Today God again gave us beautiful gifts! After breakfast we headed up into the mountains to view the city of Huehue from up above, with plans to listen to a sermon enroute and then have our worship time up there. Well, the car's CD player would not play the sermon, so that was disappointing. Once we reached the top, clouds rolled in, affecting our view; nevertheless, we were awed by His creation. At the top, Mirador, we encountered quite a few children from the village who, we supposed went there to receive something from tourists.
We snapped pictures and then sat down on a bench for our time of scripture and a devotional. Antonio conversed with some of the children. Then he said, "Sometime we need to come up here and do VBS with these kids," and in the trunk of the car we carried our VBS supplies from the orphanage. So we decided to take out our children's Bible story books, and Antonio read about creation and Adam and Eve, as the kids sat attentively. When he finished that story, then he read about how Jesus saves the world, and we remembered that in our "stuff" was the extra craft from the story of Jonah yesterday. A count of the boys and girls of varying ages came to 17, and we had 35 packets of that craft. So Antonio asked the kids to form a circle, and we passed out our simple craft. Each child could place a butterfly sticker (symbol of the resurrection) on a colored flower, along with a sticker that said Jesus me ama, Jesus loves me.
Well, as we guided the kids through the craft, more came. In the end, mothers came up to the lookout from the village, and we had forty children participate! Yes, we ran out of crafts. At the end, we gave out the Jesus loves me stickers, because that was all we had. As a result of this experience, we saw Antonio's mantra come to fruition: My mission is where my feet touch when I get out of bed in the morning. We all agreed that when the team comes, we must go up to Mirador fully equipped to hold a VBS. Interestingly, our scripture passage for our worship talked about how Paul planted, Apollos watered, and God will bring the harvest. Today, we planted seeds. and the Lord provided quite a worship experience, one quite unlike we expected!
We drove back down the mountain, ate lunch, and then headed for Fundacion Salvacion. The succeeding hours brought more blessings as we enjoyed the kids, read more books--the same ones as before. Next came the movie, which we showed before dinner, because after dinner the younger ones generally head for bed; and the older ones need to get up early for school. So "Ratatouille" played and we three served popcorn and citrus punch, with much help from the staff and the "leaders," the older children responsible for much of the smooth operation of the activities.
After the film, and everyone helping to put away the chairs and clean up, we enjoyed time with the kids. John and Antonio hosted a Bible question game with several of the girls. At long last we left Fundacion Salvacion, where tomorrow we will meet to review the orphanage's needs and the cost to meet them, so that upon our return to Michigan and the team's meeting we can evaluate what East Martin can do this year.
Eagerly we anticipate God's blessings again tomorrow!
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