Brazilian birthdays are celebrated in a unique way here. At YWAM in Belo Horizonte we have a special meal (it can be any meal of the day) followed by pudding or cake. Before the meal begins we sing "Parabens", a form of portuguese 'happy birthday', and then pray for the person. It's really cool and encouraging. But, there is a further element which only the brave participate in. It is customary in Brazil, so we have been informed, to throw eggs at the person and then cover them with flour.
This week it was the birthday of the house leader and he told Josiah and Gideon that they could throw eggs at him....if they could catch him. Not only did they manage to catch him but also they managed to tie him up before covering him in eggs and flour and then soaking him with water from a syphonning device which Gideon had previously constructed in the tree above where they tied him up. Also you may notice from the photos, Lady, the house dog, 'helped' to tie him up too.

Back to normal, again. It's always a bit strange when you have a different routine for a week or so, but it's nice to be working with the children again. Dave has really noticed an improvement in his understanding of Portuguese when the children shared about their weekend on Monday. He also tried a new technique when it was his turn to share about his weekend, he explained that he didn't know all of the words and asked for their help. This really made a huge amount of difference, instead of laughing at the words he got wrong they were helping him.
We have also started with new discipleship groups, the idea of these is getting to know other workers better, sharing difficulties, praying for one another and generally encouraging one another to grow. We meet every Friday, and are beginning to get to know 2 other Dutch girls who are new workers here, plus we have another guy from this house who we already know quite well.

Dave and I are doing 'new staff worker' training this week. It's great that it is based at this house as we begin at 8.15am, so those coming from the other side of the city have an early start. I have been doing the mornings and Dave the afternoons, then in the evenings we need to feedback to each other what it has been about. We have learnt a lot more about the beginnings and vision of YWAM, how to resolve conflicts and communication (particularly about writing newsletters). Some of it is useful, other things are not quite so useful.
Gideon is currently playing a game with the boys in the favela. He is standing on our grassy area that overlooks their houses, and they are flying their kites, only a fraction out of his reach, and he is running and jumping and trying to catch them. The boys in the favela like it because they can show their expert skill at keeping their kites just out of his reach. Gideon likes the challenge, and we like him burning off a LOT of energy.

The last couple of days with my group (Beckie's) have been quite fun......
I tried to tell my first bible story in Portuguese, I think they understood most of it, but I was very glad to be able to slip back into English for the application. The annoying thing was that the night before this I was unable to sleep because I had this story going round and round my head, in Portuguese.
The next day we did a couple of teamwork activities using rope. I was really impressed at how well they looked after each other and listened to each other. Then we went skating, and all of the boys forgot about teamwork, instead they tried to knock each other over and then give each other a kick!!! Oh well......it seems that boys will be boys, and there is still lots of work to be done socially.

I thought you'd like to see one of the practical tasks we did with the go-team. It was something I (Beckie) really enjoyed, as for once I felt like I was really able to use my abilities (many other times here I feel that because of the language I am unable to do things I could do easily in England). The children were all totally thrilled to see a transformed swimming pool, which made the hard work of painting in full-on sun worthwhile.

We are enjoying the Brazilian 'winter', fresh and breezy at times and coolish at night, but sometimes it's 32 degrees in the daytime!!!!
The go-team who were with us have now left, so it's very quiet here. They were a real blessing to us, helping out with some major practical work, and bringing a youthful energy and enthusiasm to the childrens work here. We have also said goodbye to some volunteers, what is strange in all of this is the temporary-ness of relationships. It's really hard to continue to meet people and spend time with them and then to say goodbye, knowing you will never see them again on this earth. It's not good to not form relationships because of this, yet what kind of relationships are we really able to form? In the last 6.5 months we have met some wonderful people, and many of them are no longer here, we enjoyed the time we spent, but now there are even more people to miss. I don't want to become cold towards new people though, particularly the volunteers who come with such enthusiam to see 'missions' and may only be here for a few weeks.

Today we had a day off and decided to go for a walk (hike) with the dutch team along a high local ridge to a beautiful park. We managed to take a short video clip of Gideon's comments. Sorry about the large file size but I still have not got round to getting some software to make it smaller. Maybe making a cup of tea while the video clip is loading would be wise.
It was hot but there was a fresh breeze for some of the time so it was not unbearable. When we got to the park we had a picnic and Gideon managed to get a monkey to eat out of his hand. We returned to Luzeiro via a different route along the bank of a river (again, very beautiful) and Josiah, Gideon and Beckie got soaked as they played in the water with some of the team from Holland.