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Showing posts from September, 2011

Digging and stuff

This week I have been focusing most of my energies on digging. The mission here has a school here for the kids in the local community, I think they currently have a couple of hundred kids. Anyway the school is almost finished only a bit of work to do on the third floor. As it is on a slope they had to level the ground a bit, this has left a 3 meter earth bank behind the school. So I have to build a supporting wall. It's about 60 meters long so it's a good project to get stuck in to. This week we have about 2/3 of the foundations dug. Also this week we saw a wild sloth in the forest next to our dining room! Laura has been involved in swimming lessons for kids in the community, craft with local some women, painting railings, and 2days in hope house with the boys. That's all for now. I'll put some pictures on once the Internet improves.

The bridge and other stuff

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In our second week we where all preparing for 2 big events on the base one for the local churches and the other for the community. Our part to play was finishing the bridge into the school where the events where to be held. I worked with the metal and Laura painted. Also during the week we went to the streets to do detached work with the street kids, which involved basic first aid, playing games, colouring, and generally getting to know them, this is the area of work where we find kids that want to leave the streets, we can offer them a way out. Hope house is the way out which we offer, it is a house for boys from 12-18. We also had the opportunity to help out a bit at hope house, as our language improves we hope to be of more use in that area of the work. I'm not exactly sure about the rules about pictures of the kids on the streets or at hope house, so I won't put any photos up now but as soon as I know the rules I'll put something up. On a completely different note, we h

Monkeys

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Hi, sorry that there haven't been any posts for a while, the Internet is shocking at the moment, uber slow!! Any way here are some pictures of the monkeys on the base eating bananas.

Quagmire and the rain

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Our friendly mosquito eating frog continues to protect us from the evil plans of the mosquito army! It has been a bit rainy here but we are reassuringly told that the rain is almost over for the year. Even when it rains it's not cold so it's all good, although we desperately miss our good friends in bogota, I am happy to have left behind the cold!!!

Celebrations

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Since we arrived we have been to 2 celebrations, a wedding and a discipleship training school graduation, both involved lots of cake! This is the wedding This is the graduation.

independence day

Today is Brazilian independence day, when they celebrate their independence from Portugal. it is a national holiday so we have the day off so we are going to the city to see what's going on.

a brief overview of today

6;15 breakfast 7-8 time with God 8-9 worship in chapel 9-12;30 working in the boys home. we emptied a storage room used for clothes sorted the clothes, cleaned the room, put up some new shelving and put the clothes back in order, then we put 2 large boxes of books in subject order on some shelving, sorted out some donated toys for the house and played dominoes with the boys. 12;30-2 lunch 2-5 Tony visiting 2 family's of boys involved in the football project. Laura helping cook dinner for the staff on the base 6-7 dinner 7-9 service in the chapel 10-11 update blog 11 bed.

our new place

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Here are a few pictures of our new place

Safe and sound

We have arrived safely in Sunny Recife (well it rained all night but it looks like it will be sunny today). Our journey, all be it long, went without hitch and we managed to get some sleep in Frankfurt airport. We arrived on time into Recife airport with all of our luggage intact. With a combination of bad Spanish and even worse Portuguese, I managed to buy a phone card to call the YWAM base, who in turn called the guy who was waiting for us, and we quickly found each other. Somehow we managed to fit all of our luggage and 4 of us into a small VW Golf and we started the 45 minute drive to the base. As we made our way through the streets the sights, sounds and smells were a little reminiscent of Bogota, only with slightly less pot holes. As we passed through the double wrought iron gates, a thin stone track led the way up the hill. It felt slightly comforting to see familiar buildings which we had seen on the web site. We met a few people and then we where shown to our room. It's a