CC Fredericksburg Missions Blog: Haiti Day 6 (June 19)

We're all still healthy. Maybe a little stiff but everyone is holding stead, strong, and motivated. Devotions were a team effort today between Kelly and JT. Kelly led off with a very appropriate Matthew 6:19-24 Treasures in Heaven and observed how trivial some of our stateside concerns are when we consider the big picture. JT focused on John 6:27, 35 and the observation that the people we are providing food to will be hungry a couple of hours later and that the food they really need is the Gospel. Amen brother! Jim taught the Bible Training students multiple chapters of Ezekiel and completed up thru chapter 39. Pastor John taught The Ungrateful Servant to an ever-growing VBS group. The skit was lots of fun. Joel was thrown in jail by the Ungrateful Servant and Alex got the same treatment by the Master (Kelly). Many of the kids listened and many were preoccupied as you can imagine. We decided (yesterday) to make sure we made enough take away bags because we did not want to fall short. We built 244 bags. We ended up having very close to 300 people including adults, and unfortunately, many did not get a take away bag. It's a good challenge to have, to meet the demand, but next year's effort will have to consider the likelihood of these larger audiences. We spent the early afternoon finishing off the T-shirts by putting dual-color, hand prints with heart shapes within the palms. The T-shirts have our VBS key verse, Romans 5:8 printed in Haitian Creole on them. We finished off all of the shirts in two sessions. Our learning curve was steep and we created several efficiencies to minimize the time--including reducing the size of the work force...! We will most likely be short so pray for peace in the amphitheater and a calmness among us and our friends who come to VBS. After the T-shirts were completed, we made our way down to the amphitheater for a church service. The Bible Training Students led the worship. They and the Believers who attended were so passionate about their worship! Some of the music was recognizable to most of us, but John recognized them (of course) and when he was introduced to lead the service, he mentioned the songs that he had recognized and they applauded and smiled for each "correct" identification. Man they are friendly. He spoke on 1 Peter 2:4-10 and Jesus as the cornerstone, using the amphitheater's stone masonry construction as a metaphor for believers. It was really good, as usual. Please don't slow down on the prayers as you can see there is some adversity in terms of supply and demand.