This fall I led a Real Life trip to Brazil, as I mentioned in my last blog. Our team’s main focus was on the construction of a Missionary Training Center outside of the city Belo Horizonte. In my previous blog I shared a bit about what that looked like for us, go check it out!
But besides all the painting, a lot of great surprises happened along the way, for example, we had the opportunity to teach at a school in the slums for a week! We absolutely loved it! We slept in the classrooms at night and welcomed the children around 6:40am, everyday! Seeing their smiles every morning made our day. We had 2 groups of about 20-30 kids each. Half came for the morning and the other for the afternoon. The school is actually a community program that seeks to keep young children off the streets when they are not in school. 
In Brazil the elementary school system runs on a half day schedule so the young ones have a lot of free time. The School, named Casa De Samuel is committed to caring for these kids and continuing their education during this period of the day. The staff of Casa De Samuel have found a special place in our hearts. They do not get paid for the committed time at Casa De Samuel, they have to raise financial support through friends and family. They too are missionaries.
During out time at Casa De Samuel, our team learned about giving 100% in all we do. The days were long and the lessons sometimes
hard to plan for and teaching through translators was not easy. But these kids deserved our whole-hearted love and attention. Many of them come from poor and broken homes, they long to be known and loved. We worked hard at memorizing their names and learning as much Portuguese as possible! We most definitely fell in love with them!
A great bonus to our 2 ½ months in Brazil was the depth of community that we were able to reach within our team. 
We did not have a hired cook so our meal preparation time involved many bonding moments, like the time we cooked an entire meal, set it out on the table and then realized our pasta noodles had been infested with bugs! One would think that the meal was ruined… nope, we just added more sauce and ate up! Our team really knew how to have fun and bring out the best in each other. Along with that we made time for pouring into each other through prayer, prophecy and one on one bonding time too. I love adding to my Kingdom family!
