Monday at POC in Bauru

We spent the day on Monday with the POC youth outreach in Bauru; POC is under the spiritual umbrella of the Bauru Vineyard, but is also sponsored monitarily by the Bauru government as before and after school activities for the youth in an under-privileged section of Bauru. The kids of this community go to school in either the morning or evening and rather than be on the street when not in school, POC has two daily sessions, one in the morning for kids that go to school in the afternoon and one in the afternoon for kids that go to school in the morning. POC feeds the kids and evangelizes them by involving them in plays, teaching hip-hop dance (REALLY BIG in BRAZIL), music lessons, games and Bible stories. POC has such a good reputation that the mayor of Bauru is planning a visit this week!

Our team along with Kelly, Filipe, and Victor (see previous post) went over to POC from 10am - 4pm, so we could meet with both morning and afternoon sessions. There are many dedicated workers at POC that serve the kids of the community with their lives. It was wonderful to see them again.

We started with the morning group and Kim presenting the "wordless book" to the kids and Pastor David translated for her. This is the book with only colors that tells the story of salvation, it starts out with Black to symbolize sin and separation from God; then Red to symbolize Jesus's death to reconcile us to God; then White to symbolize the blood of Jesus washing us white as snow; then Green to symbolize growth in Jesus and finally Gold to symbolize living with God in heaven forever! Kim did a great job with the story and held the kids attention throughout. Kim, Katie and the rest of the team passed out materials to make a "wordless" bracelet with a leather strap and colored beads. It was very sweet to see the kids all wearing bracelets representing the salvation story!

The morning 'younger kids' then performed a play for us that was loosely based on the story of the "good Samaritan" meets eco-friendly community clean-up. The kids were very proud to present the play for us; it was fun! After that, the older kids performed a hip-hop dance routine for us that was really good. Aaron Hatcher did a hip-hop step with one of the boys that looked a bit like Michael Jackson meets the funky chicken and Andrew did a Michael Jackson spin with a high kick at the end.....both boys got applause and claps! The morning crew then went off to lunch and during their lunch Kim and the team presented a skit about God's love with ping-pong balls.........Kim was giving ping-pong balls to Katie until she couldn't hold anymore and talked about this is how God's love works; He keeps giving us his love so we can give it away, but we have to give it away to be able to hold anymore. Then Katie passed out the ping pong balls to the other team members who passed them out to the kids, while Kim kept giving away more ping pong balls to Katie and the team (we had a big box of ping pong balls); it was a real hit, especially because the kids got to keep the balls!

POC fed our whole team and then it was on to do everything again with the afternoon crew of kids. We added a skit with the afternoon group from the book "You are Special". Kim was the narrator, Beau was the God figure called Eli, Aaron Scherer was the downcast character called Ponchinello, Aaron Hatcher was the Rock-Star, Andrew was the talented dancer, Lauren was the pretty character, Katie was the character with long pretty hair and Joelle was the character that knew Eli and only his opinion mattered to her. It was a fun play that illustrates God's love for us; the whole cast was great!Before we left POC we prayed for the staff and got several words over them about God's pleasure in their work and beauty in their dance before Jesus. We had a powerful time of prayer that Pastor David later told us impacted the POC team quite a bit.

We came back to Piratininga and our younger folks went back to the park to play with and love on the park kids......we were all very tired from a whirlwind set of days with back-to-back ministry, but the youth of our team has been so faithful to find every available time to go the park and love on the kids there. That night we gathered together for another team worship and ministry time. Aaron Hatcher led worship and did another wonderful job. We prayed for each other and many of our team kids have been getting really touched by God in our worship and ministry times.

Tuesday will be our last day ministering in Bauru and we will all miss our family at POC and the Bauru Vineyard; it has been a life-changing time for many of us and many of them.

One last thing for today; whenever we come to Brazil I'm reminded of the scripture "Greet one another with a holy kiss"; it's their culture to greet one another with a kiss on the cheek and a hug; it is very special.

We love you all,
VCF Brazil Team 2009