Three.

Jumping rope

The driveway of Bianca's family's land.

Day 4 Wednesday June 11, 2008

This morning we woke up and drove to Bianca’s family’s land. It was awesome because we drove over this huge bridge. The river there was amazing. We went down and saw small fish in the water too. Then we hopped back in the car to Bianca’s land. There are some strange fruit trees there. Muy interesante. The land was big but the house was quite small. We wanted to see the hot springs nearby but the road to it was closed. So we turned back and headed to the “downtown” area. There, Bianca, Hermano Jorge (Bianca’s dad) y yo fuimos al banco para cambiar dinero. (We went to the bank to change money.) My traveler checks were preventing me from helping myself and the team. I changed $1,000 and got 7,435 quetzales back. The whole thing took about 30 minutes. So long! Afterwards we met the other girls who have been at the internet café. Most were checking email and facebook while Ashley, Elizabeth, and Kaelin were looking for worship song chords. We headed back home and prepared for VBS. We also had lunch: meat loaf and rice = delicious. While preparing for VBS we didn’t’ know what to expect because today was going to be the first day. VBS wasn’t supposed to start until 3:00 p.m. We arrived at Champas around 2:15. When we arrived everyone was already there. So we had no time to prepare because they expected us to start. So there we were unprepared and a bit lost. We tried to start with worship but we didn’t lead it very effectively. Next was the memory verse: Joshua 1:9. Story time. Adam and Eve. We grabbed kids from the audience to be animals with us as Elisabeth read the story. The kids enjoyed the monkeys best. Next was the craft. We started with coloring pages. That settled the kids down for a while. Then we started to handout animal pieces that are put together by stickers. That was a bit chaotic. We ended up just giving everyone pieces of the animals. As long as they got something they were happy. Afterwards was jump roping for game time! The kids were so excited. So many kids jumped and jumped and faught to jump; it was awesome. We then handed out snacks and cleaned up to leave. The kids had so much fun. We did too but were exhausted. We finished and got home around 4:30 to 5:00. We still had to attend church service at 6:30. We rested a bit then went to church. Church service was fun because they sang a lot. Each song was literally 10 minutes long…trust me, I watched the clock. The congregation was very passionate though. That night they introduced us and we each said something we liked about the trip so far. That night Hermana Blanca (Bianca’s mom) spoke passionately. Then they had intercessory prayer. I’ve seen it before but have never been expected to help lead in it. I personally am not a prayer warrior, but through this experience I have definitely learned so much about the power of prayer. Many of the other girls weren’t used to intercessory prayer or have never seen it before. Therefore, all we did was stand in the back and pray for them because we were asked to pray for them. After church it was so much fun trying to talk to everyone with the small Spanish we knew. Everyone expressed so much happiness for having us there. We were soon off to home super exhausted. Sleep. Yay.