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.  

SuperWoman

Since a few weeks we started a special weekly program for teenage girls (SuperWoman) in the age of 11-18. It´s difficult to keep teenagers interested in the program at Casa Semear. Since last year we´ve been noticing that many teenagers stop coming to the community centre when they get to 15 or so, and that we kind of loose contact with them. It´s a shame this happens, because actually they are the ones that most need a place for themselves, good friendships, good advice and some wise guidance during these decisive years of their lives.

So, that´s why we thought it would be a good idea to start a fun, interactive and informative program especially for these teen girls. As I love to work with teenage girls, they asked me to lead this girls´ program. The program is called SuperWoman, it´s a really good and fun program developed by Youth for Christ in Holland (meanwhile I´m also translating this material for YfC into Portuguese, as they´ve asked me to help them out). Youth for Christ works in several big cities in Holland among teenage girls and they´ve developed this program especially for this target group.

It comes down to a group of teenage girls who meet every week to talk about all kinds of subjects relevant to them in this stage of life. It´s a very creative, dynamic and contemporary program that covers subjects such as: self-image, self-confidence, friendships, family bonds, talents and interests, the future and society, sexuality and dating and lots more. Every week we got a full program containing funny games, serious activities, relaxing talks and deep conversations. I hope that together we´ll be able to create a safe and positive atmosphere in the group so that the girls will feel free to talk about the things that are on their minds; and that, in time, they´ll notice that there is room to also share more difficult, intimate issues and sad experiences they might be dealing with.

 

We just started the program, but it´s already a huge success! The 18 girls that participate are very excited! We´re having a lot of fun together while we´re busy with all kinds of cool activities: making chocolate lollypops (and eating them all afterwards of course ;0), watching movies, doing sketches and drama, designing our own diary, building pyramids and shooting a hilarious photo session. I am already noticing that the girls are getting a more and more united group and that they´re slowly starting to feel more secure, sharing more with each other and talking deeper every time...

 

Through this program we are trying to maintain contact with the girls, building friendship with them, walking next to them and being an example to them. The majority of these girls come from broken families, where they have to deal with a mom who works full-time, the absence of a good father figure and a negative and risky social context (crime, street life, drug use, teenage pregnancy etc.). This program offers them a bit of coaching, information, direction and insight based on biblical principles. 

They are all just such precious girls with so much talent and ability! We pray and hope that we may see them grow up to become healthy, balanced young women with a healthy sense of self-respect and self-confidence, having worthy goals and dreams; girls who know well their heavenly Father and know that they´re loved. 

I would like to invite you to pray for these 18 girls!

God bless you, 

Dorothee

At the beginning of a new year!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

Caio & Dot in Curitiba

December of 2010: a busy month at ABBA

December was a very busy month for us here at ABBA. A lot to organize and take care of because of all the Christmas parties at the different projects.

All kids, mothers and staff of the community center during the Christmas party

Shelter Elohim

At the beginning of December we organized a Christmas party at the Elohim House, ABBA´s shelter for street boys where I´ve been helping out twice a week in the past year. It was a special day, because we were celebrating Christmas, the end of a working year and we were saying goodbye to two of our ex-street boys who were returning to their families. Alex and João stayed with us for about 8 months, now they were going home. It was a day full of different emotions!


It ´s wonderful to see how God uses our project to give street boys a new chance in life; and it´s great to see how these boys change and grow through the months that they´re with us, till they come to the point where they´re ready to return to their homes... Because most of these boys do have a family, often a mother who normally wants to receive her son back into the family. For the boys, this returning home isn´t always that easy, because they´ve just found their place in the shelter, are going to school, live in certain luxury when compared to their family´s situation and, above all, they kind of feel safe, protected against drug use and crime while they´re with us. For them, moving back home means uncertainty, new challenges, poverty and having to fight against the temptation to fall back into drug use. At the same time, they´re back home, with their moms, something all boys deep in their hearts long for… It´s a big, sometimes hard, step and a huge challenge for them. We´ll keep track of these boys and their families for some time still and we hope and pray that they´ll find their place in the family and stay strong, so they won´t fall back into their old habits.

Community Center Semear

At the end of the month we had another big party: the Christmas and end-of-the-year party of the community center. Now that was a huge party! We enjoyed it so much and so did the kids!

We worked hard and were able to find Christmas sponsors for all of the children & teenagers who had participated in our program over the past year. Different people from different local churches decided to help us with this big Christmas project. So every child & teenager got a bag full of Christmas presents at the party: clothes, shoes, toys etc. It was just amazing to be able to do this for all these kids! You should have seen their faces! Knowing the poverty in which these families live, you can understand how special this was for them, because at home they don´t get any Christmas presents ever.

A barbecue and three 3 Santa´s who came on huge, decorated motorcycles to surprise the kids right in front of the community center, made the party a real success! Afterwards, Robert and Caio were still busy for some time delivering 20 big food baskets to all the families! The families were glad and we were so happy that we had so much to give!

It was a very special Christmas!

God bless you,

love,

Caio & Dorothee