experiences being a fire man! Last week we were warned of the dangers of the dry season (it's currently winter which means we have no rain), today, we experienced it. When it's hot and dry, and the favela kids are bored, they decide to set fire to the field at the bottom of the lighthouse grounds. They are kind enough to knock on the door and let us know if we don't notice. Then, whilst we are madly running backwards and forwards with buckets of water, they are sitting on their roofs and watching. It's not done because they don't like this place, but purely for entertainment. Thankfully the fire was under control fairly quickly, and we managed to prevent any trees from catching alight.

We are curently having a weeks holiday, before we start our new work. We looked into going to visit another area of Brazil, but then it seemed a bit scary and quite a bit of hassle (we have only just recovered from the really long travelling from Amambai, and didn't really want to do that again). So, we are spending time at home, and having days out. We visited an amazing place, called 'New Destiny', it's a 'farm', although they don't keep animals. It's a huge area of land, where groups from favelas come, often from non-Christian projects. They stay for weekends and take part in lots of outward bound activities, raft-making and team building. Plus they also hear the gospel and have meetings. Josiah and Gideon had great fun using some of the equipment, particularly the zip-wire over the lake and the raft sailing.

We have officially graduated from our DTS!! The graduation ceremony was very nice, especially when they got Josiah and Gideon to present us with our certificates (we don't have photo's yet, but will post some a bit later). After the service, we went to 'Baby Beef', this is a really nice barbeque 'eat as much as you like' restaurant. We got back at midnight, so the boys were quite whacked. I don't know if they will ever get used to the Brazilian stay up late culture.
Saying goodbye to others has been strange. We have met some fantastic people, and now most of them are returnng to their own countries.
We start our work at the lighthouse on Monday 9th June. It involves working with childrens groups and visiting families. So this next week we are having a rest. Hopefully we will be able to go somewhere else for a few days, but at the moment we haven't been able to arrange this. We also continue to make our place a little more cosy. It's strange for us to have some freetime and not know how to use it, but thats where the lovely hammock comes in, it's perfect for chilling!