Building work at community center 'The Sower House'

It´s been more than three years since we started building a missionary house in the back yard of ‘The Sower House’. This house will serve as living space for long-term and short-term missionaries who come to work with us at the community center. We can finally tell you that we´re in the final stage of this building project!

Starting the construction work in 2010

At the end of 2010

The missionary house in 2011

2012

June of 2013

In the beginning of June, a small group of young people from a church in Pennsylvania, USA, came on a mission trip to Brazil to help us out with the finishing touches of this big building project. They worked really hard during a whole week and were able to finish all the external painting work of the missionary house. With great results! 

Great results!

Thanks to a very generous donation from my (Dot) church in Holland, we´ve already started furnishing the part of the house that will serve short-term volunteers. We´ve been busy buying lots of supplies for the house: from a bunk bed and refrigerator to curtains, cups, plates and pans! It´s been wonderful to see God provide everything we need to improve the structure of the project and we´re very grateful to Him for giving us the opportunity to create a nice living space, so we´re able to receive well the people who are willing to come work with us and serve the kids and families we attend at ‘The Sower House’. In October we hope to welcome the first short-term volunteers in the new house!

                                                  The bath room ready to be used!
 

                             Working hard to get the kitchen and living room ready too

Brand new bunk bed ready to be used!

But the building work around ‘The Sower House’ doesn´t stop at this point… There are still many other things to do! Our next project is focused on turning the concrete back yard of ‘The Sower House’ into a nice playground area for the kids to enjoy. In the neighborhood where these kids live, there´s not even one park, square or playground area where they can run around, play and meet each other in a space properly developed for them. So it´ll be really great to be able to offer them at least a small playground area to safely play in at the community center.

Our concrete back yard

Enough space for a nice play ground!

We´ve also started to do some building work in ‘The Sower House´s’ main kitchen area. We would like to improve and enlarge the kitchen structure and create a big, well equipped kitchen that will not only serve for preparing food and snacks for the kids´ program, but will also serve as a good place for giving cooking and baking classes and workshops for moms and women from the community.  

                     Seu Luiz working hard to put two new windows in the kitchen wall

                                       The two new windows in the kitchen wall

So there are many challenges still ahead of us and we know that we depend on God´s provision in order to one day see all these desires become reality, desires that are focused on better serving the kids and families God has put on our path.

God bless you!

Love,

Caio & Dot

Some special holidays!

We had a few very busy months at the end of last year, so by the time it was Christmas we were more than ready for some holidays, rest and no set responsibilities. The Christmas celebration of community center Casa Semear was the last event of our work year and it turned out to be a wonderful celebration!

Some 150 people came to the small Baptist church we were allowed to use for the Christmas celebration; it was a great opportunity for us to share the Gospel with these people! The kids also played an active role by performing a musical that explains God´s plan of salvation.

And of course the handing out of Christmas gifts was a very special moment too, it´s always amazing to see so many happy faces and the great joy a simple present causes in these kids!

The following weeks were very relaxing and quiet. We used our time well, resting lots and reloading our energies after the extremely busy time we´d had. We spent Christmas and New Year´s Eve with Caio´s family here in São Paulo and also used our free time to work on some of our craft projects. 

Christmas 2012

Caio´s craft project!

In the second half of January it was finally time for my parents to leave behind  a cold, snowy Holland and spend three weeks with us here in Brazil! The last time they were here, was more than three years ago! We had a wonderful time together. We tried to show them a bit of the normal, Brazilian life by, among other things, taking them to the local market on Saturdays and having pastel for lunch.

We also spent a week travelling along the shore to visit several different beaches and small villages that are very beautiful and famous amongst tourists. If you live in São Paulo and want to show a bit of the Brazilian nature, you quickly turn to the northern beaches of the state of São Paulo, they´re worth it! Together we really enjoyed our holiday at the beach! 

Joseline (who was also in Brazil during this same time) and her boyfriend, Bruno, joined us at the beach for two days, so we were able to celebrate together mum and dad´s 35^th wedding anniversary! Very special!

Celebrating mum & dad´s 35th wedding anniversary

In February it was time to go back to work at community center Casa Semear. Mum and dad were able to see a bit of our work with the kids and also joined us in the program for a few days, and then the time came for them to return to Holland. 

Joseline also returned to Holland in February, so now I´m again the only member of our family living at this side of the ocean ;0) But we´re very thankful for the wonderful time God gave us together here in Brazil!

And now we are back to our normal, daily responsibilities: the SuperWoman program started again two weeks ago and besides that, running the community center in general, continues to be a huge challenge with a very small team of 4 attending a big group of around 80 kids!

Doing home visits in the slum

Caio has also returned to his normal, daily routine of working for the Christian publishing house. He received his first whole book translation job and is very busy with it right now. It´s a book by D.A. Carson that needs to be translated from English into Portuguese. Caio is enjoying his new job and we´ve been able to see God opening new doors and confirming him in his ministry. Caio also finished his theology studies (Master in Divinity) and we´ll be celebrating his graduation on Saturday, 2^nd of March.

And, last but not least, something that has been on our minds more and more is of course the arrival of our baby boy or girl and we´re trying to prepare ourselves for parenthood as best we can. We´ve been on the adoption waiting list for about 8 months now, time flies!! We don´t know how much longer we´ll have to wait, but we hope that we´ll be able to welcome our little boy or girl still this year. And so we´re gladly expecting...

God bless you! Love,

Caio & Dorothee