Construction and building work at Casa Semear

It´s been more than three years since we started building a missionary house in the backyard of Casa Semear. This house will serve as living space for long-term and short-term missionaries who come to work with us at the community center. We can finally tell you that we´re in the final stage of this building project!

Starting the building work in 2010

At the end of 2010

The missionary house in 2011

2012

June of 2013

In the beginning of June, a small group of young people from a church in Pennsylvania, USA, came on a mission trip to Brazil to help us out with the finishing touches of this big building project. They worked really hard during a whole week and were able to finish all the external painting work of the missionary house. The results are great! 

Thank you, Bill, Jessica, Olivia and Annie, for your hard work and dedication during your time at Casa Semear! We also want to thank Delton and Seu Luiz who supervised the group and worked as hard as they did!

Final result!

Thanks to a very generous donation from a church in Holland, we´ve already started furnishing this house. It´s been wonderful to see God provide everything we need to improve the structure of the project and we´re very grateful to Him for giving us the opportunity to create a nice living space, so we´re able to receive well the people who are willing to come work with us and serve the kids and families we attend at Casa Semear. 

                          The bathroom totally equipped and ready to be used

                          Working hard to finish the kitchen and living room too

The new bunk bed ready to be used

But the building work around Casa Semear doesn´t stop at this point… There are still many other things to do! Our next project is focused on turning the concrete backyard of Casa Semear into a nice playground area for the kids to enjoy. In the neighborhood where these kids live, there´s not even one park, square or playground area where they can run around, play and meet each other in a space properly developed for them, so it´ll be really great to be able to offer them at least a small playground area to safely play in at the community center.

We´re also planning on doing some building work in Casa Semear´s main kitchen area. We would like to improve and enlarge the kitchen structure and create a big, well equipped kitchen that will not only serve for preparing food and snacks for the kids´ program, but will also serve as a good place for giving cooking and baking classes and workshops for moms and women from the community.  

              Seu Luiz working hard to put two new windows in the kitchen walls

So there are many challenges still ahead of us and we know that we depend on God´s provision in order to one day see all these desires become reality, desires that are focused on better serving the kids and families God has put on our path.

Last but not least, we would like to share with you some of the things that have been on our hearts, things we´ve been praying for and we would like to ask you to join us in prayer for Casa Semear, for the lives of the kids and families we work with, so the Kingdom of God would grow:

• Pray for God´s provision for Casa Semear. As we´ve already mentioned, we have many challenges ahead of us and we´re going to need the finances in order to go on with the building projects.  

• Something we´ve been continuously asking God for, is a bigger team! We urgently need more people willing to join us and work full-time together with us at Casa Semear.  

• Pray for the lives of the more or less 80 kids and teenagers who are participating in Casa Semear´s program. It is our biggest desire to see their lives being totally transformed by God´s love! We can see small changes every now and then, but we would like to see so much more! Pray that God would work in their lives and hearts so that they will come to truly know Him! 

May God bless you!

The Casa Semear team

A challenge called community center “The Sower House” (and sowing is what we do!)

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

Back to work!

The last months of 2012 were very busy for us, the Casa Semear team, because we organized several different events and day trips for the kids and their families. In the midst of everything that was going on, we couldn´t find the time to update you properly through this weblog. So, here´s a short overview of everything that happened:

Day trip to the beach

In November, we took the SemearKids, group of 8-10 year olds, on a road trip to the beach for a day! Most of them had never seen the sea before, so you can imagine how special this outing was for them!

Team retreat

Also in November, we, the Casa Semear team, took a week off work to rest and seek God together. We spent quite some time praying for the project, for the families and the kids that God has given us to take care of and we also spent some time together just dreaming and talking about Casa Semear´s future. It was a very good, fruitful time! 

SuperWoman program: Celebrating the end of one more year

We organized a fun evening full of activities for the SuperWoman teen girls to celebrate the end of one more year together. As a group, we thanked God together for a very good year full of friendship, growth and learning.

Christmas celebration

On the 15th of December, we had our yearly Christmas celebration together with all the families, kids and teens who participate in Casa Semear´s program. It was a beautiful celebration where we were able to preach the Gospel to the more or less 150 people who came out to be with us that night. The kids also actively participated by presenting a sung musical that explains God´s plan of salvation. And of course, handing the kids their Christmas presents was a very special moment too, as it is always wonderful to see them happy and with big smiles on their faces!  

At the start of a new year

January was a month of holidays for all of us at Casa Semear, so only now are we back to work with the kids at the community center and also trying our best to be back here at the weblog to regularly update you about everything that happens at Casa Semear, about the things God does in us and through us in the lives of the kids and families He gave us to care for. We´re excited and feel challenged by everything that lies ahead of us in this year of 2013! We´d like to count on you to pray for us and support us so we´ll be able to do our very best and together participate in what God is doing in the community He put us in.   

For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.  For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.

While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:5-12 & 18  

The Casa Semear Team

Construction missionary house

Right now at Casa Semear, besides the daily work with the children & adolescents, we´re also busy with something else: the construction of a house for missionaries and short-term volunteers in the backyard of our property. 

Almost two years ago, we started the construction of this house, which is being built little by little, according to the donations that arrive...

Starting the construction process

  

The first floor ready...

Second floor ready!

For us, who have witnessed this construction process since the very beginning, it´s great to slowly see the construction site being transformed into a beautiful house; there are so many details and there´s so much work to do, but God is faithful and provides in exactly everything we need to be able to offer a nice and comfortable `home´ soon to the missionaries and volunteers who come to work with us at Casa Semear. 

Roof terrace almost ready

This missionary house will also, indirectly, help us in the work with children & adolescents: the community centre is a three floor building; but right now, we´re using only two floors for the activities with the children, because the third floor serves as living space for one of our missionaries. Once the missionary house is ready, we´ll be able to de-occupy the third floor of the community centre, which we then want to transform into a nice, creative lounge space for our adolescents.

There´s still a lot of work to do, but we are very excited by what God has been doing and giving us so we can do a better job in working with the children & adolescents He has put on our path.

Excitement!

We’re hoping to finish the missionary house this year, maybe it´ll be ready by July or so!

The Casa Semear team.