Back to Work!!!!!!!!! :)

Saturday the vacation was over. lol. Mike and Pat came back on Friday and I am back in my little room. Sunday the children´s church went very smoothly. I think that each week it gets better. It is a challenge for me but I like it. I think that at first it was difficult primarily because I have had basically no real experience teaching kid´s church on a weekly basis. But things are going very good at the church in Huambi. This week we talked about creation and the seven days that it took. It was fun because there are a large number of kids under 6 years old. So it´s challenging also because there were 6 teenagers there and I am basically with no help. Next week is going to be our big kick-off service for the adult church service and the pastor from Sucua is going to come as a guest and preach. He will preach and we will have refreshments afterwards. It will be the first service with adults and kids. And we will meet in our kid´s church next door. It will be exciting. The following week I get to have a youth servcice after the kid´s service. (I´m excited!!!) We are still planificando (planning) how to work out a teen service and a kids service and an adult service because there is only one of me and one Pastor Angel and our nights are limited...... oh, and a million things to do. :) But I am so blessed to be a part of this new church... SOO blessed. This week we are having Health Promoters at the church. This is a class that meets for a week and teaches Shuar pastors and leaders basic health facts. It is five weeks total and this is the fifth week. The weeks are spread out over a few months. I helped today to read the material in Spanish. Some words are hard enough in English!!!!! The classes are from 8:30-5;00 with a break for lunch and a break before and after. Next week we will have Bible School classes begining also. So it will be a great time to get to know the Shuar pastors better and really build relationships with them.

PRAYER REQUESTS
A friend told me that a friend of many at Campbellsville University passed away on Saturday. She is a MK who went home during Christmas to Africa and contracted Malaria. She died on Saturday from Malaria. Her name is Lori Morrison. Please pray for the Morrison family.

ALSO
Please pray that God would give me creative ideas for Kid´s Church and that I would be able to meet the challenges of having 4 and 5 year olds in the same class with 12 and 13 year olds

AND
That everything would come together for the ESL classes to begin in May. (ESL=English as a Second Language)

RATS!!!????

Since the last team left, you can find me continually thinking about Chilren's Church. Sunday was the best service that we have had at Centro Cristiano Huambi. The group of children was smaller, but it was one of the best kid's services by far. I talked about returning our offerings and tithes to God. I made some really big bills out of green construction paper and markers. The kids really liked it and I got some volunteers to hold them up for the rest of the church to see. Then we sang some songs with hand motions. The girls especially are good with the hand motions. I make all of the signs and all of the scriptures or illustrations on posterboard and have two kids hold them up so all can see. All of the songs we sing are written out on posters. It's so much fun to watch the kids do the motions as we sing the songs. Sometimes I grab a volunteer to help the rest of the kids learn the motions. I think that this week we are going to learn some more songs. The church is a small building that has an open feel to it. Really it reminds me of a brick picnic shelter. The walls only go up about to my elbows so there is quite about a five or six foot space in between the walls and the roof. Our benches are stumps that are positioned in rows with planks over them to make benches. We are hoping to have a construction team come and build a complete back wall going from the floor to the roof so that when the kids move to Children's Church, we won't be a distraction to the big service.
Yes, we have our own Children's Church building! It will be an exact duplicate of the Big Church, but at the moment is only a concrete floor and a roof. Right now, because we're the biggest service, the kids meet in the bigger building. It will be a blessing to the kids to have their own church building. I think that it will help them know that they are an important part of the church.

On a funny note, right now I am staying at Mike and Pat's house because they are gone for the week, and just now I was outside standing at the pila scrubbing out some laundry. I decided to grab a shirt from a pile of clothes on the floor. When I picked up the shirt, a HUGE RAT ran ACROSS MY FOOT. It was HUMONGOUS!!!!!!! It had been in my pile of laundry, which had been on the ground about a total of 3 minutes. I screamed so loud!!! lol... and then I started laughing. There is a big pit bull dog that they keep as a watchdog. She just stood there and then when I screamed, she ran away. Some watchdog... That rat must have weighed as much as a sack of sugar. It was huge. It was as long as my foot is (which is big because I'm a size nine) and very heavy. I marched into the house and rummaged in closets until I found Mike's big shoes. Then I finished doing my laundry wearing his shoes and staning with a broom nearby in case I saw it again. No monster rat will run across my feet again today. lol.. :)
I think it had been in the dogfood because the lid was open. So I will make sure to NEVER do that again.. lol.

Please pray for a young lady named Nimfa. Nimfa is thirteen and has an eight month old baby. She was abused against her will and it resulted in a pregnancy. She is living in a nearby village and needs a lot of guidance and wisdom about caring for the baby. The name of the baby is Estefania. Please pray that the Lord would give her wisdom and that she would come to know Jesus as her Lord and Savior.

Medical Clinics and the Shuar Language

Well it has been a rushed week let me tell you. We started on Friday morning, going hard. Over all, we saw over 800 patients free in our clinics. It was wonderful to be a part of something so beneficial and practical to the people. My job was translating. Initially, I was a little afraid that my spanish wouldn´t be good enough, but everything worked out fine. Aside from translating for doctors, I also had the opportunity to translate for several Spiritual Counselors. It was such a joy to lead people to the Lord and share the Gospel of Hope to them. There was such a spirit of religion over so many people but I know that God broke those chains for many. It was a lot of fun to translate, especially when we had people speaking only shuar. Then we would go from shuar to spanish to english. What an experience!! Today the medical team is vacationing in Baños. And it´s a much needed vacation too. The construction part of the team finished the foundation for the Girl´s home. They worked very hard too. So everyone is gone now and I am getting caught up on some housework and emails. Sunday was my first official service as the Children´s Ministry leader at Centro Cristiano Huambi. There were already over 25 children there. I am expecting to have a lot more as time goes on and the word gets out. The church is starting from the beginning, at ground zero. The main service that they have is the Children´s Church. So working as a kid´s minister with the kid´s ministry is really going to help get things going. The service will help get the word out to the community that there is a new church just beginning in Huambi. God has blessed me to be working with Pastor Angel. He and his wife Andrea are very sweet and have been in ministry longer than I have been alive. It is an honor to be partnering with him to reach children and adults for Christ in evangilism and discipleship. They are teaching me Shuar. The words are very dificult to pronounce. A "w" is pronouced like a "v." It is very interesting to hear people speak it- it reminds me of Native American languages like Cherokee or something.

Hey Everyone!!!

Hey Everyone!!!
OK so I am going to start updating my blog finally!!! The trip has been wonderful and I love Ecuador. Today we just got back from a trip into a little town called Huambi. We did a medical clinic that I worked translating for the triage. It was a busy day as we were short on interpretors so I had to go double time. Tomorrow we are going to a little place called Cumbatza. The roads are rough so we are taking 4-wheel drive trucks to get there. We are hoping to see a lot of people. Sunday I will be teaching Children´s Church at hte early service in Sucua and then after the second service go to a service in Huambi where I will be teaching children´s church for an houar and then talking to the moms for another houir. I am interning at this church in Huambi. The pastor´s name is Pastor Angel (pronounced on-hel). He and his wife are Shuar and they are teaching me Shuar. Slowly but surely.
Please pray for my friend who´s wife recently lost a baby. She carried it to full term but lost it right before birth. They are suffering a tragic loss. Pray that God would give them grace right now. I miss you all but am having a blast. Shoot me an email or comment on my blog!!
Bekah