It has been a while since I (Dave) last posted anything here and Beckie has convinced me it is about time. The thing is, I get so used to certain things being 'normal' that I do not consider them worthy of a blog so I only tend to write about things which are extraordinary for me. Anyway, here is what I did yesterday afternoon:
I ate lunch with my lovely family at 12pm. We had rice, beans, lettuce mixed with a kind of shredded spring-green type vegetable, green raw pepper and meatballs with gravy. It was delicious.
At 12.30 I walked in the heat of the day to collect a volunteer from his house in another part of the city just the other side of this favela and walked back with him so he would know how to walk to here on his own next time. This took about 45 mins.
At 1.20 the volunteer, Maarten and I met together to pray before going out into the community and to explain about our work to the volunteer. Just after 2pm we left .
As we were walking through one particular alleyway, a lady who we didn't know, stopped us and asked if we could go to her house to pray with her. So, we went. We discovered that she had suffered a trauma about 4 years earlier and had been living a difficult, medicated life since that time, suffering from profound depression among other things. We do not have any expertise in this area at all so we did the best we could do and that was to pray for her and her mother (who was also in the house) and share with her what God put on our hearts. We stayed there a while and drank some sweet, strong coffee.
Next, after a bit of a climbing ramble through alleyways and across roads, we visited a pregnant lady and her children. One of them is not going to school and the consequence of that for her is that she would lose the government allowance that is given for this. This was made clear to her and we were also able to pray for her and see the kids in their home to better understand their life. Then we left and continued our walk.
In the 'shopping area' we met a homeless friend of ours who was selling records to make a bit of money. He even had an Isaac Hays 70s album! We had a good chat and are trying to get him into an old peoples' home, which is what he really wants, so he can get off the streets and live the rest of his life in peace.
When we arrived at the praça (A kind of village square) we asked the owner of the vegetable shop there if he could give us the address of a lady addicted to drugs which he asked us to visit on a previous occasion. Instead of giving us the address, he showed us the house. So, we talked with this lady and it seemed that she is motivated go to a drug rehabilitation center as she does not want to end up like her 2 sisters who died as a result of using drugs, leaving her mother all alone. At the same time, we met a lady who had been badly beaten by her husband (2 black eyes, a cut elbow) who fondly talked to us about an Englishman called Matthew who set up a dance school for street girls in 1999. She also told us about her first child that she used to dance with at that time, holding her in her arms. But the child only lived for 1 month and 15 days. She was very much a lady trying to live in the fond memories of the past to escape from the present. Again, we were able to pray for them and hopefully we will be able to help the first lady to go to a rehab house.
Back to the Lighthouse! We prayed, thanking God for our afternoon.
10 minutes later (5.10pm) I took Gideon to his weekly drumming lesson, which went really well. The tutor let him play for an extra 1/2 hour after the lesson which Gideon loved.
That was my Tuesday afternoon......quite normal for me.