Traveling(2)

Well it seems my time in Recife has come to an end!
I was allready trying to get in contact with more bases in the north east since chrismas. But i just didnt get any replys from anybody. This was realy frustrating!
You have a great blessing for them you want to come for a month and help out in anything they ask and you are even willing to pay for it. And then nobody shows intrest... That is kind of strange to me.

I have this scedule in where i want to be at what date. And well i was getting behind on scedule becouse i kept hanging in Recife. But luckely i only have two days delay becouse this weekend i received an email from the YWAM base in Fortaleze. And they invite me to come.

Well right away i bought a ticket.
Im leaving this evening 20:30 brazilian time and then will be in a bus 12 hours to arive around nine o clock tomorrow morning...

In Fortaleze i will go and work in the Boys house.
These boys are ex-streetkids that had no option to return to there homes becouse the situation at home was absolutely not healthy. So they are welcome in the boys house. It a recovery centre. The learn to live in a house again. Get of the glue go to school again. Have bible studies get to know Jesus. All the important things to get a new life that lasts!

But i´ll tell more about it later
ate mais!

coversation with streetkids(3)

Last monday we decide to go the the sinco pontos this is one of the areas where we work becouse there we find many of the streetkids... So did we this time. There hasnt been any rain for two weeks so we could now also bring a ball and play soccer with the guys.
This is a great experience! They even said i was good and they wanted to have me in there teams. well thanx!

When one of the team reaches three points they win and the losing team has to get out of the court. And then you wait till you can play again. While i was waiting i had some intresting conversations again... Let me share them with you!

There was one girl that came to me. She wanted to see my eyes again becouse she hadnt seen some one with blue eyes before. i was realy beautifull she said. Well that sound s realy nice but you actualy have to be realy carefull with this becouse these kids are the best Manipulators there are. And so they try to get you to like them alot hoping to maybe get something out of it... Well and thats not supposd to happen. there are not going to be any favorites!

But well we continued our conversation. I asked her do you like living in Recife? Strange question becouse well are they realy living in recife they dont have a house
or do they realy have a life? well yeah they are lving thats for sure...
She said no i dont like this city. its a bad city...
So i asked her do you like to live here in this park?
Yeah she liked the park it was nice with a lot of trees but she didnt like it that there was laying so much trasch...
(For brazilians the trash in the park are the streetkids! but she didnt like the real rubbisch)I asked her do you want to keep on living here?
She said no, She wanted to live in a house.
She wanted a diffrent live then the one she had now.
So i asked her what she wanted to have in her new life.
She said she wanted a house, Family and she wanted to go to school and learn things
So i asked her why isnt she doing this?
well it was to difficult she said.
So i asked her what is difficult for you on the streets?
She said i cant stop with the cola(this is the Glue they sniff)
I asked her do you want to quit the cola. She didnt know. I cant stop with the cola so i will not have a house...
I understood her realy well. she had given up hope becouse she was adicted and couldnt get free. I wanted to help her.

Well if our project would have been ready for it then we probably could have helped her a lot! but we dont have a house for girls and so we can not bring girls from the street. She will not get free from the glue on the street and so until we are ready there will be no hope for her... Some lady from the states sended us a huge amount of money to open a girls house, tobad we had to send the money back to her. We had no staff no people that wanted to work in the house. So no use to build the house...
Working with girls is probably a lot harder ten with boys, They went through so much abuse they are totaly wrecked but its possible to restour their lives. just not jet... It kind of makes me give up hope for the work i do. What do i realy mean to these people?

Sharks!!

I told you there were to many sharks here so that you cant swim...
And you didnt want to believe me huh? Well here is the evidence! What you think about that! A traffic sighn that tells you to be carefull about sharks...
Thats a whole diffrence then be care wild deer may cross the road...
Wow Wild Deer... That deer is Bambi compared to these guys!
More lykely to attacked by sharks! deers dont attack you they are just standing in the way. These Sharks have allready killed sevaral times. A friend of mine also knew a guy who went to far in the water and died.

Sporting!

In the afternoon of the same saterday we went to a soccer match.
Sporting against Cabense. they are also seccond devision teams. But it was nice futieball to watch! It realy is a whole cultural experience. Everybody shouting curses to the referie or the goaly of the oponent! Haha i learned a lot of new bad words! Sporting won with 1-0 so thats always good. I realy liked the soccer stadiu becouse you could see everything realy closely! the match was decided by a penalty. And i was sitting right there in behind the goal to see the shot go in!!
Had a great time!

Olinda!

These are a few pictures that i took the past saterday.
I went together with a friend of mine Ednilson to dive into some history of Recife. I think i allready told you that the dutch in the golden century(17th)have done a lot to build up this city and ofcourse to make provit out of the countrys recourses. It hasnt been all nice things the duth have brought here. But there is one good thing. They brought developement. This you can see in many of the old buildings, briges, roads, churches and fortreses...

Olinda is the oldest part of Recife. Its a realy old vilage with old cuble stone roads, many churches, houses build in that century. And beutifull vieuws over the centre of Recife and the ocean! as you can see on the pictures...
I have many more pictures that show more of the town itself. But i cant put them all online! see some more on my Hyves!

Interesting talks with streetkids(2)

Yesterday fryday the 5th we went to the street again...
the first time of the new year so our leader had decided that now we wouldnt go to work with the streetkids we would only go to the places where they usualy are hanging around and intercede at those areas. Claim the ground as Gods place and purify it through prayer. Well it was a good idear and we prayed a lot but immediately the streetkids came to us and we finaly had time of working with them after all...

One of the places when we arived, not one minute later this litle girl of around seven years old comes running towards us. she runs by the other of the group and jumps into my arms. I was kind of overwhelmed like what is this? I have never seen this girl before. She doesnt know who i am and she just jumps into my arms...
Probably becouse im realy tall i just seem to attract children to me

All the time we were there she played around me, asking me all kind of questions and sometime later when i was sitting on the ground she came and sat in my lap.
She told me that that woman a litle further was her mother and that litle baby is Abraham he is my brother(one month and one day old) so i asked her, where do you live? Right here in the park she said. So you dont have a house? No here is our house. And where is you Dad? I dont know not here...
So what do you do here all day? Play a litle and talk to people and hold my brother
Dont you want to go to school? Yes she wanted to go to school

Then she suddenly asked...
Can you pray for me? Wow, well yeah sure i would love to pray with you, is it okey if i pray in dutch? what is that? well i come from holland and there we speek dutch. Or shall i speek english? Or portuguees? Yes she said pray for me.
I was like well how am i supposed to pray in portuguees i havent ever done that...
i dont know if i can do that... But well i can bless this girl by it so i prayed in Portuguees. Father i come to you with this realy nice girl. Thank you father that you look from heaven and that you see her everyday. And that you see that she is very beautifull. (She opened her eyes and smiled at me) Lord will you please help her when she lives here in the park. Will you help her family and give them a better life. Will you please make it possible for her to go to school. Bless her Jesus. Ameng!

Than she ran to her mother, grabbed the baby out of her arms and came back to me, can you now pray for my brother! So i prayed for her brother as well!

Then my leader called me we were going to sit a bit further away to pray for the place. But i just had no strenght to pray. My heart was heavy, I was like how schould i pray for this place? I was realy sad and realy had difficulty to believe that God could change the situations of these families living on the street...

Then we went back to the bus to go on to the next place, but this girl came running from the group back to me, Dont go away she said. No im sorry i cant stay, then i want to come with you she said. No girl you cant stay with me. Go back to your mother. Their is where you belong help your mom and your brother. thats better then to come with me. So she went...

My heart realy broke that moment! Whaaaaaaaaa
How on earth, i can not help her but i want to so much!
But you see. it sounds like a lovely story but then for real its ectualy realy bad...
Why does a girl of 7 years old just run to the arms of a complete stranger and then not a half an hour later wants to go home with that person??
A healthy child would not do this, a healthy child goes to her mother when there is a new person entering her space. She doesnt know this person and doesnt trust directly so she seeks for safety with her parents.
Its a clear signal of a girl at risk, She doesnt have a father figure who can tell her who she is. Nobody that confirms her that she is a beautifull princess. But like every child she needs this confirmation extremely much...
And so she sees a father in every man that walks by and seeks confirmation in every man. What will happen to this girl???
She will probably run away from her mom not long from now. hang around some street guy who protects her and confirms her. she will get pregnant at the age of 12 or 14 as fast as possible for her body. Or she will end up in prostitution

Or she will meet Jesus and please let it be so...
She will get of the street with her whole family. (we can not help her when she lives with her family, we help to bring children back to the family, but what if the family lives on the street, our work is not ready to help whole families)
You can all help praying for girls like these

I don know her name exactely. maybe thats even better, its not nice to tell her name to the whole world... oh and the boy on the foto is someone else... sniffing glue or allready far away in wonderland

RECIFE aan zee

From where i was spending my new years you had a great vieuw of Recife... Far away in the see! It realy is a huge city. And from far away it looks so peacefull. to bad that idear gets destroyed soon when you get closer...

My Newyears dive

Haha this was some kind of funny idear of mine...
But it didnt work as i wanted. I was suposted to have a foto of me running to the water and one of me diving in. Just to keep myself to this weird dutch cultural thing called the newyears dive.

I was in a realy beautifull peace of earth...
With blue clear water just like a swimmingpool you could see the bottom of the see!
I swam with like all kind of beautifull fisches that you normaly only find on TV or in an aquarium. All colors they had blue, orange, black and white stripes you name it! Wow i had an amazing time there! Also good to just relax for a few days dont do anything more then swim, read books, look around in the area! They had a Mango forrest there! can you imagine a whole forrest of mango trees... Many other nice pictures i have made... when im home ill let you all enjoy! it just takes to much time to put them on internet!

Happy new year everybody!
2007!!

pernambuco

Pernambuco is one of the states of i believe 23 states of Brazil. In the past they were called provinces just like in holland but well since a great part of the world wants to look like the united states. They decided to name their provinces states as well.

Its the state where i am living in right now and Recife is its capitle.
I kind of putted this paste in just for the picture and some extra info.
Somehow i like the flag but on the other hand i find it kind of weird...