Running the community center continues to be
a huge challenge with a small team of 4 missionaries and a big group of 80 kids
and teens! We just keep asking God to send more full-time workers, we really
need them. The group of kids is really big and the only reason why it isn´t
even bigger, is because we limited the number to 80; which means that by now we
have quite a long waiting list of kids who really need a place too.
And the
misery and needs also grow! The more we get to know the families we work with,
the more needs and problems we see! And that can be really difficult sometimes,
as we don´t always see that much change while working with the kids. We know it
is our job to sow, to show the kids who God is. He has His own way of working
in their lives and often a real change only happens later on in life, we might
not see much of this change yet. So we still see teenagers who make wrong
decisions (teen pregnancy, crime and drug traffic) and when you look at it, it
seems like nothing changed in their lives, but the message they received at
“The Sower House” will not “return empty”. So we know that our work isn´t in
vain, on the contrary, we know our work is essential in the development of
these kids and their understanding of who God is, so that they might
eventually, one day in the future, get to the point where they’ll truly
surrender themselves to God. The kids are with us for only a few short hours a
week, the rest of the time they live in a very harsh, problematic reality, and
the influence this reality has over them is huge. But God´s power is greater
still!
And so we notice that our work is often heavy. If you look around you
and see everything that happens, you could easily give up… but God calls us to
keep our eyes fixed on Him and on the things we do not see. All of this does
encourage us to stay very close to God, totally dependent on Him, because we
continuously realize that we´re not capable of bringing any true change. Who are we after all? We feel very incapable...
and that is good! Because that is what keeps us in the right place with the
right attitude: dependent on God and His power, because if He doesn´t work,
then everything is simply lost!
The Casa Semear Team
