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!

Global Outreach Mission - January 2010 Team/Part 2

For the first time in the almost two years that we have been here, we decided to also take the construction team, who normally stays at the camp and does projects there, mobile with the medical and children's ministry teams. This year, the construction team spent four days working in a very small, low income church in Cariari, just down the road from where the medical clinics were taking place. While the church had most of the supplies, they had very few bodies to help them build another wall around their existing church building to expand their church. Here's a picture of the wall taken on the second day of work.

Ken had to find our camera and take a picture of this! He couldn't believe how the Costa Ricans placed block! This was physically exhausting work, not to mention that this location is about 3 hours away from the camp, near the coast where it is very hot and humid.

While it took most of the children's ministry team to sort, inventory and prepare crafts for the upcoming ministry that would take place during the medical clinics; there were a few who put together 100 teacher's training manuals that was also going to be taking place on the first day of each clinic. These guys were bent over this table for a few hours putting the manuals into the binders, but we couldn't have done it without them!

Here's the entire team, missing just a few bodies to the left of the picture on the first night beginning to go through orientation.