Children's Ministry Team

The Team from Threshold Church based out of Charlotte, N.C. arrived in the beginning of December for three days of children's ministry (VBS) at the camp. We, of course, did the normal pre-team preparations of lining up their transportation, grocery shopping, snack shopping for the children, etc. This is a team that has come down every January for a week since we've been here and even actually before we were here. They are like stellic VBS pro's and really don't need too much of our help once they get here. Heather and Kyle usually help with some of the translation and program. This year, they served about 126 kids and this is the closing program. 23 children came to know the Lord in those three days...Praise the Lord!

Ministering at the Orphan Home

We ministered at the orphan home for two days; last Friday and also this past Tuesday. These pictures are from last Friday while the previous post was from this week on Tuesday.

Since the kids in the orphan home go to school for a half day it gave us the opportunity to fit a lunch break into our schedule. We thought that Candace might enjoy having lunch at the Mirador in Orosi (the look-out) to give her the opportunity to take some photo's and also to just enjoy the beauty of the valley in which we are allowed to minister.

This photo is taken from one side of the Mirador, a cleared field overlooking some of the opposite mountains and valleys.

This photo is overlooking Cachi, a town past Orosi. This is the same river that flows behind the campground.

On both Friday and Tuesday we packed a picnic lunch, kind of a "make-your-own" sub-type lunch with baguettes, lunch meat and toppings as well as chips, soda and cookies. Everyone seemed to enjoy this and the team fellowship as well! This is taken from the Orosi Mirador and on Tuesday we went to the Ujarras Mirador, across the valley on another mountain.

And the parachute, a gift from Global Outreach Mission, is still a big hit in children's ministry!

One of the really fun things that Amy & Alex prepared in the hygiene teaching was a video entitled, "The Batman". Amy had found it online and it demonstrates the proper way to protect a sneeze from spreading germs. Of course, Amy didn't have too much problem finding a volunteer on the team to demonstrate "The Batman" following the video, live to the kids! Here's our Batman, Jordan!

Thank the Lord for Heather, always willing to lead music and with Becca & Tate's help, we were well prepared to minister through music with beautifully decorated posterboards!

Keep us in your prayers as tonight we go to minister at the homeless shelter. Candace and Emil & his family will be joining us in that as we prepare in the campground kitchen this afternoon a spaghetti dinner for 90 people. Tomorrow, sadly Emil and his family will begin their trip back home in the late afternoon, so please keep them in your prayers for traveling mercies. Candace will leave on Saturday as well and would appreciate the same prayers. It will be kind of lonely around here, that's for sure!

The last two weeks!

Here's a pictorial review of what we have been up to over the last two weeks!


Yesterday, we were asked to do some children's ministry teacher training in a church about an hour from the camp. Two churches in a small town invited us and we arrived at 8:30 a.m. The training began at 9 a.m. and lasted until 4 p.m. This is Kyle doing a demonstration of some gospel magic and explaining how to do a rope trick.

I did a session on Bible Storytelling and one on Bible verse memorization for kids and this is Heather demonstrating just one of the fun ways that we illustrated an important concept of "bridging" from different parts of a children's program i.e. from the main story right into the Bible memory verse.

Ken's parents just returned to the States on Thursday after being here for almost two weeks. In preparation for the children's ministry training, I have Carolyn, Ken's Mom, helping me trace felt squares which we then sewed into Wordless Books.

Yesterday, at the training, each teacher was given a wordless book of their own and after teaching it, we divided them into small groups for them to practice what they had learned.

Seems like a blur, but somewhere in between having family visit, getting ready for teacher training; I also did a few days of inventoring medicines for the upcoming clinic that we will be doing with a medical team coming for a week in May. After about three days of this, I decided I needed a break to spend some time with family, not to mention that I was nearly blind even with glasses on trying to squint to check expiration dates so that those meds that were expired could be disposed of.

Here's a picture of all the things that my in-laws brought to us from our home church, Hickory Grove, in Four Oaks, N.C. We had asked for donations for the "needy" church in which we did the teacher's training, however, so much was brought to us, that we were able to give some to our church here and we were also able to restock our children's ministry supply closet. Thank you SO MUCH Hickory Grove. We couldn't do this without you!

And with all the supplies came a need to tidy up the children's ministry closet so the supplies could be put away. With needing to inventory medicines, I enlisted the help of Ken's Mom, Carolyn, and Heather to organize the closet. Thanks Mom and Heather!

A week of VBS

The first day of VBS with the Threshold Team from Charlotte, N.C. brought in 120 kids, 40 team and Tico volunteers and a lot of energy to the campground! Tomorrow, it all wraps up with a graduation celebration for the parents, and the team returns to the U.S. on Saturday. This week we've been busy helping the team out, running out and picking up last minute needed items for them, working in the camp kitchen to keep up with their busy schedule, but not without at least one evening hockey game in the Celebration Center! I think by the weekend we will be thoroughly exhausted. This week, we've also been working on tying up the loose ends of logistics for a two-week January team coming down from Canada.

Next week, a clean up of the campground from this group being here, a rental group comes in on next Friday for two nights and on Saturday night, Danielle (our daughter) and her husband, Brad, arrive for a two-week Christmas visit!

Update on Ken/Prayer Requests

The doctor's appointment went well for Ken on Monday. He had a hearing test and examination. The results were that he does not have "crystals" attaching to his inner ear that could be throwing off his balance and causing the dizziness. Instead, he has 30-40% hearing loss in his left ear from his years of doing construction and remodeling work with high-pitched power tools. Unfortunately, when Ken was younger OSHA didn't have "laws" on protective hearing devices, and quite honestly, Ken wouldn't probably have taken the time to put those on anyway! His medication that he has been taking for the dizziness and nauseousness does seem to be helping and this medication could potentially cure that problem altogether. It was recommended that he have a hearing aide, but that because a portion of his hearing is still partially good, that he wait awhile on that decision until after he finished the course of medication to take away the dizziness first. If the dizziness does not go away, then he will probably need the hearing aide. But, if the dizziness does go away, the recommendation was that he would actually hear things a lot louder with the hearing aide because of the good side of his hearing, and that the $1200 hearing aide would probably drive him crazy and end up in a drawer! For now, it wasn't a hard decision since we don't have the $1200!

The second night of orientation went well even though we were exhausted from being out all day doing errands, and a prayer was answered in that we told the Lord, "we are weak, please make us strong for You". We had 68 volunteers from the church show up to hear us do the orientation. They are on fire to reach the community behind the church, a squatter village, for the Lord! So, please keep this church in your prayers as they also continue to prepare for our short-term missions team that we will bring in to do three days of Medical Clinics, Children's Ministry and Children's Ministry Training in their church in January.

The Medical Clinic in Palomo; we had a good number of Youth volunteers show up with the Youth Pastor to help us out. We saw about 100 patients in six hours and did not run out of medications or vitamins. We brought in what we thought was enough food for just our volunteers as we closed the clinic for one hour to provide them lunch. At one point, Ken looked in the supply box and cooler and said, "I thought they would eat this, but we have more than I expected left"! So, he began cutting the loaves of baguette and making sub sandwiches for the kids that were there to be seen by the physicians. We had enough to feed every single child that was waiting! God so often multiplies our supplies that it is overwhelming to us! We were so happy and blessed to be able to serve the children sandwiches. Some looked like they hadn't been eating regularly.

Our family left the clinic just a little bit early to go to our friends house for Thanksgiving dinner. We really enjoyed being able to eat turkey which is very hard to find here and quite expensive, though we found a Butterball to donate to the dinner at a reasonable price this year. We had a lot of fun just relaxing and sitting around talking afterwards.

On Friday, Ken and I prepared the camp for a group that was coming in that afternoon, doing custodial-type work. When I was finished with that, I ran home to tidy up the "drop and run" house from a busy week of ministry and prepare it for a new ministry that we are involved in. Heather has always helped facilitate a small group Bible Study for Youth with the assistance of the Youth Pastor in our neighborhood. About six months ago, Heather decided that she felt she needed to step down from that ministry, having served in it for over a year, and give more attention to her homeschooling. At the same time that she was serving in that ministry, she was also teaching a Sunday School class during the church hour. We supported her in that decision and the Youth Pastor found someone else to lead the small group in the neighborhood with him assisting them. But, like most ministries in churches in Central America, it is difficult to find someone who will be consistent in ministry and the Youth Pastor after six months came back to Heather and asked her to consider leading the small group again, since they were not able to meet regularly and the group was falling between the cracks. She, along with Ken and I agreed, and every two weeks the small group of Youth meet in our house. Last night's group was bigger than the group two weeks ago and we thank the Lord for that! So, please add the Youth's small group meetings to your prayer request. Their next meeting will be December 18th in our home, and then they will return to their every two week meeting schedule in January!

Today, I am finishing up preparations for my sermon that I will share tomorrow.

Next week on Tuesday, we will be preparing the Celebration Center for a wedding that will take place on Thursday evening as two teenagers (in their 20's) who attend our church and have grown up in the neighborhood tie the knot! We will also be working on the final preparations for a short-term mission team coming to us from the Great State of N.C.; arriving on Saturday to stay for a week and do VBS! We need to do the grocery shopping and final preparations at the camp on Friday for this team.

On a frustrating note, when we returned to the States in August we bought a new digital camera and for some reason, it has died already! I apologize for the inability to post pictures on our blog. Please know with all the exciting things that God is doing here it is extremely frustrating for us not to be able to share that here!

Cops & Robbers, Fruit & Fun, and Prayer Requests

On Friday morning, David & Katherine with some help from Alianna, Ken & I picked fruit at the campground for a trip that we were taking today to do some logistical work. Pictured here are oranges, lemons, limes, guava and grapefruit loaded into the back of our van. We had a good time talking and laughing together! I wish I had my camera with me to snap a picture at the camp of Ken pushing Alianna around in the wheelbarrel full of fruit...so cute!

This morning we traveled about three hours away from the campground to the Caribbean, near Guapiles, to visit churches in more remote areas. This is the area that we will be bringing a short-term missions team to in January to minister through medical clinics, construction projects and children's ministry and training. In this picture is Pastor Jose, a Global Outreach missionary who introduced us to these churches and their Pastors; Ken and Katherine, who are discussing the logistics for this upcoming team.

Here's a picture of Ken & Katherine distributing the fruit that we had picked and brought with us on this trip to the Pastor's wives and families. We hope that this will bless them in some small way.

While it was much hotter and more humid than we are used too here on the Caribbean side of the country; it also seemed that everything grew bigger and prettier. I saw these hot pink flowers along the road and couldn't resist taking a picture. So vibrant and dainty.

On Friday evening, we had a rental group of ladies at the camp. After we finished picking fruit, we worked together to clean the kitchen, the bathrooms and cabins in preparation for this group. They arrived a bit later than we had expected them on Friday evening. Running behind schedule, they stored their baggage outside the Celebration Center and immediately began their evening service. Much to our frustration, three to four young men entered the campground and stole one of the ladies pieces of luggage. We are grateful for the quick response of the area police who were able to capture two of the men; one who was released (the laws are very lax here) and one who was taken into custody for possessing stolen items that were identified by one of the ladies as hers. Most of all, we are very grateful that no one was hurt!

How you can pray:

1. Pray for the upcoming teams coming to the campground to do ministry in December and January.

2. Continue to pray for our neighborhood which is experiencing more thefts and crime, and for the added police who have been called in to patrol our area.

Orphan Home Ministry-Prayer Requests

Yesterday, and yes, I forgot the camera again (sorry); we went to the Orphan Home to do an all day ministry. I mentioned before about a new intern we received last week. Her name is Lynae. Lynae is a professional music teacher when she is back in Canada. Yesterday, she taught four hours of guitar lessons at the Orphan Home. In the morning, she did two hours of classes, a half hour each to four students. The Orphan Home was gracious enough to serve us lunch and we spent about an hour eating and chatting with the Orphan Home staff. Then, in the afternoon she did another two hours of lessons, a half hour again to four more students. During the time that she was teaching, Heather and I had the children in a "holding" room awaiting their class time. We did children's ministry with those students; a Bible story, crafts, games and memory verses. This time with the kids in children's ministry has been awesome. Usually when we are there at the Orphan Home ministering we are working with the "masses", large groups of children of all ages. The way that their Educational Director set up the lessons is that in the morning we have a group of younger children and in the afternoons we have older children, more youth group-aged.

PRAYER NEEDS:
Please pray for us as we have made a commitment to minister at the Orphan Home every Tuesday and Thursday for the next five weeks. Pray for Lynae as she teaches music; guitar and piano lessons. Pray for Heather & I as we teach to these small groups of children, but at a much more intensive level than we have ever had the opportunity to before. Pray for discernment as we are already working on next week's lessons. Pray for the children's hearts to be open and receptive. Pray for good behavior, it can be kind of rough!

I'll try and get some pictures tomorrow as we minister and post them on the blog before the end of the week.

Team PBA-Part II

This was the second scorpion I saw on Chira Island. The first was in the shower stall and this was the second by the water tank. He didn't last long!

This was the church building and I am helping some of the other ladies set up their tents. When ours finally dried out the second day it found its way up to the stage in the church.

Here's one of the showers of two for 38 people for four days. There was no hot water, of course, but I didn't find it very cold since the temperatures were oppressive.

This was on Thursday in a medical clinic we did in Cartago, much closer to home, in a church. Even Jordan helped out in the pharmacy counting vitamins.

This is Tortuga Island, not the one from Pirate's of the Carribbean, sorry, but even so it was beautiful. We spent one day here with the team as their "free day" and they more than enjoyed laying around on the beach!

Back at Chira Island, this was the stove behind the church kitchen where our food was cooked for us.

This was a school we got into on Chira Island and did some children's ministry while the rest of the team was back at the clinic. We are working on some beaded bracelets.

This was in Cartago, not far from home, in the church's school room where we set up for children's ministry. Lots of kids and lots of fun.

A puppet show!

Ministry on Chira Island-Team PBA

Here is "most" of the team from Palm Beach Atlantic University sitting down for a meal at the camp, though there are a couple of empty spots on the benches. The team consisted of 30 pharmacy school students, two pharmacists and Dean Mary Ferrill, one of their teachers.

To get to Chira Island we got up and departed from the camp at 2:30 a.m. last Saturday morning, traveled four hours by bus to the port where we loaded down one boat with the mobile pharmacy, tents and children's ministry supplies. The other boat carried all of the team and their personal belongings. The boat ride was 45 minutes long to get to the port on the island.

Once there, we quickly loaded our belongings on to a truck off of the boats and then we loaded a school bus (the public transportation system for the island) to get to this church where we quickly got settled in and set up. This is the patient waiting area.

Here are some of the pharmacy students, Elizabeth on the left, Alba on the right standing in the tan shirt, Jason in the back checking patients in to the Triage area where they have their vital signs taken and wait to see a physician.

Here we have set up physician examining rooms, not quite like the States. Elizabeth is escorting the patient into a "consult room" to see the doctor on the patient's right, Dr. Manuel.

While the doctor's see patient's, outside more are lining up in the patient waiting area. To calm fears and to begin to prepare hearts, Laurence, Heather and Elizabeth are singing worship songs in Spanish.

While all of the above is going on, underneath a tree, the Gospel has been shared by Amir, second to the left in the red shirt to a couple of patients in the circle. Kyle (you can just see his blonde hair in the background) has interpreted Amir's message into Spanish. Some of the other students who are on the evangelistic team have joined in praying for these who are accepting the Lord.

We spent our nights on the island inside the church buildings in tents. Initially, our family wanted to sleep outside in the church yard. We got the tent all set up in the yard, sleeping bags inside, suitcases, pillows and went in the church's fellowship building to have dinner. However, during dinner, it began to pour outside. Ken jumped up to check on our tent and not only was there standing water inside, but it looked like a mud slide went through our tent. This is the next morning, our clothes hanging out to dry on the fence.

Children's ministry is always a challenge with mobile set ups. This is the next day after it rained and a group of the "guys" decided to play some soccer with the kids, puddles and all.

In this picture, the team brought down lots of hygiene items that had been donated to them; new toothbrushes, shampoo and perfume samples, trial-sized toothpaste, lotions and conditioners, Q-tips and just a slew of things. Here, we are filling lunch bags with some of these items for all the cooks and volunteers from the church who fed us our meals and helped us with support staff. Katie and I are giggling because the camera was not working properly when someone was trying to take this picture and this was the third attempt.

Saying "Yes" to Jesus!

We arrived at the children's home at about 1:30 p.m. today. Once inside, we locked ourselves in to have the necessary time to set up our projector and movie screen. Word got out quickly that we had arrived and that the kids would soon be able to see, "The Chronicles of Narnia". What started out as an easy set up, soon began to take a downward spin and we realized that our showing of the movie was facing opposition. Just as we got the movie underway, power cords began to malfunction. We would get things started again, and breakers would blow. Finally, we lost power altogether and with great frustration, had to send the kids back to their perspective homes. We found out that the day before the power had been out for two hours. Not willing to give up easily and go home, we spent close to an hour praying and trying to entertain the kids outside for we believed that the power would come back on!

Word spread quickly as power all over the compound began to come back on; and within just a few minutes some 48 kids returned to see the movie! Here they are with bags of popcorn in their laps and juice bags in their hands. The power remained on throughout the almost three hour movie. Following the movie Amy shared a little bit about C.S. Lewis and the spiritual significance of the movie. When she was done, Ken & I shared the plan of salvation using the Bible and interpretive chalk art. Katherine, of course, was our interpreter.

With heads bowed and eyes closed, my eyes filled with tears when I saw that 20 of the 48 children raised their hands to show us that they wanted to accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior! Thank you, to all of you, who have been following our blog and who specifically prayed for this ministry today. I believe that there were people who were standing in the gap for us!

This week...How you can pray.

Last night Ken took the three interns plus Amy who was on the last team, but decided to stay a week longer to work alongside us, to the homeless shelter. Heather went along with her Dad, but Kyle and Jordan and I stayed home to work on getting our house back in order. When we have a team here, we basically run into our house, drop things and are on the run a lot, so things needed to be put away! On Thursday, we will return to the orphanage to show the movie, "The Chronicles of Narnia" in Spanish and Ruth (one of our interns) will explain the meaning of the movie from a Christian perspective. I am praying about doing an invitation with the children utilizing chalk art. On Saturday, we have a group rental at the camp for the weekend, but the interns with David & Katherine & Heather will be doing a one-day medical clinic at the homeless shelter. If you think of us on these days, please pray for us.

Team #2...recovery...

The team left this morning at 4 a.m. to head up to the airport for a morning of departures. Thank you, Lord, for Victor, our bus driver! We spent most of the day today at the camp, even though Isa and Gloria clean the cabins, do the laundry and clean their kitchen; the Celebration Center looked like a bomb went off in it. We also needed to "reclaim" the desk in the office and put things back together in the ministry closets! Lots of garbage was gathered. I am currently staring at a "mound" of laundry in my home, but do not have the energy to care to do anything about it! Tonight, we have to get some groceries as the refrigerator is bare from eating every meal with the team over the last weeks. Tomorrow is another day!

We saw some 963 patients in medical clinics, half of which accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior! Praise the Lord! 250 kids participated in Children's Ministry. 60 Children's Ministry workers received formal training! It's been a very busy past two weeks, but we are filled and blessed! For now, we just need a couple of days of rest, before the preparations begin for Team #3!

Up and running!

Today, a technician came to the house late in the afternoon and was able to repair our internet service. It went down early Saturday morning. Today was the second day of medical clinics with simultaneous children's ministry being run at the same church. The construction team is progressing on the block walls of the bathroom addition to the Celebration Center. Needless to say, I have forgotten to take my camera to the past two days of clinics, but hopefully tomorrow night can get some pictures posted via team members memory cards. Our ministry day begins with breakfast at 6:30 a.m. and we leave the camp by 7:30 a.m. We have been returning back to the camp for dinner at 6:30 p.m. Following dinner we have team devotionals and "restock"; the medical team pulls additional medications for the next day and the children's ministry team reviews the next day's programming. We certainly sleep well! Tomorrow, I will be in a different church location than the rest of the children's ministry team joining the Vice President of Global Outreach Mission's wife in teacher training. Three different churches have combined their children's ministry teams and extended an invitation to us to train them in children's ministry programming. I will speak on the element of music and it's importance in children's ministry. A new cross cultural experience for me! I am really excited about it, but I hope that I can remember to "slow down" for my interpreter!

More exciting than this are the 25 people who made first-time commitments and received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior yesterday during our time of ministry at the church. It is the reason that we are here in this country; so that others might come to know Him. That God would even allow us to join in His purposes...it's beyond amazing to us and so humbling and rewarding!

Children's Ministry Supplies

With the summer over, fall begun and an influx of short-term missions coming December through February; it was time for me to get to work on the task of reorganizing our children's ministry supplies. What I already knew was that "there's some slim pickin's"! Right now I am updating our inventory list and my wish list for a team coming in January.

Heather snapped this picture of me going through the odds-n-ends of it all. Hopefully, I will have everything reorganized and put back in it's place tomorrow since we have a rental group coming in on Friday...yikes!