The group of children that I´ve been working with this year, have been learning a bit about other parts of the world. Many of them never travel, and have no idea about the diversity in our world. We have wanted to teach them about how other children live and also inspire them to pray for other people. This week I shared with them about India, they listened in fascination about how the rich and poor live. I think this is something they can understand, but hopefully also made them thankful for their homes and families (India having more extreme poverty, orphans and homelessness). It was beautiful at the end to hear 2 girls praying heartfelt prayers asking God to put the children in families and enable them to go to school and also for the Churches that are being persecuted. We also tried some Indian food, though many of them didn´t like it, it´s quite different from the rice and beans we eat here every day.

Today is a very sad day, yesterday we discovered that the house dog, Lady, has an illness called Leishmaniasis. It is transmitted by mosquitos and is very dangerous if passed to humans. Therefore she had to be put to sleep today. Many people loved Lady (many others also disliked the dogs), she was a wonderful gentle dog with the children that should be here and a wonderful fierce guard dog for those that shouldn´t be here. The children in my group found out about this yesterday and they were able to lavish her with love and play lots with her at the park yesterday. many of them were picking flowers for her, to put in her collar, so she had some flowers when she died. Both Josiah and Gideon really benefited from having a dog here when they came, dog´s have a way of relating that goes across languages and cultures. Here is a photo of Gideon chilling with Lady

Here are some photos from the mountain near us. We took a few volunteers up there, for them to see the view and the favela (slum) from a distance. This was a rare opportunity to have a camera at the top of the hill. Many times it is not recommended as it could be stolen on the way through the favela.
Both photo´s are the same shot, with one enlarged so you can see where we live (Casa Luzeiro) in relation to the slum and the city. It always amazes me how big the favela is.

Here is a link to my co-leader´s blog, she is really good at putting lots of photos on her blog. So, if you want to see how our group celebrated "100 day", take a look......

www.thematiasfamily.blogspot.com

What is normal?

Last night, I began to wonder about this. The favela music began, at 3.30am, very loud, party style music. Instead of being annoyed by this, I rolled over and thought, "oh....but it´s normal for here". Then I started thinking about a conversation I had earlier in the day with a fellow worker here. She had just been to the local shop and when she opened the gate a drunk man was lying in front of it. Another worker asked "was he dead?", and both of these things seemed quite normal. Often there are drunk people lying in the street, and maybe it wouldn´t be too strange if one of them had already died. What a strange normality I have got used to.....

To answer the title question, a very good friend of ours once told us that "normal" is only a setting on a washing machine.

Yesterday, I (Dave) went for a walk in the community with my friend Maarten which we do 3 afternoons a week as part of our missionary work here. It was really a day of spending time with the rejected.
In Brazil, there are a lot of people who would not enter a favela because of the stories they hear and the type of people who live in such places. Even Christians from "richer" churches or backgrounds would not want to enter here or associate with these people so, to start with, favelados (people from a favela) are rejected by others from their own country. However, within the favela, there are also those who are rejected by their fellow favelados. For example, the drunk old men who sit in groups semi-conscious in the streets. The drug addicts, the "crazy people" - often people who have gone mad through too much alcohol or too many drugs or extreme tragedy and similar.
So, we started our walk with a visit to our crippled friend and we planned to take him to a school next week for him to look round and see what he thinks. Next we saw some children playing in some rubbish. They said that they were trying to find metal to sell so that they could buy some bread for their family but, to me, it looked like they were playing and having a lot of fun, discovering cool rejected items which could be used for whatever their imagination allowed.
After that, we spent some time with a group of drunk men (and 1 woman) who were really grateful that we talked to them because they said that no-one cares about them - we even got some strange looks from people who seemed like they thought that we were crazy associating ourselves with such people. 2 of them asked about going to a rehab house for alcoholics and we did not even mention it to them.
I love people like them and I believe that they are really precious in the sight of God because he died for such as these.....the poor, lame, lonely, blind, rejected.....these are the people invited to the banquet....and I reckon they´ll have the best seats!!