Day trip to the zoo

It has already become a habit: every year we organize a special outing for each (different age) group of children participating in Casa Semear´s program. In August, it was time for the SuperPequenos, group of 5 to 8 year olds, to have their special day and this year we decided to take them to the zoo of São Paulo. 

The whole group!

So on a sunny Saturday, after having breakfast at Casa Semear, we left for the zoo with a group of around 18 little kids… Excited and happy about the day trip, they talked all the time about the different animals that they were going to see at the zoo… Several of the kids had never been to the zoo before and they were full of expectations!

We had a great time together! Besides seeing practically all of the animals, we had a nice picnic for lunch and we went to see a very funny clown show. We laughed quite a bit because of some of the kids´ comments about the animals. Looking at a beautiful toucan (bird), one of the little boys said: “That´s a vulture, right auntie?!”

Spending a whole day with these kids, we noticed how little they know about the nature and animals. In their daily lives these kids don´t have any access to this type of experience and knowledge. So it was really special to be able to spend this whole day with them at the zoo, showing and teaching them a bit more about God´s rich and beautiful creation! It was a day filled with joy and new discoveries!

The Casa Semear team

Teen Camp "Walking in Jesus´ footsteps"

It’s a tradition by now. July is the month to organize “The Sower House’s” teen camp! Like in previous years, all the teenagers were eagerly looking forward to the camp, waiting impatiently and with huge expectations. Good stories and experiences from previous camps were remembered and told over and over again, while the younger teens, those who would participate in the teen camp for the first time this year, listened closely, with sparkling eyes, to hear all about night games in the jungle, the primitive rope bridge across the river, and the swimming pool´s freezing water.

This year, once again, we had a great time. Five beautiful and sunny days, right in the middle of the jungle, a fun group of teenagers, who were very united, and a huge team (15 people!). We are very thankful for all the volunteers who helped us! This year, the theme was “Walking in Jesus´ footsteps”. Together with the teens we studied many parables on God’s Kingdom, repentance and forgiveness, hypocrisy and true faith, and being salt and light in our world. Especially during our Bible study groups we had some good talks and great opportunities to explain to the teens what exactly it means to live your life with Jesus. During that week, many of the teenagers showed interest in living their lives with God and it was very special to watch God work in their hearts. It’s very gratifying to be able to lead them to grow a little bit more in their understanding of the life planned by God, and guide them in their journey of discovering who God is and what He does in this world!

The rules of the game

Imagine participating in a game without knowing its rules, or even worse, thinking that you know them, but having no idea that the rules are totally different. We decided that to teach the teens the good Samaritan parable, the last game of the camp, we would have to mess a little with their minds. We came up with this game where each of the groups had to find one of the staff,

who would be hidden in the jungle, carrying a card with the groups’ color. At least, this is what we told the teens. But in reality there were no staff hiding in the jungle carrying any cards, but what we did instead was put some of the staff acting as hurt “cannibals” (in many of our night games, there were staff with their faces painted in black trying to stop the teens from accomplishing their task, we call them the “cannibals” and they are much hated by the kids) by the side of the trails asking for help.

The game starts and each group, accompanied by a staff, goes after the colored card. The trails, well known by them at this point of the camp, are walked with hurried steps and searched by attentive eyes. Strategies are made and the hope of winning another game increases with every trail they pass. After walking for a long time, the ‘green’ group finds a hurt “cannibal” asking for help. They react surprised. Two of the teens go to help the “cannibal”, but some others start to ask questions: “Which color is the card you have?” When they learn that the “cannibal” doesn’t have any colored card, their reasoning gets interesting: “He is here to slow us down”; “Are you really hurt?”; “Let’s go, we gotta find our card”.

Yes, the “cannibal” was simply left behind. After a little while, the kids of the ‘green’ group hear the other two groups cheering and realize that they lost the game. They went back and were very disappointed. When the group gets to the meeting point, the teens note that the other groups don´t have a colored card. There were no staff with cards, but there was someone asking for help! The fact that they helped the “cannibals” was what made the other groups win the “game”, while the ‘green’ group, so worried about winning the game, left the “cannibal” behind and lost.

You have no idea how difficult it was to make the teens understand that the game they thought they were playing, actually didn’t exist. It was so hard to make them realize that no matter what the “game” is, there are other things that are more important than the “rules”. The thing is that we are often not that different from these teenagers. We are told, all the time and everywhere, that “the game of life” has to do with studying, finding a good job, having success, to retire and then die happy. When other things show up on our path, we think that they are slowing us down to “get there”. So worried about the “game”, we end up losing, because we don’t pay attention to what is most important: life itself. Not our lives, but the lives of those who are crying out for help, those who are lying by the side of the road, those who are not even playing the “game”. Yes, we might win the game, but we lose our lives! Will we get to the finish line just to hear that the “rules” were different than the ones we thought, or worse, that there was no “game” at all, there was only the responsibility of being human, to care for the lives of those who are dying? Are we going to win the game and lose our life?

God bless you,

The Casa Semear Team

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