Yesterday, we had an amazing day. A church brought it's youth group to do an outreach event here, after several months of construction and maintenance here. The day began with teaching for the young people, about missions and how to reach out to those around you. Followed by lunch (cooked by some members of their church) for 160 people and then preparing for the activities - different things for kids and adults all over our grounds.
The gates opened and the kids went running to find the trampoline and one eldery man ran to the jumble sale ( things were free - they just limited what each person could take). it was wonderful to see the place so full and everyone having a good time, this was followed by a service for all with dramas and a good message. Eventually, the afternoon ended with a thank you and a snack for the visitng team.
Today, I am exhausted, but it's a good kind of exhaustion, knowing you've worked hard and worked as a team. I am thankful for the church wanting to get involved, for their ideas and their heart to reach this community.

In all the fun, difficulties, frustrations, successes, failures, hard-work, relaxation, enjoyment and impossibilities God never changes. He is always good, always faithful, perfect in every way, beyond our understanding, holy and righteous, never lying, and ever present with us through all of the above.
We are now in the process of leaving here. Yes, I know we still have many weeks until we actually, physically return to England (December 21st, we touch down) but it is a process and it has to start way before we leave because of our responsibilities to YWAM and to our family (each other).
Beckie has been writing up what she does with the money so that the next person can take it over in the beginning of December. Our 1970 VW Beetle is for sale and I will be going to sell a few other things next week. I am looking for work for next year - maybe still a little early for that at the moment, and we are praying for God to reveal what is next, in many aspects.
One challenge for me is to ensure that The Lighthouse is able to keep running into next year as financially, it is struggling and it is something that we, as a team, are working on.
So, in all of this God is there.....and will continue to be.

Faith vs. Being prepared

I have recently been wondering where to find the balance.... or if there even is a balance. My thinking tells me that faith is always a good thing, but maybe I sometimes get confused as to what is actually faith. You hear a lot of people talking as if something will happen, but not really worrying if it doesn't - is that faith? Or is that pretending to have faith? Is that having a little bit of faith? What kind of faith do I have? I want the kind of faith that is CERTAIN of what I do not see.

How does faith co-exist with reality? Maybe this is a silly question.... let's get back to my title, what am I thinking?

Well, I am responsible for paying the bills at the community centre at the moment and we have a lot of bills. In fact, we have more money going out each month than we have coming in (as we all know that can't carry on long term, the savings we had have almost gone). This particular job is one that has caused a lot of stress to people in the past and when I took it on I made a deal with God (if you can actually do such a thing) - it went a bit like this "OK God, I'll do the finance stuff, but, I am NOT responsible for the money coming in - that is your job, OK? I can just pay the bills that have to be paid, receive the money that comes in and document everything - You have to provide and I will NOT worry about it!"

Maybe that's easier said than done, but I've tried to keep my part and when I begin to worry then I have to remind myself that I only have to do my part. So, where is my faith? I have been doing all I can to budget well and to 'be prepared', I believe that is one way I can be a good steward. However, my biggest question is do I allow my desire to be prepared cause me to stop the house from doing things (because they would cost money that we don't have at the moment) when really I should have faith that God will provide? To what extent do we carry on as normal, with the sure conviction of faith that God will provide? Or is this mere foolishness and not accepting our responsibilities in administering well? I'm not talking about doing ridiculous things e.g going out with a credit card and buying nice new furniture saying that I have faith in God to pay the bill at the end of the month. I'm talking about little things, meat in the menu, chlorine for the pool (this is a pool used for swimming lessons for the kids and women in the community, rather than a leisure pool). Are these the kind of things we can expect God to provide for us? What constitutes our needs? When is it that I'm pulling back because I'm being wise or because I'm afraid of the next bill?

Lots and lots of questions, not sure how to answer any of them. Any suggestions?

So much to write, so little time to write about things.
Lets start with today......This morning, I (Dave) helped a Dutch volunteer with his new project which involves using a room in a local church to spend time with some of the addicted people in the community - people mainly addicted to alcohol but also crack cocaine. We provide cheese bread, coffee, art materials, fizzy drink, a guitar and our prescence. This is the first week of the project and it went well. Two ladies attended, one for about 1 hour the other for around 15 minutes. We were able to talk and pray with the first lady who shared about her husband dying and about her mother leaving her alone in te house when she was a child (She is now in her 50s). When she shared about her childhood she cried alot and it really made me think about how many people carry scars with them that affect them throughout their lives, never having the opportunity to talk about them, process them and recieve healing.
The other lady came to paint. She arrived, refused coffee and cheese bread, saying that she wanted to paint a picture. She painted a house, a tree and wrote her name. She was so child-like during the activity (although she is in her 30s) and very focussed which was a completely different side to her that I had never seen before. She normally works for the drug traffickers as a 'watcher', nearly always 'on edge' and also trying to entice people to buy drugs. It was a time of escapism for her that she neeeded. This project provides simple opportunities for people like this and I believe it will grow into something bigger as word gets around.

This afternoon, we did some house visits and walked in the community for a while. The visits were complicated, needing an intervention from God to make a difference in one of the households, which had some involvement in child trafficking as there were many issues that still had not been resolved from a long time ago. Sorry, but I will not post more about that here.

Human traficking is a BIG business and happens everywhere, it seems, but often goes undetected or even ignored as sometimes it has implications on the price of the goods that we buy. I will endevour to write a post about this soon when I have collected my thoughts together a bit more on the subject.

Once again, I am shocked by how much time had passed since we wrote anything. Not that nothing has been happening, we just got out of the rhythm of updating the blog.

The base that we work for (YWAM Belo Horizonte) is celebrating 25yrs, so this last week and this week we are joining in this celebration. Instead of just organising a party or a special service they have decided to raise awareness and action against human trafficking. We all know that even though slavery has long been abolished it is still ramant in our world. This campaign is particularly relevant to Brazil, as the up coming world cup will see many people wanting to import slaves and prostitutes for this time. Our base leader invited government officials to participate along with all other contacts.

The teaching has been great, some statistics (not so many as to overwhelm me), some bible verses sharing God's heart and tips on how to make a difference. The organisation that is doing the majority of the teaching is called not for sale - check out their website to discover more, another interesting site (through them) is free to work which shows you a rating of how good or bad a company is with regard to human slavery, helping us to avoid buying from companies that don't care about human slavery - just like people gave up sugar many years ago to make their stand, it worked!

Currently, Dave is attending a 3 day seminar which addresses other ways of getting involved and how we can make a difference. He can then update on other ways to bring about change and be a voice for the voiceless.

Dangers of dog TV but God is powerful....

In Brazil there are many chicken rotisserie machines, particularly on a Sunday, they jokingly call these machines 'dog TV', as all of the street dogs hang around them drooling.One Sunday recently we decided to buy a ready roasted chicken from our local bakery, when I went to put my name down I saw that the lady who owns this bakery had burnt her arm, very badly, on the chicken rotiserrie. The skin was literally hanging off. I went home and couldn't stop thinking about her, so when I returned to buy the chicken I offered to pray for her. She accepted gratefully and we prayed at the cash desk of the bakery, me standing one side and her the other, with tears pouring down her cheeks.

Today, when someone bought some bread she asked them to tell me that she has new skin on her arm, soft like a babies, she was praising God. God is good!!!!

In 5 months time we will be stepping onto a plane again, flying back to England. This time however we will not be flying back to Brazil after our Christmas break. We have taken a long time to make this decision and it wasn't an easy one. For sure we have no intention of giving up on missions and fully believe that God will show us a new mission field, be it in Dereham or somewhere else. We have 2 excited boys who are really looking forward to a life in the UK again and of course our family are pleased to have us nearby once again.

For Dave and I, we are excited and nervous - what is it really like to live in the UK? How much have we changed, how much has England changed? What will it be like to live a "normal"life again?

In the meantime we are trying to run the race so as to win the prize in this community. We know that the work continues here and we want to finish off or pass on some of what we are involved in. We also want to keep our focus on being obedient to God, not missing opportunities because our minds are elsewhere.