The Olympics were really fantastic. All of the children had a wonderful time and particularly enjoyed competing with other teams. On the last day we had a longer worship time and were able to share the reason that we were there, and to tell them about God's love for them. The children waited with anticipation for the results, Dave and Gideon's team came last, and mine was 4th, Josiah's was the best in our family coming 3rd. This photo shows the children very happily receiving their medals for taking part. The other photo shows the winning team (New Zealand) performing their war shout to everybody for the final time. It was a good week, if somewhat tiring and was really good for all of us to build better relationships with the children.

'THE OLYMPICS' in Belo Horizonte...we have been having a great, but exhausting week. It is a 5 day event crammed full of fun physical and mental challenges for 6 teams. The teams are named after the countries represented on the base. Dave is one of the leaders in the 'England' team and Beckie is helping lead 'United States'. Josiah and Gideon are also in teams, participating with the other children from the favela. The teams compete against each other for points and at the end they are awarded medals and other prizes for their achievements. Each team has it's own colour and on the last day, the children get to keep their t-shirts. The children are full of enthusiasm, and continue to shout their teams 'war cry' even on day 4! Lots of the activities have involved team work. One we particularly liked was 'Monkey families', where the team had to retrieve a banana from a tree without touching the ground near the tree. They were given a piece of rope to help them but that was all. It was really interesting to see how the groups reacted to the challenge, especially as only 20% of the points were given for getting the banana and the other 80% was for how the team worked together (or not!). Other events included football (of course), swimming-dressing-up races, obstacle courses, unusual relay races and lateral-thinking challenges.

Today, I had a bit of a scary experience, that actually turned out fine. I needed to go the dentists for root canal treatment. I had no-body to translate for me, but hoped it would all be fine, going alone. However, when I arrived the dentist spoke English, so it was really easy for me, I no longer needed to worry about what was happening. So, I was able to lie back and thank God for looking after me so well. It's great to know that he provides for us in so many ways, sometimes helping us to understand and other times actually providing a translator.

We have had a bit of a change of routine this week. We began with a weekend break at 'Rainbow farm'. It was for all of the workers at Luzeiro and we had a fantastic time, climbing, bonfires, cycling, football and horseriding. It was really good for us to bond more with the team, and the boys particularly liked all of the open space. Then we had some days off (to prepare for very busy times ahead). This time we used to continue making our home more personal and practical (recycling a dogs house into a piece of furniture), it still isn't a palace, but we really like it.
The hardest thing is definitely the language. It makes me feel so incompetent. At the moment, the more I learn, the more I realise I don't know. One day this week Josiah and I went into the centre, I was really thrilled that I managed to ask questions and understand the answers, I even gave a man directions. Then today when I went to the dentists, it was really difficult for me to understand him, but it was made much worse when I went to a huge building to book an appointment and the lady on the desk sent me to the wrong floor. I was so confused , I had to stop myself from crying. Not speaking the language well is incredibly frustrating!!!!!!!!
So now we prepare for a 'GO team' coming from Holland. We are going to be doing a holiday club type thing called 'the olympics' and lots of practical maintenance work.

On Friday we celebrated the 'June Festival' - it is the time of year when the corn harvest is gathered in and when Catholics celebrate Saint John. In the North East of Brazil this festival is more important than Christmas to some. Although we at YWAM do not celebrate the 'Saint' part of the festival we did have a big party with all of the staff and some children from the housesbeing transported to the Lighthouse to have fun together. There were traditional fairground-type games like hoopla and catching fish and many food stalls. The interesting thing about it here though was everything was free....all the traditinonal food and the games. We all had a great time.

It is great when God teaches us through our children. I love it and am often challenged by it. Firstly, during our Thursday evening base service, God gave Josiah a vision which he then nervously shared with everyone. It was so cool to see him telling the Belo Horizonte YWAM base what God wanted to show them.
Another great thing is Gideon. He has got a new friend and as I am typing this Gideon is round his friend's house playing with him. What is so profound about that? Well...this new friend is the child that stole the boys toys while we were away on outreach for 6 weeks. At first, Gideon wanted him dead but now thy are good friends! We never got any of the things back either. God is so good enabling us to bless those who give us a hard time and, in the case of Gideon, has shown him how to love someone who he perceived was his enemy. Fantastic!