Today I was able to take three of the teens from our group to visit the Air Force Aerospace Musuem and the Navy Cultural Centre in Rio de Janeiro city, a 150 km drive from our city, Nova Friburgo. In addition to seeing a number of aircraft at the aeorspace musuem, we were also able to visit a Navy battleship and submarine, and to see inside a SH3 Sea King helicopter.
Our Teen CERT group helped run a display in the local bus station today as part of a Day of Social Action. It was a great opportunity to show the general public our CERT and first aid courses, and seven of teenagers took part in the event.
Here are some photos from the day.
I was able to take four of our teens to a local river today - despite summer being officially over we got a mostly sunny day.
It's always hard to choose who gets to go as due to financial issues, the size of my car, and the lack of available adult helpers, I'm very limited in how often I can do these sorts of activities and how many of our youth can participate at any one time.
I was able to take four of the teens from our Teen CERT group to a local swimming hole yesterday. The $49 Intex raft from The Warehouse was a great hit!
Here are some photos from the day.
We had a meeting of our teens' group tonight and a surprise party, partly to celebrate Brazilian Childrens' Day, which is next Wednesday, and partly as a social activity as we probably won't have a chance to have another meeting until I get back from New Zealand in mid-December.
It was also an opportunity for six of our teenagers to receive their new ranks within our group structure, including Kevin who is the first member of the group to be awarded the Junior Commander rank.
Turnout was less than expected, which was not doubt due, at least in part, to a shooting (death) that happened here in the hillside last night, and the environment here which feels like we are in a state of siege at the moment. Neverless, the meeting went very well and the party was a great success.
Here are some photos from our meeting tonight.
We had a great kids' first aid course today, with 18 children aged 10 to 12 years participating. It was great to have the help of some of the young people from our Teen CERT group.
Special thanks to Global Samaritan Resources for the donated first-aid supplies!
It was great to be able to open up the base for some of the local kids to play on the video-games today - I counted 14 kids at one time! Special thanks to some of the members of our teens' group for helping out.
Here are a couple of photos:
Here are some photos from today:
Today I took some of our teens to watch the Olympic torch make its way through the city.
Here are a couple of photos:
It was great that our team chaplain Luiz Augusto was able to give another drum lesson and discipleship lesson to our teens group yesterday.
Here are a couple of photos:
Over the last couple of weeks I have been running some Small BASIC programming lessons to a small group of young people. It's great to see these teens wanting to learn programming - at their request we did a double class yesterday and are getting into nested IF-THEN-ELSE conditions.
We had a great teens' group meeting tonight with team chaplain Luiz Augusto.
Here are some photos from the evening:
We had a great teens' group meeting tonight, and two of our boys were awarded their Patrol Member patch. We also watched a modern video of the Good Samaritan parable and the kids ended up playing games on the XBox and the Wii, before we finished with a snack.
It was great that Kevin, one of our teen leaders, opened our base this afternoon for some of the local kids to come hang out for a while. Here are some photos:
Over the long weekend we ran a three-day camp for nine of the members of teens' group. It was a great time and here are some of the photos from the camp.
It was great to open our base for some of the kids from the teens' group to play games tonight. We're hoping to make some adjustments soon to the building, to make the space more usable and secure, and to prepare for what I hope will be my soon return to the house that I built above the then church building just over ten years ago.
We had a great "camp-out" on the church roof overnight with some of the teens from our group. It was really cool to see how everyone helped with the chores, and we had some real good conversations (and one boy was instantly healed of a stomach-ache when we prayed for him last night).
Over the last week we have been running Bible Studies and CERT Emergency Communications courses and also opening up the base for games. It was great to see our teens completing the courses, including the new members who have recently joined the team, and all who were awarded Achievement Badges today.
Today I took some our teens hiking up a nearby mountain (I survived!).
While on our climb back down the mountain the teens found and buried a blue parakeet, which seemed to have died of natural causes. Sorry kids, I guess that means that that there won't be any more Rio movies!
Last night we held a CPR lesson for some of our teens, with the help of a visitor from the UK.
Here are some photos of the lesson:
We have just come back from an overnight camp that we held for some of our teenagers at a small farm with help from some of our leaders. The camp went very well, here are some photos.
Here are some photos of our Response Team and Teens' Group for the month of November. Activities included the awarding of achievement badges, work on our rescue trailer and some flying of our remote controlled helicopter.
Some of our teens helped me teach a first aid course at a local State School this morning, which went very well.
Here are some photos of the course.
Today some members of our teens' group participated in a Civil Defence emergency warning system test and evacuation simulation.
We had a smaller than usual turnout for our last Response Unit and Teens' meeting for the year, but those who came were able to rescue the lost chocolates.
Today I had a busy but very rewarding morning teaching two end-to-end first aid classes in a city school in partnership with local Civil Defence and with help from Felipe.
Here are some photos:
Since September we have been holding two-weekly meetings on Saturday nights where we provide advanced training to members of our response team and young people from our teens group who have completed the Teen CERT course. Over the past several meetings we have trained with the SKED stretcher, tested an Meal Ready to Eat (MRE), and practised one and two personal profissional CPR and the use of the Bag Valve Mask (BVM) and Automatic External Defibrillator (AED).
Here are some photos from recent training meetings: