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

Casa Semear: Overview of 2012

Here´s a short video with some pictures of everything that happened at community center Casa Semear during 2012! 

We´re very grateful for everything God did in and through us at Casa Semear and in the hearts of the children, teenagers and families we were able to work with during this year!

All honour to Him!

Meeting for moms: touching stories & one great hope

Since last year when we did the camp for teenagers about the exodus, the idea that God wants to create a new society where there´s love, justice and peace, as a result of his dwelling among the people, is something very strong in our mind. For that people, who lived more than 3 thousand years ago, this hope was clear because they could compare it with the kind of life they had; a life full of slavery, oppression and injustice. As for us, the idea is a little more difficult to imagine because our lives don´t look much like that.

But there are many people to whom such hope may seem impossible, something too good to be true. In one of the parents meetings at Casa Semear, the mothers (they are the only ones who show up) had the opportunity to share their life story and their reality right now. Among the great tragedies they have to face, the heaviest of them all has to do with their partners. Husbands or boyfriends who mistreat, threaten, take advantage of, abuse, neglect them and do everything else, but to love them, is a common experience in their lives. To see your children hiding under the bed while your partner beats you up is an image that gets very close to that life of slavery, oppression and injustice. Many of them really feel like slaves because they don´t see how they can escape from this situation.

While Dot and me were talking about this, we couldn´t help but wonder how great God´s grace and love are. How such a holy and marvelous God could think it was worth it to safe a world in such a terrible condition? But it´s so good to know that He is doing it. We also talked about how much we want to see these women, one day, living in a world fully redeemed by God, being able to live a life of love, justice and peace. Tears and wounds of a life of suffering will turn into a big smile, finally life as it should be! This is the one great hope that we want to share with these moms.

Caio