The English team that are with us are doing the practical phase of their Discipleship Training School, the mandatory YWAM school that has to be done before being able to be a staff member with YWAM. It involves a lecture phase and a practical phase built around knowing God and making him known.
Yesterday, we went out into the community with invitations for a kids event (which is happening as I type this), an afternoon for adults (to happen tomorrow afternoon) and an invitation to collect the forms to fill in so that they can participate in the groups we have here. With these invites was some cake - so we handed out cake, invitations and talked to people in the community. But, what about this constitutes a blog post?
On our walk we encountered some of the local drug gang, selling drugs and what struck me as strange was that we were handing out cake to them in the middle of a few drug deals. It just seemed bizarre. We wanted to give life and freedom while they were dealing out death and destruction (Or certainly encouraging it). It was a good relational exercise with them though and we hope to return to them next week to offer them something a lot more valuable and sustaining than cake.

January 2011

Well, the new year is here, whether we're ready or not. The team arrived on the 31st and have experienced the Brazilian rainy season, probably not the best welcome for them. However, today, the sky has cleared a little, enabling the first walk through the community. It's exciting for us to have a new group of people here working alongside us for 2 months, full of passion to evangelise and transform this community. Sometimes we get stuck in our ideas and traditions and although we really want to see God move and show his power we are a little scared of doing things differently.
A new year is a great opportunity to recommit and truly welcome Jesus back to the centre of it all, to recognise it's not through our abilities, talents or great ideas, but it all comes through Him. I'm looking forward to how the Lord is going to lead me, lead us. I'm looking forward to seeing what He wants to do, and yet a little scared of the challenges there will be along the way

This afternoon Laura and I (Beckie) were able to visit this boys family, it wasn't easy, but I'm glad we went. It felt like we were able to grieve with those who are grieving. Check out Laura's blog where she shares of our experience.

At the moment it seems like we are only hearing sad news. A lot of things are going on here, some things to do with drug gang tension, others are purely accidental.
Yesterday evening, the little yellow bus was doing it's normal (very full) run through the slum, on it's descent the brakes failed. As far as we've heard the driver tried to avoid crashing down the hill full of passengers and swerved into a wall. Unfortunately a young boy who was crossing the road was badly injured. The driver was seen a bit later running down the hill, distraught, trying to get help, covered in blood and having just been threatened by some people in the community. The boy died a bit later.
Today, I discovered it was a boy from my group last year. This is very sad for me, he was a sweet boy, with a difficult background, who lived with his grandmother. However, I am consoled by the fact that he was here, he did hear about Jesus and his Father God's love for him. We would like to visit the family, to see if we can help in any way, maybe offer some of the photos we have of him.

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.