Archived Latest News - Casa Alfa - A home for Street Girls

After countless decades without updating the site I have finally put up a newsletter from this month which you can find here...

As a family we are planning to be in the UK from the end of May until mid-July this year and are looking forward to seeing friends and family again. In the meantime the church will be being looked after by Sergio, Lidia, Efrain and Rosmery. (Sergio came with me to the Newfrontiers leaders conference in Brighton last year.)

We are hoping to be able to start small groups/ house groups/ community groups/ cell groups or "whatever else you may choose to call them" groups for the church later on this year.�

It's been a while since I updated this page. So what has happened in the meantime?

Well, sadly the second stage didn�t work out and Heidy left after a few weeks. We tried everything we could to help her but in the end each person has to make their own decision... It was quite hard on Gaby to have launched herself out like that, only for Heidy to run away. At the moment Gaby is continuing to do all the shopping for both homes. She is also taking a computing course and seeking God about the future - she is considering the possibility of starting a nursing course next year. Please pray for her with these big decisions to be made.

If you would like to receive Gaby's newsletter please write to us at: contactus@casaalfa.org

El Alfarero

Yanyt & Salustio are now doing their YWAM Discipleship Training School and so will be away from the home until the end of January. So, Jimena is now in charge of the home together with a young couple, Javier and Delia. Delia has been working in the home since the beginning of the year as our teacher and her husband, Javier has been teaching mechanics to some of the older boys at El Camino, the boys� home. They have a 4 yr old daughter called Sara�.

Church

Church has been going well and we've seen some real growth in some of the folks... as well as some very real struggles in others. We are very much looking forward to the visit of Oscar and Arturo, 2 pastors from Newfrontiers churches in Mexico who are coming out to visit us at the end of the month.

April 2006

Sadly, just after I wrote our latest newsletter, Isabel left us saying that she wanted to go and live with the mother of her ex-boyfriend. Just a couple of nights later she was seen by our First Contacts team on the streets again. She didn't seem to have a particular reason for leaving, she just kept saying that she didn't want to be in the home anymore... please pray that she will reconsider and come back to El Alfarero.

Last Friday our street work team met Isabel who said that she wanted to go back to the home. So Salustio and Jimena from the home went into town to talk to her and ended up bringing her back with them. She has obviously found it difficult to get used to being back in the home again, but now seems to be settling down. Please keep praying for her - especially around the 12th of April which is Bolivia's Day of the Child and a big deal here. She is bound to find it hard thinking about her son in the children's home.

We're planning to go to the river on Sunday (12th of March) for baptisms and a barbecue! There are 3 people who want to get baptised - so as long as the weather is good we'll be out at the river... otherwise we'll try to find an alternative wet site.

We went to the river and had a great time. Almost everyone came away with sunburn, but we did enjoy the (almost) crystal clear waters of the river Piray!!

Over the last few months the landlady for the building where we hold the medical post, Sunday church meetings and the drop-in projects has received complaints from some of the neighbours about the presence of street kids round the building. In reality the kids are only outside the building about twice a week and then generally only for about 20 minutes at a time while they wait for the projects to open. However, the landlady is unwilling to renew our contract (which ran out in August) and so we are now in the search for new premises.

This isn�t the first time we�ve had to move on and so we are praying about and looking into the possibility of buying a property. A house has just come onto the market that is only just over a block away from where we are now that has one large room (currently used as a restaurant) and 8 other rooms that could be used as offices, counselling rooms, a children�s playroom, etc. The asking price is us$45,000 and we are looking into whether we can get a bank loan for it. Please pray....

Things are going very well now at the girls' home. We now have 5 girls in the home, 2 of whom have children with them. We are still looking for another full-time staff member to join the team and enable us to better cover time off for the workers.

We finally moved house the 16th of January leaving behind the one that we bought almost 8 years ago. The new house, which we have taken on a loan system, is much closer to Jasmine's school, to the main YWAM training base, and also to the girls' home. So it's altogether much more convenient for us. It's also a lot bigger than our last house and we're looking forward to having a number of visitors this year who we'll now be able to put up in style!

There is also a nursery school just a block behind our house where we have started taking Gaby. She loves being like Jasmine and going to school every day.

Things are going very well now at the girls' home. We now have 5 girls in the home, 3 of whom have children with them. So there are 4 children in El Alfarero just now, making a total of 9 people under our care. We are still looking for another staff member to join the team and things are going to be a bit over stretched over the next few months as Jimena will be taking 5 months out to do the YWAM Discipleship Training School. 4 of the girls are about to start studying next week, 1 is going back to school to try and finish her high school education, whilst the 3 others will be going to an institute to study sewing and haridressing courses. These things are bound to be quite a challenge for the girls, but we hope that they'll also help to raise their expectations and encourage them as they learn new skills for the future.

We have a teacher who comes into the home 5 afternoons a week to help the girls catch up on some of the schooling that they have missed during their years spent on the streets and also to make sure that those who go back to school are able to keep up with their classmates.

Unfortunately, having a great infrastructure and a wonderful team doesn't automatically ensure that hordes of street girls will suddenly decide that it would be better to have a nice place to stay and people who genuinely want the best for them instead of living on the streets with an abusive boyfriend.... so at the moment we are looking after just three girls in the home whilst continuing to work on the streets and in the project with many others. Of the girls who have had a spell in the home since we reopened in May with a new staff team, we have managed to maintain a good relationship with all but one, and we are hopefull that after a time of reflection, many of them will want to come back into the home and give things another go.

We have been out and about looking for a house to move to that will be closer to the school where we'd like the girls to go, and also to El Alfarero, to cut down on the time spent travelling to and from work.

click the images to enlarge
Driveway to the site More foundation work Up to window level	Foundation work The first bricks The roof timbers going on
Finished!

We have now received enough donations to enable us to finish paying for the land (us$18,000) and build the dormitory block (us$16,000) which was just finished last week!!

On top of that we currently have about us$4,000 towards the building of the staff block, which includes staff bedrooms/ office/ storeroom / kitchen (approx. us$17,300).

We are planning to open the home using just the dormitory block until work is finished on the staff block, so hopefully we'll be able to open very soon - depending on finding one more full-time staff member.

Latest News - August 2003
El Alfarero - The Potter

THANK YOU to everyone who has given towards the building of the new girls� home �El Alfarero�. Work started at the beginning of June and has been progressing nicely. We now have enough money to be able to finish the dormitory and toilet block and we have around us$7,300 towards the staff house/ kitchen which means that we still need approximately us$10,000 (�6,000) to finish the buildings.

There are 2 girls who have shown particular interest in going into the home when it opens and who have been faithfully coming to the projects in Casa Alfa. Gladys (18) who has a 1yr old daughter, Jasmin, and Elsa (17) who is expecting a child in October. Please pray for them and the other girls who will be the first to enter El Alfarero.

We would like to say a big "THANK YOU" to everyone who has sent money towards the new girls� home �El Alfarero�. It has been amazing to see how the money has been provided. We have been able to finish paying for the land and we now have about $15,000 towards the buildings that we�ll need to be able to start running the home. It�s a very exciting time having planned and waited for so long to now really feel like things are moving along towards the new home. We feel really humbled by God�s faithfulness and excited about his plans for the girls� work.

We are now trying to get all the paperwork sorted out to get the property put into YWAM�s a name and getting plans and final cost estimates drawn up for the buildings that we want to see on the land. Hopefully we should be able to start building in the next 3 or 4 weeks!!

As far as staff to live in the home is concerned, it looks likely that Sharon Rillie will be in charge of the home (Sharon features on the About us page), and there are one or two possibilities for support for her there... including Gaby, herself an ex-Casa Alfa girl who is now doing her Discipleship Training School with YWAM, but is praying about the possibility of working in the girls� home once she finishes.

Latest News - January 2003
Over the last few months we�ve looked at a number of different properties but haven�t been able to find anything that we really feel would be suitable for the new girls� home. After praying a lot about the situation we felt it would be right to go ahead and make an offer for a piece of land that is in a good location with a view to then being able to design and build a facility that meets all the necessary criteria for a rehab home for girls.

If you would like to make a donation towards
buying this land and building a new girls'
home on it please click here

Our offer of $18,000 (approx. �12,000) for the 6000m� piece of land was accepted and we have made the first down payment of $4,000. We have around $5,000 of the remaining balance of $13,000 all of which has to be paid by the 14th of July 2003.

Obviously this is a longer route to finally being able to open the home. Once we have paid off the land we will still need to raise the money for the building (estimated at around another $20,000 � approx. �13,000) before we are able to start using the property as a home. The need amongst the street girls and their children is great and we are praying that God will provide the necessary finance so that we can go ahead and start building soon.

Please pray about this new challenge and if you are able to help in any way please do get in touch. You can email us at: contactus@casaalfa.org

In the meanwhile we continue to look for staff who will be able to live in the home as house parents � please pray for the right people to come at the right time.

Latest News - August 2002
Having spent almost 3 months in the UK we are soon to return to Bolivia. Thank you to everyone who has shown us their support as we have travelled around - those who opened their homes to us, fed us, prayed for us, gave us donations, invited us to speak at their churches and just generally were very nice to us. We have really enjoyed the that time that we�ve been back here and our only regrets are about some of our friends whom we haven�t been able to see this time.

As we go back we are hoping to build upon the work started in the new girls� project and to reopen a home for girls in the coming months. The key to opening the home will, as ever, be finding the right staff. Please pray for more workers.