The Reality of it All

So, four months without updating the blog. That´s just sad huh? It´s about time for an update don´t you think? I usually post pictures of the kids or of new places we have recently visited, but today I think I´m just going to open up and share a little bit of what is going on around us here. Pictures are much more fun. What I´m sharing today isn´t. Jane and I made it back to Brasil in mid-January. We were anxious to hear about all we had missed while we were back in the States. Unfortunately, not all news we received were things that we wanted to hear. Two months ago, one of the moms that has two girls at the project overdosed and almost died. She had left the house so she could go get high. She didn´t have any place to leave her kids, so she locked them in the bathroom at home. She just got out of the hospital this week. About 6 weeks ago, the house across the street from where our cell group meets on Tuesday nights was robbed. The housekeeper left the house at 7:30 in the morning to go by groceries. Three guys held her up at gunpoint and told her to let them in the house. The owners were still there. They held the family and housekeeper at gunpoint for three hours while they collected all that they wanted to take. When they were done, they forced the owner of the house to drive them into Rio (about an 45 minute drive), along with everything they had stolen, and drop them off!! Who says you have to have a get-away car? Three weeks ago, Pastor Claudio was driving us home to our apartment. As we pulled up to our apartment building, we saw a motorcycle accident happen right in front of us. There was a teenage girl riding along with her boyfriend. They had been at the beach and were both drunk. He lost control of the bike and they both fell off. She got run over by a van that was behind them. I went to give first aid and was thankful that it wasn´t as bad as I had thought it was going to be. She had a deep cut about 4 inches long on her right knee and I could see down to the bone. There were severed ligaments and tendons, but she was not bleeding profusely. I found out later that her femur had been severly fractured. I have seen three other motorcycle accidents in the last week alone. Two weeks ago, a man who lives two houses down from the Project was shot 5 times in a drug deal that went bad. He didn´t die, but he is still in the hospital and is now septic due to an infection he received from the gunshot wounds. He will proably not live. 10 days ago on Friday morning, a teenage boy was shot and killed during a robbery at his home on. This was 2 blocks from the Project. Three guys had entered the home and held the parents at gunpoint demanding them to hand over their valuables. They went to wake up the boy because he was still asleep. When they did, he tried to jump out of the bed and they shot him. He was a relative of one of the teachers who works at the Project. We arrived at the Project today to find out that the lady who lives next door was arrested for drug trafficking...marijuana and cocaine. It was no suprise to us. You can smell marijuana smoke coming from their house EVERY day. I´m not trying to sensationalize anything. This is just the reality of where we live. This is what is happening right around us. Sorry that you didn´t get to see any pictures of smiling kids today. Hope to have some for you next time.