We have been very busy this week hosting a team of fifteen people who came to work alongside of us in the favelas AND help with some pretty major roof reconstruction on our home. It has been a VERY blessed week and I’d like to share with you Day #1, from a team members perspective:

“The Generational Curses for the “Sins of the Fathers” is very evident here.
…Cartel members running drugs and playing lookout.
…prostitution.
Drugs…POVERTY.
We walk the “streets” handing out sandwiches, Fruit and Candy inviting those Who might come, to the services at the church. 

Some would invite us in, and we would share their humble existence for a few minutes and we’d pray with them.
Our Team Sponsors have developed a truce with the Cartel to be “allowed” to enter the Favelas to do Gods work.
We were given instructions on the details of the truce and warned of the do nots.
One major do not, Don’t take pictures without permission.
I was in a group that climbed the path to the top of the Mountain.
At the top, we gave two Ring Pops to a 15 year old boy that was one of the lookouts for the Cartel.
He radioed his buddies to get out of sight and for 5 minutes. We were allowed to take pictures of the valley. They DO NOT want pictures taken that might show the Police who the Cartel members are…

One Man wanted us to see he tried to make toys to sell instead of drugs.
In his Home / Shack, he had even installed a toilet that he “flushed” with a bucket and rain water barrel beside it.
It dumped out of a pipe onto the Street/Path outside, But he wasn’t using the bathroom right on the street.
One lady had 8 boys.
She was 33. She invited us in.
She was a unique case because all her kids were from the same Father. She was living on the streets and got pregnant at 13.
They teamed up together to build the Shack in the Favela and had been together 20 years.
That was the favela “love story” of the day.
They didn’t have a bathroom, but there was a sink and a stove where she tried to feed and raise her sons.
I gave 3 of the boys suckers they climbed around like boys do, but where happier than any kid, I ever gave anything.