Day 4
At Shalom Church
This morning I met with Lupita and we practiced the next 2 nights of stories for VBS with different teams. Very excited about what the teams cooked up, going to be some fun & engaging stuff for the chillens. At the same time we were loading concrete blocks up on a roof and also moving a ginormous pile of dirt out of the way. Both required having a line of people passing either buckets of dirt or concrete blocks. Everyone jumped in and made it happen.
We finished work way early and our foreman had nothing else for us to do. We asked the staff at Shalom what we could do to help them around the church. They said nothing and then (I swear!) Daniel said (in a Mexican accent:) “While you wait for lunch I take you to d Starbucks if you want to go?” His idea. Really it was. Dude after my own heart in another country. Love it.
So we loaded up most of the team in one of the vans and made a run. The store was really, really nice and everyone loaded up on their favorite beverage. (I might have acquired a bag of beans and a mug as well… might) Not gonna lie, it was refreshing to have a nice venti iced americano in the middle of the trip with it as hot as it is. A cool treat. I didn’t even think there was a SB here, I’ve been giving VIA’s away to all the staff members who like coffee. Crazy.
The few that stayed back got to go for a ride on one of the staff members motorcycles around the area and had a blast.
We got back and Genny had whipped up another batch of something incredible and then we cleaned up and headed back to the hotel. I had the sense when we left for work this morning that we are already a little on the tired side (I think it’s the heat) so I asked everyone on our team to take some time this afternoon to be alone with God to fill our tanks up a bit more. I hope they took advantage of the time and did that.
VBS
Tonight’s VBS was so much fun. Attendance increased by about 50%. Really. The church we are doing this with has a regular weekly attendance of around 20 kids. Last night there was about 35. Tonight almost 70. It was great watching every last member of our team serving, loving and investing in the kids and other people around. So great. There is a great energy level on the team right now that honestly only the Lord could do. It’s fun watching all these relationships form and go deeper. Our team already feels deeply for the staff we are working alongside and to be quite honest I don’t think a month ago that I would dream about our team being this close with each other. It’s an answered prayer.
Back to Shalom after VBS for another throwdown with Genny.. this time is was chicken tostadas. Wow. Seriously- this might be the only mission trip I’ve ever been on where I feel like I eating better than I usually do at home.
So we are 4 days in and have 3 full days left here in Merida. Tomorrow we go to the beach in the morning and have the last night of VBS. (Which our team is bummed about, we’d love to be with the kids all week.) I think the beach break will be good as we prepare to finish VBS and the last 2 days of construction. We are laying a concrete floor later on and likely moving some more concrete blocks around.
Great times are being had and it’s cool seeing God working in a different culture in some cool ways through some great people. We are thankful to be a very small part of seeing God work. More to be done…