VBS in Chetumal

If you recall, I had spoken of leaving for a VBS in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, which is located in the Yucatan peninsula, but I may not have also mentioned that I was incredibly nervous about this trip. I am not one who really enjoys 25-30 hours on a bus, and I knew it was going to cost a lot of money and I don't exactly have the best Spanish. Though, the coordinator of this event does speak English I was still very uneasy about taking orders from those who didn't and If I would have the patience needed to deal with 70 or so kids (all speaking Spanish) everyday all week. Well, suffice it to say that I started praying hard about God's hand on me and my team in this trip. I had already been praying for the kids and the VBS itself and for God's hand to touch the church and the people in the community there, at the request of Carla(VBS coordinator), but I had to pray for something personal. I commenced to pray very hard for my strength and patience and attitude during our journey and during the VBS.
To tell the truth, I went expecting to work like a dog, spend all day with children, and to take orders from someone who I didn't think liked us very much. Though we did work hard and spend our whole day with kids from the area we ended up loving Carla and she treated us very well.
On the second day of our arrival we started to set-up the VBS, and we had our work cut out for us. An event place was rented for the week and we had the privilege of cleaning of the mess of the last party that had rented it. Then we could finally get started setting up our stations and hanging up posters and decorating the entire place to make it look how Carla had envisioned. The first day was a lot of work and we stayed from morning till night fixing up the place.
The whole week was themed. Monday was themed "God is Real"! With the them character being Buc the Horse. Tuesday was "God is with Us," and this day's character was Shadow the Prairie Dog. Wednesday, "God is Strong," and the character Ranger the Buffalo. Thursday, "God is Awesome!" with Skye the Eagle. Friday, was the last day and was themed "God is in Control," with the character Boss the Bull.
Each day was different and each day was amazing. We would wake up about 6 in the morning everyday, the VBS was only about 3 hours a day with at least an hour of clean up at the beginning and end of each day. What I didn't expect, though a pleasant surprise, was the amount of time we had after the work of the day. We had from about 12 p.m.- 11 or so at night, before we finally would get to bed, to fellowship with the brothers and sisters there and get to see the sights of Chetumal. It was definitely worth the time and effort with the kids, which was a lot of fun, to get to spend the rest of the day relaxing in beautiful south Mexico.
I learned so much during our time down there and I feel much more confident about my Spanish after that week. I love God's people and I miss the people I got to know and who got to know me. I had a great amount of fun and I praise God for the work and the opportunity He has given me. He is so beautiful and graceful and always with us. As a wise man once said, "You will see, everywhere you go, God's people are good."

Photos of the week can be found on facebook.com

To Grips

Do you ever find that you just can't seem to get it right no matter how hard you try? Have you ever thought to yourself,"I just want to give up!" Well, you are not the only one. Now, I'm not talking about things like: a great bowling game, fixing your car, or even solving that problem in your relationship you just can't seem to understand. No, what I am talking about are things of the heart, deeper things; trying to understand and to be more of what we are called to be. I'm a talking about trying to be more like Jesus. Having the heart of Christ is quite possibly the most difficult task I have ever encountered. Since it is the one thing that matters the most to me, I push myself to try extra hard. And yet still, I seem to always find myself failing even harder. "Why is this?", I ask. Why, when in all my prayers and petitions, I seem to always fall short? I think all of us who are truly trying to be disciples of Christ ask ourselves this question almost daily, if not weekly.
As a friend told me on the walk home from Spanish class today,"This is not a bad question to ask, it means you are actually trying. Maybe you just have to come to grips with the way things are and move on. You are not going to get it right the first time you know. How many times did the apostles themselves and even Paul have to mess up before they got it right just once?" Even then they still didn't admit that they never made a poor decision again.
We may not want to admit it sometimes but, unfortunately, we are powerless to change the past. We simply have to trust that God can use our mistakes, and move on to forgiving ourselves, which is, at times, the hardest thing to do. I mean, how can we move on to anything else, like loving and forgiving others, if we can't even do that for ourselves. I have the hardest time with this.
So really, in the end, asking God to intervene and make everything pretty again is not a "pretty" process. It actually was a heart breaking, bloody, and passionate process that He started just about 2,000 years ago. So, becoming more like Christ, being more conformed to His image, from what I have seen and experienced, is a lot of prayer yes, but it is also a lot of coming to grips with the fact that it is going to hurt and we will fail and we must move on. Strength, endurance, patience, humility, and all those things that we desire to have from life, comes at a price, just like that perfect bowling game, fixing that car, and solving that problem in the relationship. That is what I see In the Heart of the Lion.