I (Dave) went out last night with 6 other people, including Josiah our 14yr old son. We spent some time playing football on the street with some boys (I watched) and then climbed the hills to the top of the favela (slum) where a lot of the trouble had been over this last week. The aim of our presence was to do some evangelism amongst the people that frequent the bars. Traditionally, Christians do not go into bars here and keep themselves very separate from the bar culture but there are so many people in these places that we thought it would be a good place to build relationships and minister to the people that the churches normally don't reach.
We spent the majority of our time in one particular bar which we had been in before, played a few games of pool and table football and chatted to some of the locals. There was a group of ladies who were particularly interested in us foreign guys and they started off by trying to chat us up but we ended up in a small circle praying for them in the middle of the bar. Excellent.
Another guy approached me asking to talk with me about Jesus and we arranged a time for him to visit Luzeiro (The lighthouse) for this to happen. It was a good night.
The police presence was fairly high with a bus full of armed police patrolling the bus route and police stationed at various places along the street. The atmosphere was a little tense but generally ok.