SuperWoman: a pyjamas-party & first fruits!

Looking back on the past year of course makes me look back too on the work we did at community center Casa Semear; and one of the first things that comes to mind is the SuperWoman program for teen girls. As many of you might know, in the beginning of 2011 I started a special, weekly program for teen girls; a dynamic, interactive program called SuperWoman, developed by Youth for Christ Holland, which includes all kinds of subjects relevant & interesting to teen girls. Among other things, we talked about family relationships, inner & outer beauty, feelings, talents, friendship, sexuality & boys, our life stories & our future. 

 

We started the year with 20 teens and finished it with 16; even though it wasn´t always a very stable group (sometimes girls would drop out and others would be added to the group), together we managed to create a positive and more importantly, a safe atmosphere. Slowly openness and trust developed, new friendships were created and old ones strengthened. We had great times together, a lot of fun, but also some serious moments and challenging talks. It was great to see how everybody was so excited about it; not just the girls, but I myself would wait anxiously for every next Tuesday! It is such a privilege to be able to invest in these girls´ lives & to share a little bit of my life and experience with them. I really enjoyed it! And I hope so did they…

 

In the last months of the year I specifically invested time in short Bible studies at the beginning of each SuperWoman program. The majority of the girls didn´t really know the gospel yet and only a few of them come from Christian backgrounds. We spent time talking about God as our Creator, our Savior, Father and Lord. We read the Bible together and studied God´s plan of salvation, while I (and the rest of the team) prayed constantly that God would reveal Himself to these girls… I did my very best to get through to them, but I knew very well that it´s God´s Spirit who changes hearts & lives… Oh how I longed to see these girls living their lives for God, how that would change their lives, enrich their lives! What joy and hope would they experience! True joy and true hope, so different from the joy and hope this world has to offer! I would imagine it… and many times I would pray for them with tears in my eyes… how I´ve come to love these girls!!

 

To finish the year together, I had planned a big pajamas-party at the end of November. For weeks I was busy with all the preparations and it turned out to be a huge party! We had so much fun together: only teen girls & the 3 ´aunties´ (Silvana, Dora and me)! We had a very full program: making a photo collage, eating pizza, lots of games, watching a movie, Christmas presents, a pyjamas fashion show, photo session, making Christmas cookies, a luxury breakfast & somewhere in between these things we had to try and get some sleep! ;0)

But the best moment came when Silvana during devotional time explained the gospel once again and 3 or 4 hands were raised with the same question: ´Auntie, I want to know how we can do this: accept Jesus… Because I really need Him in my life!´ Wow! That night 6 girls accepted Jesus into their hearts and lives! We spend time talking to them, praying together & crying out of joy because of what God was doing in their lives! It certainly was the greatest moment of 2011 for me! God hears our prayers and He is able and is ready to transform the lives of these kids who so often are so broken & give them new hope! 

 

In the following weeks we talked a lot more and thought about how to continue this journey together... Some of the girls came with the idea to use 20 minutes of the program on Friday for prayer! Great! So now regularly we have ´time with God´ as they like to call it, where we share things about our lives and pray together. With time I hope that all these girls will feel safe enough to really pray out loud in the group (something that still is new and scary for them right now). Besides this, we´ve done our best to get them into contact with a Baptist church nearby the community center, hoping that they will feel at home and become a part of this local church so that they´ll receive food, friendship and guidance. Things they really need. 

 

 












So 2011 was a great year when it comes to my work with teen girls!
I´m so excited to see what 2012 will bring us...

Dot

Merry Christmas & a blessed new year!

Rapid growth of community centre Casa Semear!

It´s already a long, long time ago since I´ve last updated this weblog… By now, so many things have happened that it is impossible to write just one short post ;0)

So I´ll just post several short updates about everything that has happened around here.

In the past months community centre Casa Semear has grown significantly and we have been busy reorganizing the project. Until last September, the kids didn´t need to subscribe or anything: they would just turn up and participate in the program whenever they felt like it. This had never been a problem, because up till then we had a group of only 35 kids participating. So that was perfectly doable and, as long as this lasted, we didn´t worry about it. 

But last June things started to change… We got access to another, bigger favela in our neighborhood and soon the people got to know Casa Semear and would spread the word that there was a great program for the kids & teenagers of their community. As a consequence, our group of kids suddenly grew from 35 up till around 90!! Even though this was great progress and we noticed God´s guidance in it, He was opening more doors for us to be able to reach more families & kids, we started to worry: How many kids can the 5 of us handle?? What is doable and what is our limit? 

The team of Casa Semear

In August we received a new, important team member: Eliane, a professional social worker who came to help us out exactly at the right time! She´s been of great help to us and has been busy organizing & administrating the community centre: during the month September we had the parents of all the kids come in to register their children. This means that now we have a fixed group of about 90 kids who participate actively in our program. Eliane maintains regular contact with the parents, supports and advices these families (58 in total!!) and every now and then she organizes workshops and interactive lessons about relevant subjects for specifically the moms. Now that we have Eliane working with us, the community centre also finally got it´s very own office (although really tiny), phone line and internet connection. Important progress!

Eliane, the social worker

We´re very excited about this period of quick growth the community centre has been going through. We really see God´s guidance in all these things that happened; He connects us with more and more families & kids, people who don´t know the Gospel yet and so desperately need God! It´s wonderful to be able to participate in what God is doing, giving us the chance to make His love & salvation known to these kids & teenagers! It is a huge task and in order to do a better job, we urgently need more staff! Will you join us in praying that God would call more people and bring them to us to work alongside us in this big responsibility He has given us? Or, if you are interested and would like to come over and work with us for some time as a volunteer, please do get in contact with us!

God bless you!

Caio & Dorothee

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