As you know U-Don and I are in Brazil.
Besides being with family we already got up to a special time with the locals.
The first ministry that we have already participated of is called Project IDE. This is a project for disadvantage children in the city of Campo Grande in the countryside of Brazil.
The founder of the project is a Christian man who once had a dream to build a space where kids can play and learn after school instead of being on the streets.
This is the entrance of the centre
The families register their kids in this project and the idea is that only if the kids are attending school they can participate of the after school activities in the centre.
They offer many activities such as: music (learning all sorts of instruments), drama, computer skills, leadership courses, homework help, recreation time and sports.
Library
Kids in the morning programs waiting for their classes
Computer Lab
After School homework help
Music studio – classes to learn drums, guitar, base guitar, flute, saxophone, etc
What a great place to learn!
They have a program for the kids to learn how to become leaders through a system of becoming a monitor/mentor to other kids in the project. They learn discipline, respect, how to research and improve in their knowledge basis, how to teach others, they participate of workshops to prepare themselves to the workforce and become examples to the other kids who join the program.
the monitor T-Shirt that shows the steps of the program to train leaders – for teenagers from 14 to 17 years old
The activity that we were going to watch and participated of was the jiu-jitsu classes. But when we got there the teacher asked U-Don to teach the kids self defence. And he ended up teaching all 7 classes for the whole day (with translation of course).
It was really nice to see how the kids loved the classes.
U-Don teaching self defence to one of the classes and everyone really interested!
Even the girls got into it!
After the exercise we had a time to talk and pray together when U-Don shared a little bit about how much Jesus is important in his life and how much Jesus protects us more than anything else, even more than some self defense techniques we might know.
The kids asked him many questions and they were really excited to know that a foreigner cared about them enough to go there and teach them something new and spend time with them.
Time for questions, short testimony and prayer
We really enjoyed ourselves there.We heard about the plan of expansion of the centre that so far cannot be done because they are lacking financial support. We saw the 3D project idea with all facilities that the founder is praying for to be able to build to attend more kids. There are almost 100 kids on the waiting list to get a chance to join this project.
We also heard a little bit about some of the stories of kids in the program that had suffered abuse, violence at home, extreme poverty, broken families and many other unstable home situations. We were happy to see how much can be done to help those kids but sad to hear that so little is done at the moment because of lack of financial support, lack of volunteers, lack of more space to receive more kids, and other issues.
We can say that an experience like this transforms us. We are reminded that God is so powerful that he can use such a small place with no much facilities and only a few workers to transform the kids’ lives forever as hope for a future and for eternity is offered to them.
Praise God:
for the vision,
for the project and its results,
for the many children that have been taken out of the streets,
for the many who accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior,
for the volunteers that work there every day,
Please pray:
for the project to continue even though they are struggling with finances at the moment,
for God to raise supporters and workers,
for the plan to expand to happen so more kids will be able to participate of it,
for the kids who are currently in the project to have their lives changed.
