Monday Misunderstanding

For the actual ministry of doing VBS programs here, we are split up into groups that each go to a different site in the morning, and another different one in the afternoon. We have four groups, with three sites in the morning and four in the afternoon. Since I only go with one group, I will only be writing about my groups experiences, for now.

In the morning we got to the church in good time. The first problem was that no one there spoke English, and I was the only one in our group that was mostly fluent. To begin with, the pastor asked us to go out and invite more kids from the neighborhood to come. If we had thought there was a lot of mud the other day, we were in for a surprise. Even more mud on the streets there near the church. We invited quite a few kids and then returned to the church. We were told that we were only responsible for the craft, and that the churches would do the rest. When we got back to the church and the pastor asked if it was okay where the kids were sitting, I got a bit nervous. When he asked if we wanted to open in prayer, I realized with a sinking feeling in my stomach, that they thought we were going to do a whole lot more than we thought we would do. I politely explained that we thought we were just doing the craft and it actually did turn out alright.

After the first site, we had lunch at a different church, before going back to the hotel for some rest. In the afternoon, we left for our second sites for VBS, which would start at 4:00. Our group got crammed into a rather old sedan, all six of us plus the driver. It was tight, but we made it. At the site, they actually did have something planned. It went well, and the people were very glad to have us there.

That evening, we ate at Nueva Vida again. Instead of returning to the hotel right away, though, we joined in the birthday party for a girl turning 15 (probably the biggest birthday a girl in Mexico ever has). We even joined in the games afterwards, including a very, very big game of musical chairs. That was one of the most competitive games of musical chairs I had ever seen! Very fun, though.

Picture 1: The church we work at for the morning site.
Picture 2: Some of the kids with their craft from the first day, pinwheels.
Picture 3: Racing for the last open chair in musical chairs.