Tony and Laura Lewry

Santa Monica is the Community we live in. It used to be a notorious Favela but now has settled down. I really believe that the base here has a lot to do with it. It has focused a lot on community development projects. Everything from women's conferences, to the 'Show de Bola' football club which encourages kids to stay in school, to working with the local clinic to provide healthcare information to the community. Several of our staff are involved in the local council trying to make Santa Monica a better place to live for everyone. We have mini supermarket, a football court, a sweet shop a bakery and veg shop and 3 Bars.And the YWAM base of course.

We have seen lots of Joe recently which is great as we are hoping that he will still want to come of the streets when we have our next Triage in Sept/Oct. If all goes according to plan we should be involved in this. Keep praying for him, his safety and that he still will want to come of the streets when we have everything prepared to give him this opportunity.

One of the Projects of our fellow students on the Children at risk course is to bring Unihoc to the Favelas. Here on the base there is an excellent project with football (called Show de Bola)  which trains the kids in football skills, disciples them and gives home visits. The kids need to be attend school to be able to be part of this project, and because the training is good and they win lots of tournaments, kids want to be involved. So as football is used as a tool to be part of the kids lives, our friend has a vision to start Unihoc projects, which will also be a tool to help us work in the Favelas. Getting the kids to learn new skills, play as a team, get to hear about God and hopefully it will help them to stay in school which is so important in trying develop these Favelas into good communities. We had a week of Unihoc training and learning how to train the kids. It was a great week where YWAM invited several NGOs that work with street kids around Recife to also be train

Last week we helped a Texas team do a bible club for the kids here in Santa Monica. It was a great week    ( if a little manic at times) but we built good relationships with the kids, they had fun and learnt about God! Tony did a great job translating for his team!        

Our last week with the Kings Kids Camp was outreach week. The focus was take take light into dark places. We did street dance and drama, campaigning against exploitation of children, and a visit to the street community that we work with to bring food, drama and dance.   The street visit was an incredible evening the kids acted out some of the stories of Jesus in the street and the community was so engaged, cheering and booing and clapping through it all. It was possibly my most humbling experience so far, to see, when Jesus embraced the woman who society wanted to stone to death and he told her that he did not condemn her, the adults and kids of the street stood and cheered. I cannot explain how awesome it felt to bring the truth of Gods love to his children in a way that they understood and truly felt.

  For the Next part of our Practical Phase we will be going to Belem ( top of the map!)  in the Amazon region of Brazil. It will be hotter and humid-er than here. We will be going to serve and learn from a project called ARCA  http://www.arcabelem.com/  which have a Triage Centre, a boys house and a girls house. Please pray that this would be a great time where we can bless the staff serving there, the kids living there and gain skills for the future. (Please also pray that I ( Laura) wouldn't be eaten alive be killer mosquitoes)

We found this small tree frog on the window

We found a two meter long Boa constrictor on the grass about 20 meters away from our house!! How cool is that!!! not big enough to eat an adult, but i think it could manage a toddler!