Furlough in Holland

This last July that just passed we had the chance to travel to Holland once again after a long year and a half. We spent 4 weeks of holidays with my (Dot) family; far from work, stress and rush hours; a time that we could rest, see the family and friends and do some presentations on our work with children at risk for ABBA in São Paulo. We enjoyed a lot the rest we had ´cause we definitely needed it so we could gain some new energy. Here are some small impressions of our time in Holland:

As always, it was great to be in Holland, my home country, being able to speak in Dutch, experience my own culture and get back to live with my parents again, just like in good old days.

A day of fun and laughter at the rollercoaster park with my siblings!

We visited the little old city called Quotshausen in Germany where my mom was born and from which we have many good memories of the holiday’s we would spent at my grandma´s house when we were kids. Such a special day.

For one whole week we traveled around Switzerland with my parents, a week of total retirement with no responsibility, no time schedule and a lot of opportunities to enjoy such a beautiful country. We walked a lot for sure.

During our stay in Holland we also invested time in meeting people who have been helping and supporting us during all this time we´ve been in missions. We had the opportunity to do two big presentations about our work in churches; besides that, we organized something smaller for our group of faithful supporters so we could thank them in a more personal way and also share our plans. We also visited some people who have shown real interest in us.  It was extremely encouraging to see all this care, interest and support from all these people around us. This helped us a lot and for sure was a good way to recharge our energies for the work.

Presentation in Dot´s home church

Here in Brazil we had been through some difficult situations because of our local church. We haven´t seen much interest and support from their part, so it was really important to see how many people in Holland have a real interest and actively support us. People have no idea how important this is for us. That´s what gives us courage and motivates us to keep working here in Brazil. So, thank you, everybody who was and is a part of this group that care for and support us.

And then, after 4 weeks, we returned to Brazil with full suitcases (how good it was to buy things that I Iove from my country! H&M, decoration supplies, and books, books and more books). As Caio said when we were flying over São Paulo, seeing this huge city beneath us: “Ok, now we are back to chaos.” And that was how we felt. It took us a while to adapt to everything again because it´s so different than Holland. But that´s the same when we go to Holland, we also need some time to get used to life there. I feel like Brazil is getting more and more like my country, the place where I feel at home. And I believe it´s good how this is working for me. But still, all these changes from one country to another are not an easy thing to do.

Now we are all well settled and started the work at Casa Semear at full power. In a next post we will tell you more about it.

May God bless you!

Love,

Caio & Dorothee

Teen camp!

It is the best week of the year according to the teenagers... A 5 day camp in the middle of nowhere, on the countryside of São Paulo, in the middle of the forest... A unique chance for most of the teenagers, because the majority of them never gets to go out of the slum where they live and have never left the concrete jungle of this huge city. Five full days in nature, away from the poverty and problems of every day; five days of friendship, laughter, (night)games and teachings about the Bible and the life of hope God wants to give us. Every year in July, during the winter holidays, we organize a teen camp and take 25 teenagers with us into the woods to spend some wonderful days together. And we know and have experienced that exactly these 5 days can be life changing for these kids...

And so we had a wonderful teen camp last July! God provided in wonderful ways everything we needed to run the camp: in the very last week before camp we managed to find a cook, enough money came in for food, materials and the bus, and surprisingly the weather was awesome (after two years of rainy, cold camps)! So we really felt a bit spoiled with all these blessings! Thank you all so much for your support and prayers!

We got to spend 5 long days with 24 noisy teenagers. It was a wonderful, busy time, sometimes quite challenging to maintain order. Every year we turn the camp into a competition between several groups; during the games they can earn points and also lose points because of breaking the rules or fighting. We always divide the groups in a way that teenagers who normally don´t really spend time together, are put in the same group and will have to work together. Every now and then this leads to arguing and fighting, but this year we saw once again that it is a good way to teach the teenagers to work together, care for the weakest, make new friendships and get over prejudice.

In one of the groups were four girls who don´t really get along well and so during camp things went completely wrong between them. On the morning of day 2 two of them were crying and the other two were ready to attack each other... But it was wonderful to see how this changed after a good talk about understanding and forgiving each other. By the end of camp they walked around as friends and it was their group who won the competition!

As far as the biblical content goes, we had a good camp too. We studied and lived through the whole journey through the desert. We talked mainly about trusting God, unity, contentment (in stead of complaining about everything) and stubbornness (and how this can complicate life). There were some scary moments during the night games in the dark forest, funny moments when the kids just threw themselves into the river because Faraoh was coming to get them, and some long, tiring walks through the woods (because the journey through the desert wasn´t that easy). I myself had a lot of fun when I managed to seduce the kids into building a golden calf out of clay (complete with gold spray and gold glitter), after which they suddenly realized that they of course weren´t allowed to build this calf and became afraid of uncle Robert´s (Moses) reaction upon seeing what they had done; Robert played his part well and got really angry when he saw the golden calf: he threw the ten commandments on the floor and destroyed our entire art work! The excuse the kids gave: it´s all Dorothee´s fault, she seduced us into building this calf!!

So it was a wonderful time, with a great group of kids who really enjoyed nature, the free time in the swimming pool, the good food and all the different games & activities. We are very thankful to God for the time He has given us together. Each one of these teenagers is so precious and it is so worth it to invest in their young lives! We pray that they will have learned some important lessons during camp and that they will make wise choices and live their lives with God.

God bless you!

Caio & Dorothee

Trip to the zoo!

This past Saturday we went on a trip to the zoo with the youngest kids that participate in the program of community center Casa Semear! Very exciting, because almost half of the kids had never been to a zoo! Despite the cold and rainy weather and the 25 super active, noisy kids, we had a great time together! Here are some pictures of our adventure... 

 

Team picture

Caio, Dorothee, Dora, Silvana & Robert

Renovation and extension of Casa Semear

It´s been a year and a half since we started the construction of a staff house in the backyard of community center Casa Semear. Quite a big challenge, because at the same time we´re also busy (´till today) renovating the community center itself and doing a full daily program for the kids and teenagers we work with! Lots of work and a bit of a mess every now and then!

Two years ago ABBA was able to buy the community center (before that time, Robert and Silvana, leaders of the project, used to work in a little, rented space from a local church, with 30 kids on 16 m2!). It´s a big house with three floors, a garage and quite a big piece of backyard. But it needed a lot of work before it could serve well as a community center, so they started renovating the house right away. Thanks to the support of many different people, from different countries, the money started to arrive and we were able to renovate the house little by little. The big room for group meetings, the arts & crafts room, the library and study room are already done. Now we just need to finish the play room for little ones and the teenage lounge space and then the community center will be ready!    

Soon plans were made for the construction of a staff house in the backyard of the community center, a big challenge! This house is meant as a home for long term missionaries that work and live inside the project and it will also serve as a temporary home for short term volunteers, which we receive regularly. It´s really nice to see this staff house being built little by little, to see how God provides exactly in everything that we need! Just a few weeks ago we received a phone call from someone of our church who wanted to donate a lot of good furniture to our staff house! Great! We hadn´t even started yet to think about how to decorate the inside part of the house, and God already surprised us with this huge blessing!     

 

A few weeks ago we managed, with help from some volunteers, to put the second roof on the house! This was done in Brazilian manner…. Just one professional construction worker and the rest of the guys just followed his instructions. No machines, everything depends on human strength and hand work! Everybody helped to make the cement, which was poured into little buckets, these buckets were taken to the second floor by an improvised pulley, and then finally two strong men were on top of the newly made roof to pour the cement on it. I got really scared just to look at the improvised ladder that they themselves made to be able to get on top of the roof on the second floor… Just the fact that no one got hurt during this whole enterprise was a true miracle ;0) 

Right now the rough structure of the house is done. Now we need to plaster, paint and finish all the details of the house. We hope that we´ll be able to finish and decorate it ´till the end of this year, so that the whole structure of the community center will be ready and we´ll be able to just focus on the work and program with the kids and teenagers; so that we will be able to expand and develop the project more.

Second roof ready!

We´re impressed by Gods care and provision, especially when it comes to these material things which normally don´t get priority in the work we do, but still are important to be able to run a good, organized project. We´re very thankful for everything God has given us as a team, for the people and churches He moved to support the project and we pray that He will use it all for His honor and glory. That community center Casa Semear might be a place where many children and teenagers will get to know God as their Savior, Lord and Father. A place where God can work and bring transformation into the lives of these children and teenagers that grow up in such difficult, broken circumstances.