En la Isla Canoa se vive la verdad del Dios!

This week has both stretched and blessed me! As we finished our first full week of school, I also started VBS with my church in the evenings. So from 6:30am – 2:45/3:00pm I was at school, then headed to VBS at 3:00pm (getting there at 3:30), VBS started at 4pm and went to 6pm. This was then followed by clean up and traveling back home by 7pm! Still it was more than worth it!

Our theme was La Isla Canoa where the Truth of God Lives! Throughout the whole time we had around 50 kids attend the camp and more than half of the children had never come to the church before. Also around 13 children accepted Christ for the first time. We would start the night with registration, then singing and talks followed by a 5 center rotation (crafts (me!), Bible verse, Bible story, snack, and games), and finished with gathering together again to sing and go over some reminders. The students received points/stickers for attending, saying their verse the next day, and learning the English words from the day before (the students had 12 words a day!). On the last day, Saturday, the children were able to redeem their stickers for prizes. Both the songs : ), and the wonderful memories are still stuck in my head!

For this last Monday, being Valentine’s Day (which is very different from the US day!), my class and I studied the US holiday and the true story of St. Valentine. It was wonderful! We looked at John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” It was wonderful joining in the discussions about how the love we show on the day is good, but how the love of God (clearly the greatest) and the love St. Valentine showed is so much greater!

Prayer Requests:

- Please pray that the seeds planted at VBS will continue to develop and grow inside of the hearts of the children and helpers that came.

- For my two new students in fifth grade. Both students are struggling academically compared to the other students, and my newest also struggles a lot in English as well. Please also pray for wisdom and discernment on my part to best reach and provide an education for all of my students!

- For the weeks ahead, that the students will grow closer together and that the new students will feel more and more welcomed.

Firsts:

- First time helping to lead VBS at my church here in Paraguay.

- First time having a bus driver that stopped again for us! We were on our way back from the grocery store with bags of groceries and decided to take the bus home. Our primary grocery store is about 10 plus blocks away and near IPS (the national health plan hospital). Because of that some of the buses do crazy things. We hopped on a bus that should have taken us home along the main road. Less than a block later and the bus turns off onto side streets. Suddenly we grab our bags and rush to the back of the bus to disembark. The bus comes to a screeching stop. People around us quickly start telling us that the bus will return to the main road so we step back and apologize to the driver as he starts to drive on again. We return to the main road and it starts going the opposite way that we want to go! So laughing, along with the rest of the bus, we pull the stop cord and get off the bus. We started walking back to the school the 10 plus blocks we had to go. When we had around 2-3 blocks left you will never guess what bus pulls up next to us on the busy street stopping to allow us back on the bus…Oh, yes our bus! At this point we realized how kind and generous it was for the bus to stop for us and how ridiculous it would be to ride it for 35 seconds as we get on the bus, run to the back of the bus and get off before it even picks up speed again! Still this was very surprising for us and brightening to one’s day to see such kindness!

- First time eating a Pitaya fruit (aka dragon fruit). You can see its beautiful pink and green outside wit h the dark purple inside. IT was delicious and tastes like a kiwi!

- First time growing a full  pepper in Paraguay! I finally was able to harvest a full pepper from my mini pots garden!

- First Paraguayan Valentine’s Day! Here this is the day of the lovers( or couples) and mostly only celebrated between them, where as friendship day is in July and follows more of the other part of our Valentine’s day.