Many times it's easy to forget that we live in a slum here. We have a nice house, trees in the garden, even a swimming pool. Of course, we sometimes hear the crazy loud music, have kids jumping the walls and at times hear gunfire in the middle of the night.
Dave has had more experience of the reality of the slum in his many walks and talks in the community, but I have had a more sheltered experience here. Even when the drug traffickers here have been at war with the neighbouring slum (which is happening now), we have heard about what is happening, sensed the fear, but continued the same.
However, last night was the first time I felt afraid. At 1.50am a helicopter arrived, quite a strange time for a helicopter. The police send helicopters when they are looking for someone in particular. Normally, they pass over the whole favela and circle in a few places. Last night, they were incredibly low and circled mainly around our area of the community center. It really felt like they were going to land here. This circling continued for 25 minutes, which felt like an incredibly long time as we were lying there, wondering why they were here. Had a bandit jumped the wall to find refuge here? This is one of the best grassy areas here and has great places for hiding. I began to hope that our dog wouldn't notice anything, because if he started to bark, what should we do? Normally I send Dave out to have a look, but I didn't want to send him out to meet a nervous armed bandit on the run from the police. Would the police want to enter here? When would it end? Even after the helicopter left I couldn't sleep, wondering what had actually happened.

Here is a picture of the Lighthouse team. This was taken last week. Gideon didn't want to be in the picture, unfortunately.

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.

Sometimes, I (Beckie) am amazed at how hard some people work. Today, as I was out walking up one of the many hills near here (not the crazy steep one I'm pleased to say), I saw a lady (about 40) with her horse and cart. She travels all over the city collecting rubbish (to recycle) and old vegetables (to eat / feed the animals with). Many times the whole family is involved. Today it was just her and the horse. The horse isn't strong enough to get up the hill with the full cart on it's own, therefore the lady has to help push the cart.
I was on the other side of the road, I could have passed her and kept walking, I wanted to. Yet, I had a niggle, telling me to help. How can I really help? Sometimes it feels almost impossible for me to get myself up these hills. I wanted to keep walking and pray that God would strengthen her. I couldn't. So, I asked if she needed help. She didn't know how to respond, and found it difficult to accept my offer, but did accept.
So, we were both trying to push up the cart, resting frequently when the horse couldn't keep going. All of the time, through her panting breathing the lady was saying it was too hard for me, I should leave her or I would get very sweaty. She was saying that only God can help her, enable her to keep going. When we got past the worst bit she told me to go and that she would be OK then, and really asked God to bless me for all that I had done. I was rather pleased as I felt unable to continue. I only helped her for 20 minutes, she does this all day, almost every day.

Today, it is raining, and when you walk out in the streets the atmosphere is quite different. Nobody likes the rain, so you see very few people. Just a Mum and her daughter hurriedly walking under an umbrella. Two more people huddled in a shop doorway, waiting for the bus. Otherwise the streets are deserted. However, I really noticed the bars, they (2 opposite one another) were FULL. It was 8.30am and the bars were full of people (mainly men), downing many beers.
It seems that these are people who work Monday to Friday to get enough money to spend the whole weekend drinking. There has to be more for their lives than this, yet they seem quite content.
How can we reach them? Is their a way into their lives to show them a God who loves them deeply? Does anyone have any ideas?

A Celebration for the parents

We like to organise parents meetings, but through experience we have learned that very few parents will come to a "meeting", so we organised a celebration. We started planning about a month before the date. When we had decided on the snack we wanted to offer (based on budget, numbers and what we have available), we asked the food bank (a place from which we receive regular donations) if they would be able to separate fruits for our celebration, so we could make fruit salad.We received 6 BIG boxes of fruits, and most of it was pretty good. So, at 9am we started preparing, mashing bananas for cake and then peeling and chopping a LOT of oranges. We had a team of 7 preparing the food (thankfully, as there was a lot to prepare)


This is the finished fruit salad, we made A LOT!!!
Also, the small court was prepared, and decorated with the childrens' artwork.
However, the clouds were building, and as our activities we wanted to do were based on being able to fully use our outdoor space, we were praying that the rain would come quickly and leave quickly too. It sure did rain a lot, so we all hoped that the afternoon would go according to plan A (dry plan).

Unfortunately, the weather couldn't decide what it was going to do, at 2pm, we had very few parents (probably because it was raining a bit). It seemed like nobody was going to come.
Eventually we almost filled the small court (about 120 people) and the first part of the programme began, including a preach, some hip hop dancing and presentations from the groups. All of this time we are wondering "plan A / plan B"? The rain started and stopped, then started again.....Plan B

Some of the children went with their parents to do puzzles and play games
Some did group games and songs.
At moments it felt like a disaster, it was POURING with rain, to the extent that families were almost trapped in their room, and nothing felt very organised. However, for those not organising it, they had fun.
Everyone was very happy at the end when it was time for the snack. This is the part that the children and their parents particularly enjoy. Some of the more hungry children were trying to sneak up to the table as often as possible. At last, we got to taste the delicious fruit salad that took all morning to prepare.

Today, I (Dave) went for a quick trip to the centre to buy a few things. I parked the car in the usual spot and walked the rest of the way. Part of the walk involves crossing a main road on a foot-bridge and on this occasion there was a beggar there asking for money. She is often there and it seems it is her regular spot. I gave her some money, had a quick chat and continued my walk into the centre. On return I saw her in great distress. She was handcuffed to the railings and some police were going through her things. I approached and heard her shouting that they were stealing her money, which they were. She had accumulated a lot of money - she had bags of it - and they were accusing her of stealing it from people and therefore confiscated it. It was a sad sight to see her in such distress and I felt helpless as this injustice went on right in front of me. It is normal for beggars to hoard the money they get from begging...they have no other means of looking after their money and a lot of the time they do not know what to do with it. They are easy targets for exploitation and, in this case corrupt justice. I prayed as I passed.....God is the God of justice.....but wondered if there was more I could have done.....