May 9th - Sunday (Mike & Marie-Eve)

Mike:
Today is Sunday and at 7:00a.m. the chilren’s church is suppose to start, but unfortunately the leaders of that part are not on time. The kids are all in the church, 160 of them (in a church adult congregation of about 25)! Rick just takes the lead and has a bunch of fun with them, teaches a lesson, Marie-Eve and Heather do face painting, and all in all a great time. It is however sad to see how lots of the good stuff we try to do leads to fighting, like today I just quit playing Frisbee with the kids, cause they were literally beating each other up to get it, and it was the same with the face painting.

The pastors pull Rick aside for “a request.” This is the 4th time in 5 days of the trip that someone has done this. Basically they write up a list of things they need, so far typical has been, I need a missionary, or I need Bibles, or I need a garden, or I need dishes for the orphan programs, or stuff like that. Rick generally responds with something like, I need you to come up with a bigger dream or plan, than present that to me, and we will look at it more seriously. Rick takes all these requests back to the rest of the team of SAM, and they evaluate on a case by case basis. They really try hard to encourage long term thinking, so they say no to most requests that are not part of a reproduceable plan.

Church starts at about 10:30 and I’m preaching this morning. The service starts similar to last weeks service. For preaching, I share about what it means to follow Jesus, to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses and follow him. When we do this, God will produce fruit in us. Because of translation, I’m very unsure how much the people are understanding, as they are often saying “amen” at the wrong time. But Rick figures they followed the main thought, and my prayer was beforehand that they would hear God’s message for them, regardless of myself or language, etc. It is not easy, but I trust that happened. It is very hot under the tin roof, so I’m very exhausted afterwards.

Marie-Eve:
Face painting was a blast, I giggled as I drew bright stick men on guy's arm and wonder what they thought I was doing... hehe. The kids have really dry skin and many of them have scars, which is very sad to see.



In the afternoon Heather and I made 60 orphans packs to take to 2 projects in the next few days. It was very hot but we did it... and maybe even had some fun? I don't know, I'll let you be the judge of that!!!