ATL

Jacob and I (kristin) are in Atlanta for a grandparent visit. J is 6 months old now and super fun...except for the teething part of life. We are having a great time visiting family and hopefully a few friends while we are here. Mothers Day weekend we are going up to VA to visit my brother, Ryan, and his wife, LaNell. I'm super excited as I have not been up there in about 4 years. It's hard to be apart from Jason, but the grandparents are so glad to have their grandson here for a few weeks. We return on May 14th.

I'll post pictures when I get back to Brazil.

A Few of our "teens"

Here are a few kids that we work with. These youth are a little younger than our normal target group, but we are helping Compassion International start a program with young teens in a community near us. This community has a day care center with about 150 children (80 are Compassion sponsored kids) that come from very needy families. The program is called Meu Plano Para Amanha (My Plan for Tomorrow) and it is designed to teach these kids about themselves, the world around them, and God's purpose for their lives. Our main responsiblity is to teach the Bible Study.

As you can imagine, Jacob is a big hit with these kids.

This community/favela is located, like most, up the side of the mountain. Here is a picture of part of it:

Each favela is controlled by drug gangs. Occasionally, the police will enter the community and their will be a "tiroteo" (shootout) between the police and the drug dealers "banditos". This happened last week during one morning Bible study up there. The police were shooting right outside the walls of the daycare center. It's so sad that these children grow up with this violence right outside their windows. The reaction to these events by the teens is sad. For some of the boys, it elicits excitement mixed with fear. For most of the girls, it's just fear. So we pray and encourage and try to teach the boys that the life of a drug dealer is not "exciting", but that these banditos are prisoners in their own world of violence.

Jacob's First Hike

Last Saturday we went on our first hike as a family. We hiked to the Tijuca Peak (Pico da Tijuca) with Jeremy, Claudinho and Philipe. Jason carried Jacob in the Baby Bjorn all the way up and Jeremy carried him back down. Jacob slept most of the way back down. It was a beautiful day, but as soon as we got to the top, the clouds rolled over us. Enjoy the pictures and video.