"Those were gun shots...."

After a short break for Nico and I, we were straight back into the work... we started with a week of deep cleaning and organising, it felt so good, although tiring, but to see how organised and clean everything was at the end of the week!

During this week as we were dosing off one night, we heard gun shots on the street, not that common on our street! We have heard that on the other side of the slum there has been two gangs who have gone to war with each other and the situation is very tense. As we visited the community we could sense the tension. The fear. The worry. The uncertainty.


"Those were gun shots..." Nico said to me this particular night. I agreed without a doubt. Then more gun shots.... Not long after, we heard the ambulance, the police, the helicopter. Quite a crazy night! We sent messages to our friends in the slum to see what had happened. It was an unrelated incident to the war, a group of four had robbed from someone and when the police came after them it turned into a shoot out. Three of the four got shot, two died and the other two caught and went to prison. This situation added to the tension in the community.

Please pray for 'Pedreira Prado Lopes' and all that is happening, pray for PEACE among the gangs and pray for the innocent not to get hurt. Pray for the Churches of the community to rise up! Pray for our safety, we try to avoid the 'hot zones' but we continue to visit the community during the day.

Anyway, after this crazy week and all the cleaning, we held three days of prayer and planning for the semester with Nico, Rachel and Dora. Our team here at the Rock House is three, but we are very happy to say that it has grown by one more full time staff member and also a volunteer for 6 months who both just arrived last weekend!

We are super excited about what God is guiding us to this semester... lots of new opportunities! God is speaking through a quote: (anonymous)

"A seed has potential to grow and become a large tree, a beautiful flower etc but needs TLC (Tender Loving Care) - water, light, a place to put its roots etc. If it doesn't get these things it may never grow up to it's full potential."

Looking at those who live in the slum, each one has so much potential given to them by God, the problem is that the majority don't reach that potential because they don't have the "TLC" that they need. We believe that one of the focus's of the Rock House is this; to offer a place for each individual to grow into their full potential.

So we prayed for direction and God opened the doors!! Volunteers began offering their gifts and talents to serve the Rock House. A short story of one example to tell you how amazingly God did this:
We received parts of a drum kit a while back, as a donation but we didn't have the money or skills to fix and complete it, so it sat gathering dust. During the big clean up, Nico decided to see if he could sell it, a little extra money for the Rock House! He put it on a second hand website and the same day received many phone calls for it. He said 'first to come, can take it!' The guy who bought it is a Christian and when he heard about what the Rock House does, he offered to come do drum lessons!! The first lesson is happened last night, although there were only 5 students (one is Nico!!) we are super excited the 4 kids have turned up and we believe more will come. The teacher really invested in the preparation, buying drum sticks and making little wooden pads for them to practise! So cool!

So, a new project is this drum class, but we also will offer dance and swimming classes and maybe english lessons, and in about a month, guitar and violin lessons! How awesome is our God!

In our teenage boys groups we want to open their minds to possibilities, so we are going to arrange for some workshops, such as a fireman to come and talk about what he does and explain what the process is to arrive there, a hairdresser/barber to come and give some short lessons, a short first aid course, a builder etc. Next week we will start with a guy who will teach the boys how to do Christian Rap music!!

Along with all this we will continue with all the usual programmes; kids and teenage groups, water aerobics for the ladies (with a possibility of starting a second group, the demand is so high!), jujitsu and we will continue with visiting the families in the community.

It seems a lot, but we are all super excited about this semester to see what God is going to do! We will keep you updated here on the blog with all the exciting stories because we believe there will be many as our God is faithful! Pray with us. We always want to walk in the plan that God has for the Rock House, we want to serve with all our hearts, we want more love and passion to serve the people of this community!