Living Transformation ENG

A lot happened in the past three months, by God´s grace we´ve been able to experience many different things. So here are some pictures to update you all in a creative, visual way about our life and work here in São Paulo, Brazil.

June of 2012

SuperWoman program

In June, towards the end of the first semester of the SuperWoman program for teen girls in community center Casa Semear, we organized a special beauty day for the girls.

A long Saturday full of beauty workshops (hair, nails & make-up) and for each teen girl an individual photo shoot with the theme: Believe it, you are beautiful!

Adoption

On the 12th of June we received a long-expected, super important phone call with some great news: we were approved as adoptive parents by the local authorities of São Paulo.

This means that we´re on the waiting list for a baby now and that, one certain day, we´ll receive another phone call with the news that we´re going to be a mommy & daddy! Super exciting!

Also in June, community center Casa Semear received a big group of teenagers from a church in Texas, USA.

A 12 day long mission trip brought this group of excited young adults to us to help us finish some of the building work and paint the newly build staff house at Casa Semear. We and they, I believe, had a great time!

Holidays in Holland

A bit later in June we, Caio and I, went on a short holiday trip to Holland and London. It was very good to spend time with our family and friends there and just be away for a bit, relax and regain our energies while enjoying Holland.

We also went on a short city trip to London in honor of our fifth wedding anniversary which we celebrated last year (05/08/2011).

July of 2012

Teen camp

In the beginning of July we flew back to São Paulo, well rested and with new strength. As soon as we got back here, we started the preparations for the yearly teen camp of community center Casa Semear which we always plan in July, during winter holidays.

We had some amazing days with a great group of kids during camp. We had lots of fun during the many sport activities and (night) games and a lot of time to really invest in our friendships and trust bonds with these kids. Together we studied and lived through Joseph´s life story and talked much about family relationships and forgiveness. It was a good, special time!

Spare time...

At home, in our spare time, we´ve been busy improving our office space and creating a creative arts & crafts corner for me (Dot). As Caio is most of his time working at home now for the Christian publishing house, working on text revision, translation and investing in his theology studies, it was about time to improve his office space a little.

Caio´s been busy making a new office table, book shelves and a book case out of used pallets and wooden crates. Here´s the result!

I love to be creative in my spare time and so, when we were in Holland, I bought my very first sewing machine. After reorganizing the office, I now have my own arts & crafts corner where I can spend all my spare hours and relax.

August of 2012

On the 5th of August we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary! Going through life together and building up a life together has been and will always be a great adventure we both greatly enjoy; we can clearly see God´s guidance, presence and blessing upon our lives and we´re just so thankful to Him for these past years and the future that lies ahead of us!

SuperWoman program

In August the SuperWoman program for teen girls started once again for the second semester of this year. I now work with a quite stabile group of around 20 girls between 11 and 15 years old. Every week there is another dynamic, creative and interesting meeting in which we talk about all kinds of interesting topics for teen girls and study the Bible together and seek God in prayer.

It is so encouraging to see how much these girls have grown in the past year; they are a close group with good friendships, trust bonds and openness among each other. In the past couple of weeks we´ve been talking about a woman´s body, sexuality and dating.

We think it´s very important to talk about these topics with the girls and try to guide them and teach them Biblical principles. Especially when you realize that actually many girls who come from the lower social classes in Brazil get pregnant during their teen years…

September of 2012

Since the beginning of September we have two new family members: Jip & Janneke! Their names refer to a famous children´s book from Holland that is all about the adventures of two little friends named Jip & Janneke.

ABBA staff retreat

Also in September we participated in the yearly staff retreat of our missionary organization ABBA. The retreat consists in a long weekend away with the whole ABBA team (from various different ministries), it´s a time to rest, to seek God together, pray for each other, develop and strengthen friendships and just hang out and have fun. And this time it was even better because my sister, Joseline, and her Brazilian boy friend, Bruno, went along too!

The ABBA team is a great bunch of people, they´re like a second family to us, so we always enjoy it very much to be able to spend a few days with them.

We enjoyed all the free time, the fun during the many games, the camp fire on a lovely, warm evening and all the laughter and jokes involving the costume parties during dinner time...

We are very grateful to God for giving us such great colleagues, friends and brothers & sisters!

God bless you!

Caio & Dot

It has been very quiet on this weblog for the past couple of weeks... and there´s a good reason for it: we were travelling! We spent some time in Holland and London. It wasn´t really furlough, but an extra, shorter holiday trip to Holland. Quite a while ago, we received a generous gift from one of our family members here in São Paulo especially for our 5^th wedding anniversary. First, our plan was to make a nice honeymoon trip to the Northeast coast of Brazil, but as we thought a bit more about it, we realized that we could also just use this money for an extra trip to Holland! Now what is greater fun than being able to spend some time in my home country with family and dear friends?! So that´s why in June we spend almost two weeks in the Netherlands… That is very short, you could say, but for us it was a wonderful, well spent holiday time. We enjoyed every bit of it and were able to rest from the first semester which had been quite busy and challenging.

To celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary, we also made a short city trip to London! Great fun! It was so good to be away, just the two of us, spending time sightseeing as real tourists ;0) and discovering new things & spots, walking a lot, eating fish & chips as much as we could and reading a good book in the quietness of Hyde Park.