Tuesday 28 August 2012

our new home!! (sam)

This is the home that Rita, the woman we'll be working with in Medina, has found for us to rent! All we have is photos so far, but even from these we have already been planning what colour to paint it and how to deck out each room!


We'll be arriving tomorrow (Thursday) in Medina! After having been through all the painful processes of letting go of community, of friends and family, and packing up the remnants of a relatively comfortable life in England, we are a bit more free now to realise we are on an awesome adventure!!
As with all new things, there is a healthy balance of excitement..and nerves. Moving home again in itself is a huge deal. I've lived in the city all my life, with access to everything I want, with opportunities for so many different types of community or equally for complete anonymity, and the buzz and rush of hectic streets and vibrant nightlife, the feeling of being somewhere that is known...
the idea of moving to the remote countryside, a town that even people in the same state have never heard of, is ..interesting! very different indeed and although it will definitely take time to get used to, I am looking forward to some big changes in lifestyle! I think I want to plant a herb garden in our yard!!
Even today as we drove an hour out of Belo to visit a beautiful park called Inhotim, I was absolutely loving the scenery and the dust of the roads, and felt a bubbling excitement as I tried to conjure up images of what our new surroundings will be like. 
Here's some more photos we were sent of the house:


 ..and that of course is just the moving house part. The main reason we are going, and the biggest cause of both excitement and nerves, is to come alongside girls who have suffered horrific traumas and to build relationships with them, offering therapeutic activities and a space to experience healing...we are so desperate to see this happen, but at the same time we are fully aware of the long and difficult process it could prove to be, and the many obstacles that may be in the path. Very slightly apprehensive, but also full of anticipation...the next step is about to begin!



Monday 27 August 2012

food! (sam)

We've only got two more days left in Belo now! We're getting more and more excited about moving - on one hand it is quite daunting as we have been planning and thinking through all that needs to be done over the coming weeks, but on the other hand this is the most amazing adventure and we can't wait to see what it holds.
This time in Belo has been so important though, having two weeks to fully acclimatise to the country, the people, the language, the food (!) ..man, they have this thing here where you buy a platter to share and they get a massive baking tray and literally shovel onto it every type of meat you could imagine, chips, cheese, eggs, olives and a few more random items into this huge seething greasy pile of mmmmm...! (this one..googleimages ;)  is only half the size of the one we had yesterday!and we didn't waste space with salad either!)

Language!

 Both of us have been finding the language quite tiring - I have really enjoyed catching up with some of my friends who I worked in Happy Child with, and speaking loads of Portuguese again but it's frustrating when lots of common words escape you and you know the accent sounds a bit classic, and I often get home exhausted. Claire is really enjoying hearing and speaking again, and even though she's picking it up again so quickly, I think it is a lot more frustrating for her, people's perceptions of who you are based on how much you speak..i'm sure she'll describe it herself...it's going to be a difficult first period with language but we're looking forward so much to building relationships with people in Medina so I think we'll get through it!

Wednesday 22 August 2012


Matt, Dani and Milo! Matt and Dani run Meninadança in Brazil, and they are looking after us very well in Belo before we head up to Medina :o)


    View over Belo Horizonte from our room in Matt & Dani's flat

Sunday 19 August 2012

(Claire) Setting foot in Brazil

Normally when I arrive in a new country after a long-haul flight, I feel that surreal, slightly detached sensation that comes with suddenly ‘appearing’ half way around the world in a matter of hours! Everything seems different around you and it’s hard to take it all in and really feel through and through that you’ve arrived. This time however we walked out of the airport, met Matt (who had patiently waited a very long time for us to come through!), and wheeled our bags to the car, feeling entirely normal, unsurprised and deeply peaceful! The sun wasn’t particularly showing itself, and I wouldn’t say the scenery was the exotic tropical horizon that some might imagine when landing in Brazil, and so there wasn’t really any scope for romanticised feelings of ‘finally arriving in the Americas!’. I just felt extremely happy, peaceful and interested in learning about my new surroundings. It struck me that this may well be one of many ways that I would feel the difference of having had such a long time to prepare; yes we’d said goodbye to England, travelled thousands of miles in a matter of hours to our new home, and yet there was absolutely no way that my mind could be shocked! That was a wonderful feeling, and just in the first few days of being here there have been many more such moments...

(Claire) Saying goodbye

Saying goodbye to our families was the last big hurdle that we had to jump before we made it to Brazil. I’d been dreading that moment, as my parents live in South Africa for half of the year and so we didn’t know when we were going to see each other again. We all woke up at 3am, ouch! To get to Heathrow for our 6am flight. Everything went smoothly at the check-in, all our many bags were just the right weight (relief!) and so, all too quickly, the time to say goodbye arrived. Somehow having a ‘next date to meet’ seemed like it would have helped, but without knowing when that would be it was instead a painful “I’ll see you when I see you”. After making it through security we sat down for a quick coffee and I read through the beautiful leaving book that my Mum had made for us, with encouraging words and smiling pictures of friends… I read this entry and was reminded that I walk hand-in-hand with God, and with him nothing changes…


“In heavenly love abiding,
No change my heart shall fear,
And safe in such confiding,
For nothing changes here;
The storm may roar without me,
My heart may low be laid;
But God is round about me,
And can I be dismayed?”

I decided not to push any of the emotion down, but let it all out (!) so that there would be room for the deep joy and excitement that I’d been feeling up until this point to re-surface. And so it did! As I sat on the plane ready to take-off, I thought, with excitement bubbling, ‘we’re about to fly into the next chapter…’ !

Tuesday 14 August 2012

(Sam)

Oh man!! The time has arrived...it's Tuesday night and we're flying at 6am tomorrow morning so there's very few hours of sleep left.
I am so tired from a ridiculously hectic month, but my head is still spinning too much to head to bed yet.

It feels so surreal that we will be there tomorrow afternoon, in a completely different situation..and so it's hard to actually engage with the feelings that accompany it. We are definitely sad, especially thinking of the last goodbye to our families tomorrow, and also pretty daunted at the thought of what we're stepping into..mostly because of the many uncertainties and even though we've tried to build as much of a picture as possible, I still feel a bit like we're heading into the unknown.

All day today though, amidst the surreal numb feelings and the sadness and uncertainty/stress/fear, I have definitely been getting that jittery excited feeling too!! There's no turning back now. All our stuff is packed, stored or chucked, we have the flight tickets and so we just have to get on the plane and we'll literally be taken there..aagh! I feel slightly inadequate and rather nervous, but also massively excited at the potential of what could happen as we just simply show up and let God use us.

Please Father stir our hearts but calm our nerves, and take us safely there tomorrow. Please guide us in plans and preparations over the next few weeks and then by your grace grant us amazing favour in the community of Medina as we try to build relationships with those we're going to work with, with other services and schools, and above all with the young girls and their families that we desperately want to reach. Help us to understand them and to make decisions that will be transformative and life-giving for them and their whole community. Amen.