It always seems to be late when I'm working on this--oh well. I've been collecting photos from everyone for the last several hours and uploading them to Picasa. Be sure to check them out at www.picasaweb.google.com/mcarojcc. I still have some uploading, but I hope to finish tonight.
The village time was much different today than it was on Monday and Tuesday. We only had about 20 kids and they were, for the most part, very well behaved. We had no issues with the games or the crafts or even the stories, really. They participated and listened and seemed to really enjoy themselves. It was like the kids in Minier Village had come from another planet; or been a bad dream. But when we were talking about it afterward, Josh said something that made the rest of us on the team think--he said it was too easy; that he missed having at least some challenge from the hard kids. In a way I can agree, but it's also nice to be able to feel like we are accomplishing some of what we set out to. The truth is ultimately that God is in charge and all we can do is put it out there no matter which planet the kids are from. We give them our best effort every time and pray for them and there's nothing else we can do.
I thought I'd give a bit of a run-through on what we do with the kids so you can have an idea of what our days are like. The clubs start at 10 AM and we try to arrive at least a half hour before that. The ride can be as short as 15 minutes or as long as 90; like Bruce's team has today and tomorrow. Once the kids start to arrive (they trickle in a few at a time in the mornings) we have them get a name tag (a must) and then start playing with the parachute. Once the bulk of the kids have made it in we get them all seated on the parachute and introduce ourselves (for a day one) and then sing some songs, pray together and head into a Bible story. We have 4 stories that our team is using--this is from among the 8 or 9 that we had available to us. Our stories are the feeding of the 5000 (which Adam tells on day one); Jesus heals a blind man (which I tell on day one); the birth story (Stacey-day two) and the crucifixion/resurrection (Josh-day 2). Each story has a craft which goes along with it so we'll tell one story in the morning and do the craft and then tell the second story in the afternoon and do the craft. We have also taken individual photos of the kids which we print out overnight and take back on the second day. The kids have painted picture frames the day before and then they finish decorating them and we put the pics in for them. They are always thrilled to have the photos. One little gypsy boy in Minier Village stared at it as if he had never seen a picture of himself in his life. Maybe he hadn't. Intermingled with all this other stuff are games which I refuse to describe individually, but they're typically physical but designed so that all the kids can play.
That's all for now. Check out the photos and keep us in your prayers.
Mike
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