Learning and growth

Coronavirus is still very close to us, we are constantly hearing of more people that have it but I think Brazil got tired of nearly 6 months of confinement and basically reopened everything - parks, shopping malls, restaurants, and gyms, but not schools! It kind of looks like life went back to normal except that the law still states that we need to use masks when we leave our house!

Here at the Rock House things changed too. In August we took a week off with no activities - until August we had been having our prayer times together, visiting the community during the week, and giving out donations every Friday and distributing food packages to nearly 100 families (each received 3 in total, one every 2 months) and this was possible because of you all! So although it wasn't like our normal busy weekly schedule, we felt it was time for a break before our second semester started. It had been tiring mentally and spiritually with a lot of questions and a team to lead when we were all in the unknown...

Nico and I decided to go to the beach for a week, taking all the coronavirus precautions - 11 hours driving so we didn't have to go through airports and filling the car with food so we wouldn't have to go out of the house a lot. Out of our 6 days on the beach, it rained 3 of them! And Lorenzo was sick for 5 of them!! So it didn't go exactly as we had planned, but it was a break away from our every day reality at the Rock House. It was some nice family time despite Lorenzo being off form. Our last day at the beach was the best - sun shining and Lorenzo back on form! We couldn't get him out of the ocean!!

So then we arrived back and started our second semester. Since coronavirus is still around we felt it unwise to return to our normal schedule but we decided to invest our time differently - learning and growing! In 2017 Nico and I completed a YWAM course focused on Community Development. The school was such a beneficial tool in forming the way we work with the community today so we wanted our team to have this same experience. Seeing it as a good time to invest in this we volunteered to help as staff of the course and 4 of our staff are doing the school. It started at the end of August and is going really well, each of the students (10 in total) are individually being impacted and are already putting into practice what they are learning.

The school has online classes 3 mornings a week and the other two mornings are discussion groups, discussing articles, books and the weekly film. The movies are chosen with the theme of the week and the book we are reading together is called "When helping hurts" from S.Corbett and B.Fikkert. It focuses on local churches being involved in their communities and how we work as missionaries with them, it is making us reflect a lot on this. In the afternoons the school requires 2 afternoons a week in the community which our team completes along with the other students from the school. Our Rock House team has another afternoon in the slum and every 2 weeks we have a team meeting one afternoon per week. So our schedule got pretty busy! 

Prayer walks in the community

Young couple embrace their responsibilities

Opportunities to share the Word

Opportunities to pray

The time we spent during the previous months investing in the visits and time spent in the slum have been very interesting as we noticed people opened up a lot more than usual. Probably because of our schedule being more flexible without activities, we have spent more time chatting and visiting people in their home and without a time limit (sometimes arriving home 7/8pm). We heard a lot of stories and relationships have gone a lot deeper with many families that we know for a long time already. 

For example, there is a single mum who shared with us that the second of her four children is actually not hers. Her ex-husband cheated on her and the girl got pregnant but didn't want the baby so left her at the door of this mum and although the father stayed around for a while, after he separated from the mum he doesn't want anything to do with the baby. So this mum has been raising a child that is not her own and was the result of a betrayal, today the abandoned baby is a teenager. She also shared that her third and fourth children were basically the result of her boyfriend raping her as he was a very violent man and treated her very badly. Nico knows this family for more than 6 years since he arrived here and she never shared this part of her history. Knowing the story helps us understand this family situation so much better and we have been able to invest more specifically with each individual and the family unit as a whole. This has been a very positive fruit from this year and we continue to see the results as we continue to visit the community. 

Of course with Lorenzo, Nico and I cannot both participate in the morning classes (or the afternoon in the slum) so we take turns but mostly Nico is joining the classes. My involvement is more focused on walking alongside some of the female students of the school. Every YWAM course offers this individual help which is very important for the student and very interesting and challenging for the mentor. I am finding my role in this. I like to invite them to my home and have a tea or coffee with them and chat about what they are learning, how they are growing, where they are struggling etc. I am really enjoying this time and I am learning as I hear from them and we discuss what they are learning. We are excited to see what happens as the school progresses and the team is shaken in their knowledge and ideas. We are so excited to see where God takes us next year as we build on this time of learning and growing! 

Please pray for us:

- May this time of learning continue well and that everyone can grow and dream bigger with God.

- Thankfulness for our health, our comfort, our family ...

- Thankfulness for Lorenzo who is growing up well, is learning little by little to speak and already understands 3 languages (Portuguese, English, French). His favourite word are "ball" "juice" and "toot toot" which is a car!!