We are so excited to start this new year with so many of our dreams come true. This year, we will be starting renovations on the new Vila Betania and move everything to the new place. This is a dream come true as God told Nic and Rachael this was the year to buy a new house. 

Starting this month, we hope to begin work and hold our worship services at our new building. All of our offices will be moving to this new building to have a functional and central place for us to work. The old base will be used as a place for lodging for missionaries, visitors, and students.

The Father’s Love team will be visiting and discipling 10 of our men and women every month instead of the 3 families we visited this past year. Visiting and discipling the families we meet is also one of the main priorities for our Street Church team. We have noticed that by doing visits more personal relationships are built, through which we can share more of our Father and His love in various ways. For a while now, we have been thinking and dreaming of solutions for some of the more legal issues we run into on a daily basis. Some children we meet were never registered with the government and therefore do not have access to a lot of opportunities like schooling. In order to help out in these cases, we hope to launch our Legal Defense Center this year! We will start by helping one of our community boys to file for an identity card so that he can start school.

Hopefully, we will have our next banquet for the men and women on the streets this year. We are very excited for this, since most of the women know us by the big banquets we have given in the past. Many people on the streets have been asking us about when we will have our next banquet and are as excited as we are for this new chance of joy and time together. Food may be the reason why they come, but they end up being filled by the love of the Father!  

In Philadelphia, we plan to complete the work on the garden behind the church property where we live. We hope to demonstrate a tangible picture of restoration to the church and the surrounding community. It creates opportunities for people who like to do missions by physically building something. Furthermore, it is an opportunity to connect volunteers and their families, with our ministry and the community they live in. Additionally, we will be talking to city officials and the police department to formalize a plan for how Shores of Grace can be a bigger blessing to the city in our outreach work on the streets with drug-addicted peoples and those trapped in prostitution. Lastly, we plan to grow our School of the Streets trainings to equip over 1000 people this coming year. Last year, we trained roughly 600-700. As these trainings continue to grow, we plan to be as intentional as possible to formulate a network to support and encourage other churches and ministries in the region that are making moves for the kingdom in the city of Philadelphia. 

In Fortaleza, we will continue running our project called “The Molotov Team”; Jiu-Jitsu training for children from the communities. We will also have books available in our Jiujiteca, which will be a reading incentive space for our Jiu-Jitsu students. Furthermore, we will continue with Street Church to serve the community and its needs. Creating closer relationships through visits and contributions will be our main priority this year. Another great new project is the start of the “House of Prayer”. Our hope is for this house of prayer to be a place of communion and continuous intercession for the city. We believe it will be a place of great impact! In 2019, our children were trained in counseling in the field of emotions and sexuality. These children will be placed in favor of members of our community and also of our city, leading them to restoration through the Word.