The morning dawned early, as it does here daily, and we rose with the challenge of ministry on the mind. Today would be my first day experiencing Spanish missions in CR. What my team and I got to do for today was a kids club thing on the newest of SCORE's property where they are currently working on a church plant. Bethany Drew is the person in charge of the whole ministry so I went into it really excited to be able to work with her! Waking up was pretty hard, but it wasn't quite as early as I had been getting up. The whole week I got up every day at 6 to go running. So although I had to wake up at 7, it was a lot nicer than 6. I got ready, did my devos, ate breakfast with my roomies, and then grabbed my bus money to head out. We walked up to the bus stop, waited like 10 minutes and got on to ride all the way to Coronada. It's nice because most of the buses to ride all the way from start to finish is only about 50 cents. On the ride a couple of us struck up a conversation with a guy named Rafael who was headed home from work.. crazy. It's so cool to be able to practice my Spanish everywhere we go, even on the go! When we got to the last bus stop, we had about a 25 minute walk to the SCORE building. I was talking with my friend Lauren who was here in the summer of 09 and she said this building hadn't been built yet so it was brand spankin new. It was really nice too! It's going to be the place where they host all the short term teams so that the villa (where I'm staying) can be reserved only for GAP year students. Pretty cool. So anyway we get there and get the run-down of how the day's gonna work out. Bethany explains what we need to do to set up, what to do when the kids arrive, and the overall schedule for the program. Then we dive straight into the work. Some people stayed to set up the games in the field while a couple other people and I went out to the gate to set up balloons as a welcoming sign. While we were still out there a bunch of kids showed up... but it was about an hour before they were supposed to be there. So on the fly we quit the decorating, led them into the field, and started handing out name tags and stickers. Since I could communicate with them fairly well I got to hand out the stickers while we waited for more kids to show up. It was really fun to see their faces and watch them cover themselves in the stickers. I also asked what their favorite colors were and how old they were and small stuff like that to keep them talking and not just staring at me. After a while we just started even though kids were trickling in for a long time after that. The first thing we did was sing songs. Jose's (the director of SCORE in CR) oldest daughter led the music and did a wonderful job. She is a fireball of energy and knows how to really rope the kids in! Then her mother gave a message using a painting story telling the wordless book. It was simple, powerful, and very direct. The kids enjoyed it and they all prayed with her at the end.. and although we don't know how many were genuine, they heard it, prayed, and walked away with seeds in their hearts. So we're trusting God with the rest! Then we were off to crafts. The kids all gathered around tables and got to color hats using markers. It was awesome. Then eventually the older kids got to play sharks and minnows for a short time before the rain came. I know I should be used to this from Haiti, but rain every single day at the same time is still kinda weird and sometimes frustrating when you have plans... sigh.. but we gave them a small snack, took a group picture, and sent them home. Afterwards we had a short debrief and prayed just thanking God for all he had done today. This was the kickoff day for this kids club that will be happening every Saturday. I was really excited because I'm going to be attending the church that's starting this program and doing the plant, so I get to be part of it all year.. and after seeing the very beginning I'll be able to see all the growth. Which is way cool! Theeennnn we got to clean up... it didn't take very long because there were a lot of us working together. We were then dropped off at the bus stop and rode back to the villa. Because it's Saturday we didn't have anything on the agenda. Wow. A day to relax? It was sooo nice. I got to skype some people and just chill out in the villa.
So after some hours of pure holy relaxation I decided to go to the Saturday night thing at the church I'll be going to until this church plant in Coronada is actually planted. It was really neat. There were like 3 youth age kids there and everyone else was over the age of 75. But we sat on benches around a ping pong table, drank coffee, and studied the Bible.. what more could you ask for? We read Acts 27 and talked about how Paul trusted God even through the storm and based all his trust on God's promise to take care of everyone on the ship. The pastor even compared it to our year here. We will go through so many storms and will have to trust God to get us through them and save us even when we feel like we're drowning. I really liked it! Then he asked Andy (our GAP director) what we were all going to be doing this year, and when he found out we were going to be studying the Bible, not only Spanish, he decided to quiz us. So he started asking us all these Bible trivia questions. It was super cool!! For like the next hour we just answered Bible questions (all in Spanish of course). Then he finally ended the study and most people left. But like I mentioned before we were using a ping pong table as our table. So obviously some of the guys wanted to play. We ended up staying at least another half hour.. It was really fun though. And the whole time I was only speaking Spanish just to practice getting in my Spanish brain and forcing myself to stay there. It was pretty hard.. but good for me. I can't wait for classes to start Tuesday! Tomorrow is church, and I absolutely LOVE church in other countries. So I'll definitely be blogging about it sometime tomorrow. Thanks so much for all your prayers!! Send me emails :) love you all!!
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