Blog

We have teams in on Saturday for training camp and all of them launch out of the United States to their prospective country on Wednesday, January 19th. Over the next four months young adults will travel to five different countries to bring Kingdom and we are so excited to see what happens during the four and a half months they are out on the field. At Real Life, we are asking participants to try to blog every week. This can be about the difficulty of living on the field, community, ministry, the adventure, or anything related to their time on the field. Granted, internet time can be hard and it is not always available, but we stress to the teams the importance of why blogging is beneficial. For one, families love to hear from their kids, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, etc. Supporters lo…

Imagine this: eight people camping out in the mountains in the middle of the ruins of an old fort cramming under a ten foot tarp trying futility to keep reasonably dry and warm while attempting to catch at least a couple of hours of sleep.  That is what this team was doing Friday evening in the middle of the Brazilian mountains.  We were going on a pilgrimage to seek out the Lords voice by getting away from noise and distraction, or at least that was the original plan.   It began by our leaders Ryan and Angie calling the team together and giving us a very short list of items to pack in a small back pack.  Here is what was the hardest part: we were not allowed to ask any questions at all unless it was directly related to packing.  That drove me, a control freak a…

Here is a list of things you should never do if you ever find yourself in a foreign country working with a group of kids: -let any kind of candy be seen that you don’t want to share -start throwing balls at kids and let them throw ones at you if you don’t want to spend the next half hour as the object of a one sided doge ball game -let the girls start putting make up on guys…..I’ll let you imagine how that can end. -above all, don’t start tickling matches or piggy back rides, especially if you did not have enough sleep the night before…… I made that last fatal error the first day when I got in a tickling match with a kid them swung her up on my shoulder.  Within ten seconds I had five kids grabbing my arms, hugging me around the waist, and trying to climb on my back. …

This week I am just gonna post a bunch of pictures!  It has been so awesome to see all that God has done in the last 2 weeks, He has definitely given us plenty of opportunity to grow and be challenged in our faith!  (And also have a lot of fun!) Ryan and I teaching the kids “Oh Wonderful Love!” Our team performing the Good Samaritan skit!  (I got really beat up!) Brittany and I carrying around some of the crazy kids as they tried to beat each other up!  I was batman! Ryan and I outside the school!  (This picture is way too cool not to put on the blog!) Me and Sarah!  Ryan and I fought over her all week… One of many incredible sunsets here in Brazil…

           So this past week we had the incredible opportunity to work at a school in the slums called “Casa De Samuel”. We were only able to spend 5 days there, and even though it felt like weeks, I feel like I speak for all of us when I say,”It wasn’t nearly enough time”.  I know I’m going to remember the relationships I built there for the rest of my life. The volunteers at Casa De Samuel are such incredible people, and the love of Christ radiates throughout them. If I could spend the rest of my time in Brasil working with these people, I would do it in a heartbeat. This is a small glimpse of the favela (slum) we worked in. The streets were usually full of children running around, women buying what groceries they…

Ok so I am going to keep this short and sweet, because the blog I had written out just didn’t seem right.  This week has been really awesome, and have had so much fun. We left the ranch last friday, backed up all our stuff, bedding and food. We have been on the go since, its really been cool. We stayed at a familes house for the weekend, went to youth group on Saturday night and church on Sunday night. We were with the kids and youth the whole time. Its so awesome, and I really enjoyed hanging out with the youth.   Sunday night, we were brought to the slums to this school. Casa De Samuel, such an awesome place. There is around 70 kids that attend this school Monday-Friday. We started are mornings off at 6 am everyday this week. It was exhuasting but truly awesome! My hea…

I met a woman named Patrice on Wednesday. We did our first house visits and I didnt know what to expect so I was nervous the whole way we walked to her house. Instantly you can see that her family has desperate needs. Four people live in a two room house, if you can even call it a house, its closer to being a shack than a house. The most obvious was the illness that plagues that family. Patrice suffered from a stroke four years ago and she has not been able to walk since, she is only in her 30s. The hardest to see was her son Wallice. He suffers from some type of brain degenerative disorder and is more or less in a vegatative state. I was shocked when they told me he was 11 years old, he is about the size of a 4 year old. Patrice´s mother takes care of them both and Patrices other son wh…

For the past week we have been living in a slum here in Belo, and working at a school for kids between ages 3 and 14.  We have spent almost all of our time at the school teaching the kids Bible stories, songs, games, English, and a little bit of math.  We also had some opportunities to do house visits here, and those were awesome.  The people we met encouraged and challenged us at least as much as we did them.  And here at the school, the kids have done the same.  They are so loving even though they all have very rough living conditions and family situations.  I have so many stories I could share about the kids, but the people who have impacted me the most this week are the ones who work at the school.  Though none of them speak fluent English, there are…

  There is something about a child that makes my heart skip a beat.  Their innocence is reflected in their wide eyes and as they reach for me I can’t imagine anything better than holding them in my arms.  It is the easist thing in the world for me to love with everything I have on kids, I think my heart was made for it. This week my team and I have had the opportunity to love on kids every single day.  From 7am to 5pm our time is completely consumed by them.  We have been living in a children’s school in the slums in Belo Horizonte and each day we teach the kids bible lessons, sing songs with them, and play games.  We have been serving along side along some very incredible people who give up their week to pour out on these kids, recieving no paycheck for it…

For the past few days, we have had 40 Brazilians staying here at the ranch with us.  They are the leaders of a drug rehab center, and they came here for a conference/retreat.  We were all really excited when we heard they would be staying with us, because we knew it would be a great chance to learn from them.   The first night that they were getting here, they were planning on arriving around 6 for dinner, and then after that having a service.  But in typical Brazilian fashion, dinner started around 10:30 and then the service around 11:30.  We had been warned that this is how things work here, but we never expected it to be so extreme.  I was assuming it would be a short service due to how late it was, but they clearly didn’t care at all about the time.&nbs…