Report from Karl Leiber
All team members were in full motion today–VBS with the children, the medical team treating church members and local villagers. The construction team was able to make shelves and a kitchen counter top. The electrical group installed eight fans in the church that was built in 2003. The pastor and congregation will be so excited to have extra light and fans to keep them cool. The day could not have gone any better; each team member has a spirit of unity and service, and that makes for a refreshing day serving the Lord.
My primary task was to find things that were stored and get tools into the hands of those who could use them. You never know how much your team members are going to be able to handle, or whether they just talk a big talk with no walk. But after a short period of time, I realized I had some genuine walkers.
Report from Naomi
VBS in America is quite different than in Haiti in the sense that in America we are able to communicate with the children in English; however, many aspects are the same. The children were not always focused, which is understandable, because we were located in the church where the medical team AND the construction people were hard at work. Despite the distractions, the kids listened and watched our skit where we had a clothesline with different colors of construction paper depicting the wordless book story. We spoke the lines in our language and our wonderful translator spoke the words in Creole for the children. We also sang songs for them in English, Father Abraham being one of them. The kids may have thought we were weird…but we had fun! Then one of us gave our testimony to the children, where once again, we went through the translator. After we had completed the songs and the skit, we participated in a craft. Different ways of communicating started flying as we helped the children draw and write on colorful bandanas and place beads on the corners. The kids loved them, and they especially loved it when we tied them on their brown heads of hair. The smiles we got when working with the kids seemed to make the whole trip worth every ‘struggle’ we went through to get here. We are learning words and phrases so we can communicate in small ways with the kids. Things like, ‘good job,’ ‘good,’ ‘what is your name?,’ ‘yes,’ and ‘no’ seem to be used often. The kids would try to get our attention, calling “you, you, you!” This order of events was repeated three times throughout the day, twice in the morning and once in the afternoon. The next few days we will continue with a similar schedule, but in different areas.
Being able not only to speak to these children in the love of Christ, but also to SHOW the love of Christ was such a blessing. In the beginning of 1Corinthians 13, it speaks that faith, tongues and giving to the poor is useless without the action of love. Thank you SO MUCH for the continued prayer and the love you are sending from home. Please keep us all in prayer as we continue to love these people, but in the love of Christ, not in our strength.
