Sunday, Fun Day

 Good evening from Casa Pastorale.  We have had quite the adventurous day today. Everyone is doing well.  Here's what we have been up to today.

This morning we went to Batey 106 for worship.  A batey is a sugar cane village.  We joined one of the churches in the batey for their morning service.  Much of the service was in Creole with some in Spanish and some in English.  The pastor did a great job managing all of the many distractions of the service.  We enjoyed being part of her congregation for the day.  Our team offered greetings and sang Goodness of God as part of the service.  After worship they gave us a tour of the community including walking by the house that we helped to lay the foundation for in 2022.  It was special to see the completed work and also see the site our construction team will be working on the rest of the week.

After lunch, we went to the beach to relax for a bit before the work starts.  One of our leaders told us that he felt the beach we usually go to is too crowded on Sunday so we were taken to a different beach at Casa de Campo.  It was gorgeous and a fun place to experience.  We got back on the bus to head home and the bus wouldn't start.  Another bus was sent and we loaded onto that bus to head home.  About a mile down the road, that bus broke down.  It was quite helpful that the first bus was a quick fix and was able to pick us up to get us back to the compound for dinner, organizing for tomorrow, and our team meeting.

At our team meeting I passed out notes from some of our church deacons and other leaders to encourage the team members.  We are thankful for those who took the time to encourage us along the way.

Here are the ways our team members reported seeing God through the day:

Liam/Zachary: kids giving us tour of the village 

 Adeline: kids being excited as soon as we showed up, singing happy birthday 

 Mike: the focus the leader had during preaching with all the distractions going on

 Jo: going to the church and seeing everyone connect with God even with language barriers

 George/Zachary: the busses broke down, but no one panicked or got upset

 Lincoln: seeing how happy people in the village were to go to church

 Annalise: saw a cat in the village

 Tim: kids sitting in front of him were playing with his leg and he was riling them up, mom shushed kids

 George: beauty of the beach and God's creation 

We start work tomorrow.  Pray for our team as we begin construction and VBS.  Please feel free to leave us comments on the blog.  We will share them with the team during our team meetings.  One thing we have learned is that comments show as anonymous so please leave your name so we know who you are!