This week I (Dave) have been spending more time in the community and God has really opened my eyes to see things which I had previously not noticed. For example, there is a run-down park near the top of the favela and we have often walked through there to get to another place, sometimes stopping to pray and we have often seen people smoking drugs there. What we had not previously noticed is that a lot of the children actually buy there drugs there, in the bushes just the other side of a wire fence. So what we decided to do was stand a couple of meters away from the dealers and pray....they did not seem to like that very much as they started making a few negative comments amongst themselves about foreighners being at the park. But last time we went there they were not there!
What we would like is the drug dealing to stop altogether because it literally kills people....many people over the years. However, we would ask for prayer for good relationships with these guys because they are very influential in this community so if they have changed hearts, changed by the love of God, the power of the cross and made new with the blood of Jesus then the people around would really notice. May the Kingdom of God come into this community.
This Saturday the community development team ore organising a pastors breakfast with the intention of enabling the pastors to network together and start praying together for this commnuity. Exciting stuff.

Today, I (Beckie) had to do my group alone, as my co-leader is ill. It was actually a really good experience, and it helped me to realize that my Portuguese continues to improve. It´s good that the children are quite well settled into the routine, but it really hi-lighted the need for working with anger management (in the children). We had a few incidents occur, and I had to be very firm, but on the whole it was a really good experience. Tomorrow a volunteer is going to share about living in Canada, and do an interactive role play type thing. It will be a test to see if my translation ability is up to it. A lot of people in the favela are very unaware of the rest of the world, so it should be good for their knowledge and understanding of the world.

Well, we are still here, sometimes it seems like it is so difficult to keep going, but amoungst all of that there are many blessings. Josiah and Gideon continue to have good (ish) and bad days at school, we continue to have difficulty with their homework, Dave continues to be a bit tired from all of the rushing around with schools, and I am just recovering from another illness, maybe a virus or maybe dengue (very common in this favela spread by mosquitos). However, we will persevere. We have the opportunity to move soon to another larger house (on the same site), which will be really nice. At the moment it needs a lot of work, so I need to be patient with this.

Here in Brazil there are a lot of really beautiful creatures which readers of this blog will probably not get the opportunity to experience unless they have or will visit this wonderful country. For example, there are beautiful bright blue butterflies the size of 2 hands next to each other. Although nice to look at, some of these creatures are not so nice to touch.
2 weeks ago Beckie accidentally touched a hairy caterpillar. These particular caterpillars look really cute....to the extent of making you want to stroke them. Beckie did not deliberately stroke it because she was warned about them, but what she did not know was just how nasty they can be. The hairs on them are hollow and inject an enzyme into the skin which then gets passed around the body. If the contact with them is long enough and enough of this enzyme enters the body then it can cause internal hemorrhaging. Sounds nasty, huh? Well it is! Beckie just lightly brushed against one and this caused extreme pain all up her left arm which travelled to her shoulder and then kinda stopped there, praise Jesus. But the pain remained for about 2 hours and she still has a caterpillar-shaped mark on her arm, kinda like a tattoo! The photo is of a similar type.