In Our Element

I have so much catching up to do from this summer.  We've been very busy and to make matters worse, our internet has been horrible.  Apparently, a submarine damaged some ocean cables or something?  All I know is that blogging, especially with photos, has been a near impossibility.  But, it seems to be improving, so I'm going to see if I can get caught up a bit. 

Our first big event of the summer was to help  a volunteer team come from the Volunteer State and they had some children’s ministry in their plans.  They are working alongside the church that we have been attending, so we decided we’d tag-along. They spent some time each morning with the school kids that attend the school our church operates and then each evening the two men led some marriage teaching while the women taught the children.  We decided that we would go along with them the first day and see how we could help.

It quickly became obvious that our help would be needed all week long.  Each morning, they had about 250 children.  For the evening sessions they started with 75 and had 150+ by the fourth night.  It was insane!  However, we had an absolute blast.  After about 15 summers working with children on either church staff or summer ministry positions, we were aching for it.  The Lord met our need and we were so thankful.  Here are a few photos of our week.

Here are some of the school children we worked with each morning.  We helped lead games with part of the team while some of the children were hearing God's word from the others on the team.

Here's Isaac, I'm not sure what those boys are so fascinated with, but they obviously are checking out something he's showing them.

Here's Ryan, obviously in his element!

Here are the school children, gathered at the end of the week to say goodbye.  They had us all sit in chairs across the front and they sang to us.  It was very touching!

Here are some of the children we taught in the evenings. Ryan and I took the younger ones and by the end of the week we had 80 each night in a little mud/block room.  It was sweet insanity!

Here I am trying to tell the story in our room.  I would tell it about 3 times each night, once early in the evening when we had fewer children and I could tell it at a normal volume, this was the first telling you see here.  Then, after game time, I'd tell it again and by this time the whole room would be full.  This was at a much louder volume and I would have to stand on a bench to be seen and heard.  The third time, we'd make a little hole in the crowd at the middle of the room and get a couple of kids to act it out as I retold it one more time.  By the end of each night my throat ached, but I was smiling wide.  

The team gave every child that came their own Bible.  The younger ones got an easy read version and the older ones got full text.  They treasured them.  Ryan caught this photo and I thought it was a great shot of how much they loved their books.