Guatemala: VBS, Farewells, and Fun

The first message in this blog is about 'Connections' and a feeling I had after New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji that we were supposed to stay connected to people we were meeting on this journey of ours.

Our primary 'Connections' here in Guatemala have been our friends from Ohio.  We said farewell to them last night.  They have been a blessing, and I'm certain some of the relationships we have formed will continue for many years.

On Saturday our Ohio friends got up at 6am to head on a 3 hour drive to a river boat trek for the day.  My girls vetoed the idea of spending 6 hours in a bus so I thought we were going to have a pretty relaxing day.  But at breakfast, Cheryl (co-founder of HOLI and a true sweetheart) asked us if we would do a Vacation Bible School after lunch for the orphans while some of their buildings were being painted by another team.  We said "Sure!"

We headed to the HOLI office to get supplies, brainstormed some ideas and put together a skit + coloring activity + game that I think we pulled off pretty well given the amount of preparation time.

Preparing the orphans coloring activity that was done after the skit + bible lesson.  

We started with a skit that Rachel had previously done at our church.  She had the script in her email, so we memorized the lines and practiced a couple of times before heading up to the orphanage.  Here is a 2 minute Youtube video of the skit....



We used a translator throughout our lesson.  Rachel and I were the main characters and V was the girl who suggested doing something that wasn't right.  We changed the verbiage there to something about 'going out Friday night' (instead of debt) and 'what they don't know about won't hurt' as that was more appropriate for the audience.

After the skit, V explained to the kids that the lady in the skit said she was a Christian but was always wrestling with Jesus for control.  If she had truly given her life to Christ then Jesus would be in control and there would have been joy she wanted to share.

H then came up and read Mark 1:40-45 which is the story about man healed of leprosy who was filled with so much joy that he couldn't help but go tell everyone about Jesus.  Afterward, S explained that when someone loves God so much they share it, and she explained the craft project.  The girls and Rachel had cut out figures that opened up to multiple people holding hands (see picture above....visual of one person then telling many others).

Finally, we taught the kids the 'tag game' Octopus which, again, starts with one and ends with everyone as a part of the 'Octopus' (see below)

We played the game 'Octopus' after our VBS lesson.  If it looks chaotic, it's because it was....but it was definitely fun

So, VBS went well and then the kids started playing together.

Jesus decided to teach me a lesson during this time.  I will be the first to admit that I'm not a big fan of being crawled all over by kids.  I like kids but when kids who aren't mine are pulling on me, jumping on me, wanting to be picked up etc, it just isn't my thing (and these kids do that A LOT).

I try to be as polite as possible and eventually they get the message and go jump on other people who enjoy that kind of thing.  All except this little girl.  Her name is Belen (which means Bethlehem) and she just kept coming at me with earnest eyes and a nice smile.  No matter what I did, she just kept patiently coming back and waiting on me, arms open.  And it dawned on me that this is what Jesus did to me for many, many years...patiently waited, kept coming back, arms open until I finally broke down and invited Him into my heart.  So, I picked her up and she was content.  And so was I.

Saturday night the Ohio group had their final devotional, sharing stories about what they will remember about the week.

Our little S told a story where she said (and I quote)... "One of my favorite memories from the week was when Michael's wife poured a TINY bit of water on him and he picked her up to throw her in the river while his mom was saying 'don't you dare Michael!!'"

Now the funny part of this statement was the 'tiny' bit of water that Amanda supposedly poured.  It was basically half of a huge gatorade bucket (like the ones winning coaches get dunked with at the end of a football game) and this man was drenched...especially his back.  He happened to be sitting on his other shirt which got soaked as well.

Anyway, S tells this story and Amanda is saying "Yes....that's exactly what it was like...a tiny bit of water!" and Michael just had this priceless "What are you doing to me S?" look on his face.  It was really funny.  For the record, here is the picture of my soaking wet friend....his back was completely drenched as that was the primary target area.   He really should have dunked her in the river.....

The other really, really funny story told last night was Jake's encounter with a little gecko in his bed.  There is no way I can do justice to how funny he told this story, but needless to say when I see Geico commercials (where the gecko is the spokes 'animal' for a large American insurance company) I will think of Jake commando rolling out of bed and standing at karate chop readiness.  LOL

We attended church Sunday morning at the church just outside the gates of HOLI.

AJ and S went to kids church

All the orphans were at this service and the little ones all lined up to walk back up to the orphanage at the top of the hill.  Cute....

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Some of the older kids from the orphanage hung out with us after church.  V and S went this afternoon with a bunch of the orphans and swam in the river.  They had great fun but no pictures of the river swim :(

Our friend Erica attended church with us.  She is awesome and one of our favorite people we have met on this trip....

 And she gets major brownie points as she bought the kids (and us too!) an ice cream like treat after church....

Pretty much all the groups have gone home now so it is just us and a small group who arrived Thursday.  It is very odd as our 'home' that used to have the entire Ohio team + us is now just us....way up near the top of the mountain.  It is lonely and a bit quiet now (other than the constantly barking dogs and roosters in the valley....plus the music from the churches Saturday night and most of the day Sunday)

The picture above really doesn't give a great perspective of how steep the mountain is.  It is a HIKE walking up it.  So, we were VERY thankful Cheryl gave our family an old, beat up minivan to use a couple of days ago, and it is pretty obvious that it was on its last legs.  A mirror fell out the first day we had it.  The doors don't open unless you roll down the windows and use the outside handles.  It knocks and pings....but when you are at the top of a pretty steep mountain, you don't complain about the car you have that gets you up that mountain in about 2 minutes versus sweating it out for 15-20 minutes.

Today the minivan died.  3/4 of the way up the mountain it just stopped at the steepest point.  RIP.  We only have 1 full day left here and then head down to Guatemala City Tuesday afternoon for our flight out Wednesday morning.  So, we'll manage.

H is feeling a bit under the weather, so she napped with AJ and Rachel this afternoon while the other girls went with the orphans to the river.  We ordered pizza tonight and had our own pizza party.  And finally, AJ made a new friend this morning at breakfast (Allison) and they just played and played both at breakfast and lunch.

God bless til next time...