Videos about Living Stones

quinta-feira, 29 de setembro de 2011

Paulo's brother

Last night Paulo’s brother, age 22, died of cancer. They are a family that lives in the middle of nowhere (Cajueiro Claro), and from what I could understand, he was diagnosed with some kind of throat cancer, but never did anything about it medically. His death came as a shock to the family.
Paulo is one of four children who prayed to accept Jesus into their heart this week. After a year of coming to Living Stones, the children are beginning to put together their thoughts and understanding about Jesus. After a morning devotional, one of the kids asked, “So what do I need to do to be a Christian?”
After Jasmin prayed, she looked up confused and asked, “Now that I am a Christian, can I play games?” We laughed and said she could, but it shows the thought process and deep desire to learn that the children have.
 It is interesting to watch the dynamics as the kids interact and explore. The next day, Flavio asked Paulo if he had obeyed his mom. He froze and thought about it, knowing his answer was supposed to be yes, but it wasn’t true. After giving a hesitant “no, I didn’t obey my mother,” we talked about forgiveness and beginning again.
This is where it is at, learning from square one. Kids don’t have any pretenses. Please pray for Paulo and his family as they deal with the death in the family. Two of the other boys (also named Paulo, interestingly enough) lost their grandfather this week as well. He died from drinking.
Rachel and Paulo, whose brother died.

Paulo, whose grandfather died.

domingo, 25 de setembro de 2011

Planning Children's Day

For the past couple of years, Living Stones has had a special party to celebrate Children's day with the kids who normally get overlooked on such a holiday. While October 12th is the official day of celebration, our party will be October 19th.

If you would like to help donate to this project, we are hoping to rent a bounce house, ball pit, and trampoline, as well as popcorn, hot dogs, pop, and cotton candy. Let's go all out to celebrate these special children!
please make sure to write in that the money is going towards the Children's day party.
Thank you!

A Week of Food

Food brings people together. Since July, Living Stones has been able to offer food in Cajueiro Claro, bringing the group closer like a family. I, Rachel, decided to explore this part of the program by taking over the cooking for a week. Once the food is ready, we all file into the classroom, sit around makeshift tables, and sing  “God is so good.” Then begins the laughter and fun.

Monday: I opened the box with the pressure cooker. Flavio soaked the salt out of the meat while I sorted through the beans and picked out the bad ones. Then the inaugural attempt using the pressure cooker. I went to cut up vegetables to put in the beans and realized I’d never seen this bumpy green thing before. I held it up and asked the kids “How do you cut this?” I didn’t even know what part of it was edible.
Pressure cookers are scary. You open it at the wrong time, and it will explode. Paulo sat at the table, graphically telling us how his cousin got burnt all over her face when she opened it wrong. We played around with the lid, lifting it up to let the steam out. We even got it going to a beat while we danced around the kitchen.
The problem with pressure cookers is that you have to get all the steam out before you can open it, and only then can you check to see if it is cooked. Boo. After a few false tries, bingo. Rachel’s first time making beans: and it was good.

Tuesday: I bought too many bananas. It was just one of those deals you can’t pass up. So I brought them to Living Stones and made vitamina de banana, which is basically banana milkshakes. Flavio made spaghetti and sausage meat stuff to add to the rest of the beans. And it was good.

Wednesday: Fried chicken. Oh yes. And I am a vegetarian. Growing up, the only time I made chicken was the boneless, skinless stuff you stick in the George Foreman machine: it doesn’t even look like it used to be an animal. After wrestling with gooey skin and fat whatever that stuff was, I made a sauce and fried that chicken. And made spaghetti. I was told my cooking was sublime. And it was good.

Thursday: Flavio’s motorcycle was in the shop, so we walked the 4 kilometers to Cajueiro and got there too late to make a whole meal. I decided to make something different: my own version of cappuccino with cookies. While the cookies disappeared, I was told “Why can’t you just make normal chocolate milk? We don’t like this fancy stuff.” Well fine then. And I thought it was good.

Friday: I got out the big cuscus maker. In Brazil, cuscus is sort of like cornbread,  not the middle eastern grain. You steam it to make it stick together. Along with my own version of sausage and eggs, when the kids saw the traditional Brazilian food, they declared that I had officially learned how to cook, and so was now ready to get married. And it was good.

Saturday: Flavio picked up the kids in the Kombi (Volkswagon bus)  and brought them to my apartment—the trip into Carpina (the big city for them) was pretty exciting. They came in and looked at all my pictures and explored my bathroom and (I think) finally decided that maybe I wasn’t so weird after all.

I made three very large pizzas, three kinds of juice, and cut open a watermelon. All of it vanished, except for the green olives I put on the pizza, which I found scattered all over the apartment after they had left.  They could have told me they didn’t like them—I only put them on the pizza because that is traditional in Brazil.

We called my mother on Skype and all the kids said hello. You should have seen them crowding around me. I took them up to the top floor of the apartment, where you can look out over the city and feel the wind in your face: they loved it. It was the highest up that some of them had ever been. It was beautiful to see their faces. To get those hugs.
Special thanks to Frank for all his help while here in Brazil: we will miss you!

sábado, 10 de setembro de 2011

Motorcycle!

Thank you so much, all who gave! The motorcycle has arrived!
This gives us so much more time with the kids every morning (and saves energy as well).

sábado, 3 de setembro de 2011

Decorations and Fun Dip

This week at Living Stones Cajueiro Claro, the students decorated their Sunday school room:
And had 20 children come to church Friday night!
We had a special time of giving (some of the things that the American's had brought down this summer) for the children.

A special thanks to the Good News Ministries Youth Center for donating Fun Dips for the kids--they enjoyed them so much!
(Not used to sour candy. Grin.)