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Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Monday, June 14, 2010
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
Our Final Day ...
Just a quick update from today:
We had an awesome last day in Nassau! Students "haggled" in the Straw Market with the locals, ate some McDonalds, and spent a nice 3 hours at a local beach by the hotels. After 3 hours in the ocean, we had a nice collection of some starfish, crabs, and pufferfish! Even on their "day off", local children were talking with our kids and getting on their backs in the water!
We watched the dark clouds roll in our last hour of the beach and 10 minutes after getting back to the camp, we got caught in a complete downpour that lasted about an hour! The rain was coming down so quickly that people were washing their hair outside!
After all of that, we gathered for some Domino's pizza, ice cream, and some amazing conversation. We can't wait for your students to return home to you so that you can hear from their own mouths what God has taught them and will continue to teach them!
Pray for a safe flight home tomorrow and that everything is on time!
LR.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Day 5 Adventures
It's been a cornerstone of a day for us in Nassau!
Today we had our final time with the kids at the church and serving on the grounds there, visited the only planetarium in all of Bahamas, are currently cooking live crabs for an after-dinner snack, and a frog just jumped on me. :)
It was a bittersweet day for our team. After spending 4 amazing days with the children at the Haitian New Missions Baptist Church, we had to say our final goodbyes. We had been challenged by our project coordinator yesterday to choose a "starfish" which is on the Bahamian penny. So we've each been carrying around this penny to remind us to be bold in sharing God's love with our "starfish". We spent yesterday and today with more of a focus on intentional conversations. We learned more about the children we've gotten close to and we were able to spend today sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with them. We finished well as a team and I know that we will not soon forget their faces and their stories.
We also got a lot of work accomplished at the church by cleaning up a lot of broken glass on the grounds, laying cement slabs to add parking, painting the outside of the church, and doing a cleaning swipe through the entire building. We also had students take on their own side projects like getting a new basketball hoop set up and clearing a safe area for soccer games!
Our community has been deepening with each day. God has opened new doors and different opportunities for us to get to know more about one another and continue to create a safe place where we can ask questions and talk about our daily walk with Christ. We couldn't ask for cooler community to happen on the trip!
Tomorrow we will be heading out to the Straw Market for some shopping and local dining then to the beach in the afternoon. Please pray for tomorrow as we spend our final day enjoying beautiful Nassau and one another as we have a final "debrief" of the week.
God has been so faithful and so evident this week!!! Thank you for your continued prayers!!!
LR.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Days 3 & 4
The past 2 days have been busy and full of God's truth and love!
VBS started to get into a regular schedule and it allowed opportunities time and time again for students to build deeper relationships with the children they spent time with. We were able to send them each home with a picture of themselves with their friends and some of our students. I thank God we still had polaroid film from 3 years ago!!! Crafts and games were a big hit and we could hear the children singing the worship songs and talking about the Bible stories later in the day!
The afternoons were filled with a lot of labors of love! We laid down 2 cement slabs with the help of local construction workers (cool story following) and we continued to paint the outside of the church. Everyone was taking turns working and playing with kids, filling each other's water bottles, and being ready for whatever task laid ahead of them. The positive attitudes and encouragement from one another seemed to make the days go quickly.
A man was driving by yesterday and saw the guys laying the cement slab. He stopped and said he would help When asked why he responded with, "God is great. He has blessed me with twins. He is so great!" So Trevor the construction man worked with us for the afternoon giving much needed english instructions to help make the cement laying go super fast!
We also had the privilege of experiencing one of the worse storms they've had in years on Tuesday night! It started with some beautiful lightening as we settled in to bed that cooled off the air quite a bit but turned into a very thunderous, lightening-bright storm that lasted into the wee hours of Wednesday. We all survived and were able to let "love overcome fear".
Tomorrow is our last day with the kids and on the site of Haitian Missions Baptist Church.
We have seen beautiful things happen thus far: broken hearts for the poor, community flourishing and deepening, grateful hearts for all the ways we are blessed, finally seeking answers to some of the deepest questions we have, and learning more about our God through every opportunity we have.
Please pray for a beautiful time with the children tomorrow. There will be tears, I'm sure. But their faces, names, and who they are will live on with us forever. May we take every opportunity to share God's love through word and action with those children. And may our softened hearts remain that way after we get on the bus at 3pm tomorrow ... softened to knowing God more through His people and His creation.
Thank you for your prayers! We hope you are enjoying the photos and updates and hopefully the phone chain worked today! :)
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