Dia Tres: 7/11/16 with Samuel and Jonah

            Construction, mosquitoes and sandflies oh my!

Hello! This is Samuel Yang and Jonah Hanoj.

At 8:00 am, Uncle Craig commissioned two groups to go door to door, handing out flyers to raise awareness about the VBS. Diverting from the main road, my group split between people who wore blue (Jared, Wendy, and Jonah) and people who didn’t wear blue (Chi Ping, Minister David, and Samuel Yang) and each groups walked down the opposite side of the intersection.  In total, the group reached more than 40 people.  Overall, both groups found it quite strange how friendly and open the people were, because “neither of us could imagine in the US stopping a stranger from closing their car door to tell them about a VBS,” Minister David claimed. In direct parallel to Caleb Yang’s experience, Jonah managed to hold a two-minute conversation in Spanish with an exclusively Spanish speaking family.

VBS was the bulk of the afternoon.  Julia and Uncle Craig both said, “The day went faster than I expected it to be.” 55 kids showed up at this year’s vacation bible school, and contrary to last year, the ratio between counselors to kids were nearly 1:2.  The theme for this year’s VBS is “Unshackled”.  The kids were divided into groups by age; little chisels (3-5), chainbreakers (5-8), liberators (9-10), and freedom fighters (11+).  “The kids were quite well behaved; better than the kids at LGCC’s VBS”, the Yang brothers and Jessie said. Jonah had an exceptional bonding experience; at first he wanted to be a liberator-group counselor with Jared.  But while roles were being assigned, he felt called to be a chainbreaker-group counselor instead.  He immediately bonded with the three boys he was assigned to: Jason, Elijah, and Kumar.  He bonded so quickly that he was giving Elijah piggyback rides ten minutes into the VBS, and eventually gave out hugs freely and constantly.

After VBS we had a debriefing to debrief the entire day.

Thanks for all the prayers that you have been sending us! We appreciate the thought you have given us all!

Prayer Requests:

-Mr. Leung’s son Louis is going to find a job in the US.  Pray for his application process and so that he can find a job

-Pray that the counselor will work together.  Currently, the separation between the BCE group, LGCC group, and Mennonites/Belizean group is recognizable.

-Jonah Hanoj feels that his defensive nature is being town down as a result of the unshackled VBS.  An incident in specific caused him to feel as if his position and integrity as a counselor was being tested.  However, after talking to Uncle Craig and having personal reflection, he felt his defensive attitude chip away slowly.  Please pray!  This just might be the breakthrough.