Day 7: Fun in the Sun

Hello Everyone!

Sorry we've been unable to update the blog lately. We had a thunderstorm that knocked out power to the hotel and it's only been tonight that the internet came back.

Let's start off with last Friday. Friday was our day of rest after a long week of energetic schoolkids. We took a ride to a hotel resort which was supposedly close to the ocean. It was, but unfortunately it was under construction and there was no sand on the beaches. Seeing that it was too rocky, we headed back to the van and drove off to a different beach. When we arrived, we saw a beautiful resort that had 3 swimming pools and a restaurant. The weather was perfect and super sunny. It felt as though God smiled for us on that day. As I looked out into the ocean, it was awe-inspiring to think that God had made such a huge body of water. We ordered our food and switched into ocean-playing time. Playing in the waves was nothing short of amazing. The sheer force of the waves knocked us off our feet and caused us to perform underwater cartwheels and acrobatics! Four of us lost sunglasses and 2 cameras got splashed! How powerful is the Lord.

The rest of the day was spent bonding with our fellow team members by having lunch, enjoying the pools, sharing about our lives with one another, talking about the week, things that went great and things that could improve and just spending some time praying together. It was absolutely beautiful to sit by the ocean, hear the waves hit the shore and the warm breeze brush our faces.

We ended the day by going to another cell group that David leads in Tuti's (another fellow helper from the YFC El Salvador team) house but this time, another family opened up their home for us. It was a short time for prayer and a little bit of sharing since every one was so tired and we didn't have that much time left. Afterward, we have a time for refreshments and to get to know the people that were there.

It was a lovely day and we are so thankful that we got to spend so much time together, resting, that day.

In Christ,
Laura and Winston

Day 6: A Bittersweet Goodbye

Hello again everyone!

Today was the last day that we would be spending with the kids at the school. It was quite bitter to say good-bye and we definitely miss every single one of them. It was a blessing to have been at the school for four days straight. But we definitely know that there will be a lot more ahead as well as a lot more cute kids!

Sara: It was a good day but I found it really sad when we had to leave the kids. I cried a lot and got lots of hugs from the kids I got really close to. I’m really going to miss seeing their faces light up when we walked into the school. Besides that, we had a good lunch and our dinner was really beautiful. We ate it on a balcony on the side of a building and the sunset was very pink and so pretty. I just wanted to say hello to my family. Hola mom and dad, hi auntie, kimmie, jade, crystal, Jessica, Shawna, kelsy, the babies. I love and miss you all so much!!

Amanda: i had such an amazing day. It was so enlightening to see the joy that the piñatas brought to all of the kids. I also got to paint a lot of the girl’s nails. They enjoyed it so much.  I understood what they wanted when they first came up to me, asking me to paint them. The girls were so cute and some of them were helping me translate. It just goes to show that even if there is a language barrier between people that is still possible to communicate and have a good time. I made some good friends with the little girls and we played hand games and tickle wars all day. It made me feel so good just to watch these kids have such a good time. I am also shocked to learn that i ate a massive burger for dinner at Tony Roma’s. The burger was bigger than my head. Everyone thought i couldn’t finish it but I showed them. I ate the whole burger and also all of the fries that came with it. This trip has been such an enlightening event so far that i can’t wait to see what the next few days have to bring.

Natasha: Today was a powerful day. As always God was beyond amazing and good. He allowed us to spread his love to children through all kinds of different forms. It is amazing how much you can be used by him when you open up your heart and let him do his work. I was blessed with meeting a girl who needed to be shown his Love. She taught me an important lesson of being able to rely on God to provide the things that we need in Life ... like Love and affection. In far too many cases people are neglected by the people who are “suppose” to show them these things. The girl that we met today was in that situation. Myself and some of the other girls were blessed with the opportunity to provide her with examples of this. We hugged her, prayed for her and made sure she understood her beauty. She was a sad girl in the morning but when we returned in the afternoon she was a happy child again beaming with joy and excitement. To be used by God to turn that one day around for her was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. To be able to share the gospel with her on a personal level allowed us truly show how amazing our God is.  Not only does this teach us that God will provide us with the people in our lives we need to be built up but also the importance of an individual. Being able to spend so much time with one girl allowed us to pour so much into her all at once and truly show her the Grace and Love of our amazing God.

Vanessa: This day was incredible, in many ways. It was finally time for the kids to break their piñatas, and it was like feeding frenzy in the shark cage :D I almost got trampled several times. The kids had so much fun and we had almost more fun watching the chaos. After only four days at the school, we bonded with so many of the students, even though a lot of us didn’t even speak their language! It was amazing to see how powerful smiles, laughter, music, and love can be – they connect us all no matter what language we speak. We made many friends, and were able to reach some of the kids on a deeper level – it was really incredible to see God work through us, and through them. God used all of our talents throughout our time at the school. When it was time to leave, there was a lot of sadness. It’s always hard to say goodbye; we felt like we knew the kids even though we had only met them four days earlier. As we were leaving the school, I looked around at every face and found it awesome that God has a plan for each and every one of them, a future full of hope (Jeremiah 29:11). We ended the day by going to a church group in a local house – all the people from El Salvador are so welcoming, so of course we felt right at home. This day was also monumental because it was the day Natasha and I found Perfection and Flawless (inside joke - and just so everyone knows, you can buy happiness). Overall, our YFC Canada team bonded today, and it was a powerful day for everyone.

Natalia: We had our last day at the Goldtree Liebes school and the whole 4 day experience was wonderful. It was completely different from what  I was expecting because I thought that we would be giving talks to the classrooms everyday along with making the piñatas.  I was already tired of the talks even after one day.  On our last day at this school all the kids had the opportunity to break their piñatas. The sight of the kids getting ready for the candy to fall and then screaming and pouncing was completely wild…they were wild and it was such a funny sight to see. During the four days I also had the opportunity to talk one on one with some kids and make friends with them. I made friends with a boy named Misael and on the last day we found out that we had the same last name. I think he had a little crush on me because he gave me a little heart engraved with his name and his/my last name on the other side. It was something that he already had but he wanted me to have it. I really love it and I am now wearing it proudly around my wrist.  It was really sad to leave because we had gotten to know the kids and see their faces everyday and the thought that we wouldn’t see them again was upsetting. I just thank God for simply giving us the opportunity to talk to the kids and play with them but at the same time sharing the Gospel.

Thank you for reading! :D
Please pray for energy, strength, love, patience and grace. That we may just glorify the Lord in everything we do and as the days get longer,  that we have the energy to do many things. We thank God for everything He has given us! Not sure about other prayer request, but even when we don't know what to pray for, the Lord always knows every detail!

In Christ,
Laura Veronica

Day 5: Angry Birds and Cute Little Herds...of Kids!

Dear family, friends, and loved ones,

Greetings in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,

We survived another day! Hooray! As I am writing this right now in the living room, half of the team ss with me on their laptops catching up with people (and I suppose checking their email/Facebook inboxes). The other half is completely exhausted and has gone to bed. “Wow” you must be saying, “what the heck has happened?”

Well, the good news is that this exhaustion the happy kind that comes from a full, fun filled day with the beautiful children of El Salvador. As usual, we began our day with a delicious and nutritious breakfast graciously served by the hotel staff of Hotel Mediterraneo. At around 7:30am, we were picked up by David and drove up the mountain to the school with the El Salvador YFC team (Joel, Tati, Tuti, and Abbi).

The piñatas that the children made yesterday had only completed the first step and by today the glue has hardened into a shell. Today we were to teach and help the kids glue on coloured tissue paper in order to decorate the piñatas. The finished product would end up looking like the red bird from the popular game app Angry Birds. Armed with cups of sticky homemade glue, we taught the kids. At the same time and during recesses our team handed out the salvation bracelets. This again would cause a ruckus on the schoolyard with hordes of tiny cute kids mobbing those of us that had the blessed opportunity of handing the bracelets out. The kids were tested on what each bead on the bracelets symbolized.

The gospel was presented to these kids in the simple form of five coloured beads: black for sin, red for the blood of Christ, white for being washed clean, green for growth in Christ, and yellow/gold for Heaven. Surprisingly enough, many of the kids were able to repeat the meaning of the bracelets, earning themselves a nifty bracelet of their own. According to Mr.Day, one girl was even spotted sharing with he two friends the Gospel as presented by the bracelets. Praise God for using us to speak into the lives of these kids via these bracelets! May the seeds fall on fertile soil.

Many pictures were also taken today with the kids, capturing our precious, precious moments with them. This would be our second last day with them. Near the front of the stage, you could see Laura and Amanda sitting happily as they painted the tiny nails of little girls, all the while holding conversations with them. Joel, David, Karen, Tuti and Tati were vital translators for us, making sure that the kids understood what we were saying, both in conversations and instructions. Sara and Vanessa played beautiful worships songs with their voices and an acoustic guitar. Mr. Day and Kirsten handed out bracelets to eager children and taking many snapshots of grinning faces. Natasha had become a sort of mother-hen figure for the team, making sure everyone had been accounted for. Later in the afternoon she would be found walking around cradling an adorable baby girl. I myself had the honor of practicing some breakdance moves with some energetic teenagers! Some of them were even able to walk on their hands for short distances! The piñatas we’re finished by the end of the day and some of them were ridiculously well made. Impressive.

Today the team functioned harmoniously as each person brought out their talents to serve others. God is doing great things with this group as we patiently and joyfully learn each day how to depend on the strength on the LORD. He is neither lacking in wisdom to teach us well on how to function as the Body of Christ.

Tomorrow will be our last day at this particular school and we will be going out with a celebratory ‘bang’ by filling up the piñatas with candy and breaking them (piñata party!). Please pray for us and the energy levels we will have to sustain. Please pray for our safety as we travel through El Salvador in our glorious white bus/truck thing. Driving in El Salvador is no piece of cake and I cannot even begin to express how thankful we are for amazing drivers such as the likes of David and Miguel. Please pray that we would continue to press into God and persevere through pangs of apathy and fatigue.

Also, you can now watch our YouTube videos here.

God’s peace and blessings be with you all,

Winston and Team

Day 4: Piñata Party!

Hello everyone! 

Honestly, I'm sitting here and don't know really know what to write hehe but not because nothing happened but because so much has been happening during these couple of days! Plus I never know how to start these posts!

On a lovely morning, meaning Tuesday morning (August 14, 2012), our team headed back to Centro Escolar Goldtree Liebes. It is a blessing to be greeted by tiny students with big smiles on their face. (Well, not all of them, some of them just stare at us very seriously hehe). During that morning, we were starting to do the piñatas with the students. We had the newspaper, balloons and the glue ready to go. We set up some chairs and had the student pair up or be in groups of 3 or more.

We spent most of the morning doing the piñatas with the kids since it's four layers of newspaper that needs to be put on the balloon in order for it to harden it and have a shape for the piñata. While doing this, the team was blessed with a lot of time to get to know the students. There were many conversations happening everywhere. 

The whole day was spent to get to know the students as well as give out bracelets and explaining the meaning behind it. It was really really really great to talk to the students and I think I speak on behalf of the whole team that the students were so welcoming, friendly and energetic. For lunch, we drove back to San Salvador and went to a restaurant called, "Pollo Campero" which is like the KFC version for Salvadorans. It's really yummy chicken! which also had free wifi ;D

A lot of the time we spent it on handing out bracelets. The kids LOVED the bracelets, maybe love isn't the word to describe it. I don't know how many bracelets we gave out but we definitely ran out of them by the end of the day, and we had to come back and make some bracelets that night. 

I hope you guys enjoy the photos :) I know there is not that much details of what we did but that is basically what we did the whole day. We spent the whoooooooole day with the students at the school and just building relationships with them, getting to know them instead of just having them ask us questions. It was truly a blessing that God placed us at this school, with this children that are so open and lovely with us. It's amazing to see how God works through each of us in the team. He has such a different and perfect plan/purpose for everyone. He is so sovereign and great!

Thank you for your prayers and for reading our updates :) I apologize for the delays again, but the internet at the hotel is not so great and is quite picky on who to let use the internet. Please pray that the Lord continues to work through us by giving us patience and love for these children. We really must not rely on our own strength, only God can give us the perfect strength that we need. May we love these children like Jesus' loves them and let Him shine through us. 

Thank you :)
In Christ,

Laura Veronica and Team

Day 3: We Got Schooled

Hi hi hi everyone!

It has been a long, tiring and busy day but it has also been a day of learning, loving, building team work and relying only on God’s expectation on how the talks should go in the schools.

We started our day by leaving the hotel at 6:30 AM in order to be at the school at 7:30 AM. Since we were picked up by David (another fellow worker from YFC El Salvador) so early, there was no time to eat breakfast at the hotel because they don’t serve breakfast until 7 AM. On the way, Sara shared with us Romans 8:37-39 and we had some time for prayer.

We arrived to the school and found out that the school had been gathered and there were holding an assembly. When I was little, I remembered that every Monday morning, they hold an assembly. Although it’s not a Christian school, there is a lot of Christian influence from the teachers and students and we noticed this because during the assembly, some students had to go up and pray. There were also some cute, Salvadoran dancing by some students as well as the National Anthem and the prayer to the flag. The principal followed by scolding the students since they weren’t paying attention or appreciating the presentations that had been done by other students.

After the assembly, we were finally able to go into the classrooms and talk to the students. The first day is always hard and it’s never perfect but if we only hold on to our expectations, we will always fail. Because of the assembly, the first few classes were a little disorganized and we had less time but this first day was definitely more relaxed than last year and the teams were having a great time. The weather was beautifully cool and we were barely sweaty hehe. After 4 talks in the morning, we finished up and Natasha and I recognized one of the teenage boys, so we went up and asked him if we saw him last year and we actually had! We had gone to his church last year. It’s so cool how small the world can be and yet so big. We then drove back to town to have lunch at Pizza Hut and just spent some time relaxing and cooling off.

When we got back to the school again, there were new students for the afternoon hours. We quickly noticed that the kids from the afternoon were a lot more... rowdy. But either way, we had to trust that God would work through us. I can’t speak for the rest of the teams but I know for sure that my team and I were running out of energy or really letting God speak through us. As always, God has a purpose for everything. We are here to work as a family, family in Christ and we all have different skills that we can lift up when others need help. It was a really great experience to connect with each other and just humble ourselves and admit that we can’t do it alone.

Overall, the day was wonderful and the kids were fantastic and energetic. We really pray that the Lord worked through us and that we connected with the kids, only by the power of God.

We drove back to San Salvador and were dropped off at the hotel in order to change and refresh ourselves a little before going out to eat at a placed called Bennigan’s, an American and Irish style restaurant. The view was absolutely beautiful and we could look at to the city and how amazing it looks at night. The waiter was so great as well, and spoke English. We then walked around and took some photos of the beautiful place hehe J

Then we got back to the hotel a little bit late and we had a little meeting of what happened throughout the day and how God has been teaching us a lot and then we went to sleep and rested! J

I apologize for the delay… but unfortunately, the internet is really terrible here and doesn’t like to work on me and I really tried last night but yeah, it didn’t want to work hehe.

God bless everyone!

Laura Veronica

Day 2: Two Churches and Many Kids

Hello everybody, this is Winston here! We miss all of you back in Ottawa! At this point our team is feeling quite tired, but as our first official day in El Salvador, it wasn't nearly as busy as we will be for the next upcoming days. So here's how today went:

We all got up for breakfast at 7:30am and had a true Salvadoran breakfast which consisted of beans, pancakes, scrambled eggs and ham, yogurt drink, fried plantains, and fruit. Mr.Day shared with us a morning devotion on Hebrews 12:1-3. It was a highly encouraging start to our day.

Miguel (a fellow worker from YFC El Salvador) came and picked us all up to go to our first service at church in the morning. The church was called Iglesia de Adoracion Cristiana. The church service and worship was very enthusiastic and done all in Spanish. Everyone was so welcoming and giving each other “Spanish cheek kisses”. Mr.Day gave a sermon on Matthew 14:22-33 with Tati (another fellow worker) translating. The message was that even though we may fail and stumble, we should never lose faith in God just as Peter dared to walk on water to Jesus. What a refreshing perspective on that classic Bible story! After having some coffee and getting to know other people, we headed out for lunch at a local Subways, munching on turkey and ham subs. Afterwards, we made a quick stop near a sketchy gas station to buy stuff for making piñatas later in the week.

Despite the super humid, super hot weather we continued our adventure with an hour long drive to a small colonia (township) called Aguilares. This was near Laura and Karen’s hometown, Apopa! It was a poorer district of the city filled with amazing mountainous scenery and wild animals frolicking on the sides of the roads. What really got me was that they had flags from all over the world signifying that they were very intentional about other peoples. Allan gave the same sermon at this church as well, though it was difficult to hear because of the bucketloads of rain that fell upon the tin roof (and the extreme heat). Nonetheless, there were twice as many exclamations of “Amen!”s and attention to what the LORD had to say.

The rest of the team highly enjoyed playing with and loving on the kids. Gabriela made a new friend named Samuel and they got along swimmingly. Natalia says that the children really, really enjoyed our presence.

Sara got along so well with Samuel that she wanted to adopt him (J but not really cause we can’t legally do that).

We drove back to San Salvador to have a yummy dinner at a restaurant where a lot of Americans go called, Tipicos Margoth. Here the food was authentic and homemade and also very busy. Conversation was both friendly and edifying. We headed back to the hotel, separated from the other half the team and had a time of prayer and discussion about the day’s events. We also talked about how busy we will be for the next few days talking at schools with kids from Grade 1 – 12.

Please pray for us that we would not rely on our own strength but on the LORD’s.
Gabriela asks that pray for the groups’ patience.
Amanda asks for prayer that we would be mindful and respectful of our words as we share in the school.
I, Winston, ask for prayer regarding the health of our group, that we would not get ill or injured.
Mr.Day asks for prayer regarding the groups’ energy levels as tomorrow will be a brutal day (in the good way J). Tomorrow we will have to give TEN TALKS PER TEAM (5 in the morning, 5 in the afternoon).

Thank you!

God bless y’all,
Winston and Team

We have arrived!!

Just a quick post to let you all know that we have arrived safe and sound in El Salvador :) Today, we got to the hotel, settled down, ate some dinner as a group and rested :) thank you for your prayers!! Tomorrow, we will be visiting some churches. God bless :)