Holiday time is already over and so are our days off; which means that by now we´ve started a new working-year, as I call it.
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| Morgan & Lisa |
In January we had two weeks off and we used that time to meet old YWAM friends again. We travelled to Curitiba, a city in the south of Brazil, for a few days, because at the time a couple of friends of ours were on DTS outreach there. The last time we saw them was in 2007, and as they´re Americans and live in the USA, this was a very special opportunity to meet them again and spend some time together. We really enjoyed the time we spent together, filled with good conversations and a lot of memories of our time in YWAM Belo Horizonte.
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| André & Manuela |
Surprisingly, the following week we got another opportunity to meet some other old YWAM friends again... This time they were friends from Switzerland who did DTS together with me (Dot) in São Paulo in 2006! It was a pleasure to be able to welcome them in our home and spend a short weekend together. Old friendships sometimes are the strongest friendships and it´s always very special to share that!
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| Princesses! |
But, as I said, by now we´ve started working again in the community center Semear. The kids are still in their summer vacation, so we only do an afternoon program for them, which is a little longer and a bit more relaxed than the usual afternoon programs. This means, we´re mainly just playing lots of games with the kids and trying to maintain order and fun, which can be quite challenging sometimes, because we´ve had days where there were about 40 kids running around the house! It´s tiring, but fun!
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| They love to play table tennis! |
The kids are very excited about their newest `toy´: table tennis! We´ve been able to buy this game for them with money that was raised by the Sunday school kids of my (Dot) church in Holland. Thanks a lot! The kids are quickly improving their skills and they´re enjoying it very much; even though one of us staff has to supervise the game constantly to maintain order, because in their enthusiasm the kids get quite fanatic and tend to fight and discuss about every little detail of the game!! But that´s part of the fun too, I guess.
Over the last weeks, I (Dot) have been busy searching, organizing and designing material concerning (teen)pregnancy, fetal development and prevention material in the area of sexuality and dating etc. Every now and then I get this boost of inspiration and enthusiasm which I use to get more new material in this area. Preparing for the work that will come eventually.
Since a few weeks I am again supporting and helping a teenage girl who is in the middle of an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. She´s from our neighborhood and I know her mother, so that´s how God put her on my path. Ana* is 17 years old and 5 months pregnant right now. She just had her first ultrasound and found out that the baby is a boy. She got pregnant from a guy she was seeing shortly, not really a serious relationship. As she now says: `Actually I have no idea why I slept with him, because I don´t even really like him.´
Right now she finds herself in a difficult time emotionally speaking: a lot of sadness, insecurity, fear, even despair; feelings of rejection towards the baby, while on the other hand she knows that the baby is innocent. It´s a difficult time to work through things and to adapt to a new reality. But at the same time, I noticed that when she spoke about the ultrasound, for example, she showed certain excitement about the baby. We pray and hope that in the coming months she´ll be able to adapt to this new situation and that when the time is due she´ll receive the baby with love and excitement.
So we´ve been spending some time together on a weekly basis, we´re working through a manual on pregnancy and fetal development and I´m also helping and stimulating her to create a kind of pregnancy diary filled with all kinds of information and funny facts about her own life, the pregnancy and the baby. We talk a lot and this way I hope that I can help her a bit to understand more of what is happening to her and the baby, physically and emotionally speaking. Every time I work with these girls I am shocked by how little they know about their own bodies, getting pregnant and development during pregnancy; and it is just wonderful to see how excited Ana gets when she discovers and learns something new about her and the baby.
Please, remember us and the kids we work with in your prayers!
God bless you, love,
Caio & Dorothee
* Ana is a fictitious name to protect her identity.
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| Caio & Dot in Curitiba |
