It´s already a long, long time ago since I´ve last updated this weblog… By now, so many things have happened that it is impossible to write just one short post ;0)
So I´ll just post several short updates about everything that has happened around here.
In the past months community centre Casa Semear has grown significantly and we have been busy reorganizing the project. Until last September, the kids didn´t need to subscribe or anything: they would just turn up and participate in the program whenever they felt like it. This had never been a problem, because up till then we had a group of only 35 kids participating. So that was perfectly doable and, as long as this lasted, we didn´t worry about it.
But last June things started to change… We got access to another, bigger favela in our neighborhood and soon the people got to know Casa Semear and would spread the word that there was a great program for the kids & teenagers of their community. As a consequence, our group of kids suddenly grew from 35 up till around 90!! Even though this was great progress and we noticed God´s guidance in it, He was opening more doors for us to be able to reach more families & kids, we started to worry: How many kids can the 5 of us handle?? What is doable and what is our limit?
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| The team of Casa Semear |
In August we received a new, important team member: Eliane, a professional social worker who came to help us out exactly at the right time! She´s been of great help to us and has been busy organizing & administrating the community centre: during the month September we had the parents of all the kids come in to register their children. This means that now we have a fixed group of about 90 kids who participate actively in our program. Eliane maintains regular contact with the parents, supports and advices these families (58 in total!!) and every now and then she organizes workshops and interactive lessons about relevant subjects for specifically the moms. Now that we have Eliane working with us, the community centre also finally got it´s very own office (although really tiny), phone line and internet connection. Important progress!
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| Eliane, the social worker |
We´re very excited about this period of quick growth the community centre has been going through. We really see God´s guidance in all these things that happened; He connects us with more and more families & kids, people who don´t know the Gospel yet and so desperately need God! It´s wonderful to be able to participate in what God is doing, giving us the chance to make His love & salvation known to these kids & teenagers! It is a huge task and in order to do a better job, we urgently need more staff! Will you join us in praying that God would call more people and bring them to us to work alongside us in this big responsibility He has given us? Or, if you are interested and would like to come over and work with us for some time as a volunteer, please do get in contact with us!
God bless you!
Caio & Dorothee
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