2017 Day 5: Chloe & Jocelyn

Today, the kitchen crew and I made French toast and spam for breakfast. After the breakfast, Tim led devotion and sent us off to another day of VBS with encouraging words. As the kids started coming in, I decided to approach a pair of young sisters, Cinnamon and Kayla. I spent most of the time before VBS officially started playing tag with them. The younger ones are usually really active so it drained a lot of energy out of me for the morning. When VBS started, we usually sing a couple of songs before we split off to our small groups. As I was looking around, I saw another pair of siblings with an older sister and a younger brother who were standing at the very back all by themselves. I decided to go stand behind them and encourage them to dance along to the songs. The younger brother seemed really tired and the older sister, Priscilla, kept hugging him and comforting him. Priscilla later on told me that he had forgot to take his medication so he wasn’t feeling the best. She was always there next to him comforting him, making sure he was as uncomfortable as possible. The sibling love was really heartwarming and made me realize how mature some of the kids are due to responsibilities that were put on them at a young age. Later on when I saw them, both were standing in the front with smiles on their faces and dancing their hearts out to the VBS songs. Seeing the difference made me feel really warm and also put a smile on my face. Today was a special day for VBS, as we were going to share our testimonies in our small group and have some one-on-one talks with the kids. During the small group time, I was put with a 13 year-old girl named Ashnita. Natalie and I separated from our small group and brought Ashnita to a quiet place to talk. Today’s purpose was to get the kids open up their hearts but the opposite happened for us. Natalie and I shared our testimony, and Ashnita shared her background with us. She explained how she came from a big family and how she started going to church. After some background talk, we asked her if she has accepted Jesus Christ and with no hesitation she said, “Yes, Jesus is my best friend”. Those words really moved me and I started tearing up to Ashnita’s strong faith. She started asking us about the bad situations we had to go through and how God had helped us through it. She then advised us about life and how God will always help us find our way and that he does everything for a reason. Ashnita’s words really opened up my heart even more and had me thinking about a lot of other things. This small group time was a really heart-moving moment for me this past week and gave me a lot of hope to spreading the gospel in Belize. After the small group time, the kids went off to lunch and they came back at 1 for crafts and games. When they came back for the camp, we started off with a couple of songs when it started to pour rain. It started raining really hard but thankfully it only lasted around 10 minutes giving us the chance to continue on with the rest of the activities. Today was extra fun as we made tie-dye capes and had water games. The tie-dye capes were really messy to work with but the kids were really excited about it. After an hour of crafts we did a water game where counselors sat a distance away from the lines of kids. Each group had to soak a large sponge in a bucket of water, hold it over their heads, run to their counselor, and squeeze out all the water on top of them. I was soaking wet from head-to-toe by the end of my turn. The kids were really excited and hyped about getting the counselors really wet getting everyone hyped and full of laughter. The day ended with satisfied kids and counselors, and a good debrief about today. VBS ends at 3 and we had to go to a prayer meeting at 3:30 at BCCC. It was really chaotic as a lot of us were soaking wet from the games so we had to change and get ready as quick as possible. Pastor Alex led the prayer meeting and ended the afternoon with some graceful prayers. Then a couple of us walked to Sun Shop to buy some snacks and drinks, but we had dinner as soon as we came back. It was a very nice dinner as usual with lobster, bittermelon, dong gua, and sausages. We ended the night with announcements with some free time after. This was how my day went, thank you.