drug trafficking, painting walls and the presence on God

As you can tell by the title we had just a little bit more action this week as a Pais team. God's given us some real direction in these first few weeks of being here in Brazil and hid presence is really showing us where and what he wants us to focus on. 

This Tuesday we had a great day of admin with the team, sorting out what we will be doing for next 2 months, as we are going to have a very busy schedule for the next while. This month we are going to be working on a porject with the teens in the church called "escholha da vida" (life choices). It's a 5 week programme with discussion and activity that we will be doing during the church services with all the teens of the church. We have been given a space in the back of the church for this with loads of different resources so we were spending sometime preparing that this week, painting and tidying the place up. We're also going to be able to use this space of outreach events (like the logic cafe) which is going to be really exciting. 

Group of leaders and teens sorting out the "teen space"

 As usual on Wednesday we had our youth group. I would really like some Praise for what God has been doing in our youth group, it really is amazing sometimes. The last few weeks we will be starting off with our worship time (which I usually just 3 prepared songs) but in the middle of it we just feel God's presence in the midst of us so we just wait on him, praying with each other and telling each other what we think God is saying in the moment. This week we had a new guy (one of Ramin's break dancing friends) so we welcomed him with a time of prayer. He received healing in his leg and became a Christian right there! We are so amazed at what the "presence" is doing in our midst and we just pray for more and even bigger stuff to happen. 

As we have the last few weeks we visited the half way house this Thursday  We had prepared our "lesson" which was just the gospel really. When we got there we met two new kids and we were told that one of the kids had had something to do with drug trafficking and something like $10,000 was involved and because of this we had to move to the back of the house encase (and I'm paraphrasing) "someone came to shot him." We then just had a chance to sing to them and let the presence come with that. This gave way to our games and lessons that we had prepared. In the end we asked if anyone would want to received Jesus and the "drug trafficking" guy raised his hand. We prayed with him there and he accepted Jesus into his life. After we had a chance to sit and praise with the kids and just sing blessings over them. 

us and the kids at the halfway house

Finally we had a chance to go back to Floca (our school) on Friday. Was amazing to see all the familiar faces and to meet new ones. God really is going to some amazing things in that place in the next few months. Please prayer that the different projects that we will be bringing into the school would be filled with the spirit that these kids may come to meet their saviour. 

we finish with a prayer with the kids every time we visit floca

It has been a great busy week and there will be many more to come. Please thank God for what he is doing here but also pray for more and more that we may see not just these schools change but the whole of Natal. 

Thanks for reading 
love 
mark