Haiti Day 2- VBS

Bonjour! Our team split into three groups, vacation bible school, working at the orphanage, and an eye glasses clinic. Our family worked with the vacation bible school. Our theme was Jesus Loves Me. Today's story would be about how important children are to Jesus and it is his desire for us to come to him and be blessed by him without fear.  I was super eager to get started!!

I had seen the church online, thanks to You Tube. So, I had already planned where activity would be more or less. It was a concrete open building. No doors or windows. It was painted yellow and white but didn't have any decorations. It was just empty with pews. We brought everything for VBS except music. Boy, was I glad they led the music. We had four translators that led the music and helped to share the gospel. They made it very obvious that they were on fire for Jesus. It blessed us like crazy!! They sang the same songs we knew but in Creole. How exciting to praise the Lord together in different languages! It really is hard to express in words what it was like. Most of these kids knew who God was and were excited to celebrate. They hadn't had VBS in years. Some had never been.  We sing the song, Jesus loves the little children of the world. We got to experience another part of our world first hand and the kids were very aware of it. One boy even commented, "we are black and you are white but he loves us the same." I said, "absolutely!".

We split the children in two groups. One group started with story time and the other with crafts and then we switched. We did not run on a time schedule. That does not exist with Haitians. Olivia, Cindy, Derek, Georgia, and sometimes Josh (he was split between vbs and the orphanage). JD, Grace, and I did story time. JD was our story teller, Georgia illustrated the story on posters. I was thankful that we kept the stories super simple. Telling it with a translator takes longer. Our translators shared with the joy of the Lord, literally. I am challenged to have the same joy when I am praising. These people praise without holding back. What holds me back? Forgive me, but you don't see many Lutherans praising God like that. You would think that we would be jumping up and down praising God for all his blessings of resources and the "stuff" we have. These kids have nothing. At the end of the story we opened it up for questions. When JD asked what they were afraid of, most of them said Satan. One little girl admitted she was afraid of God. Some asked questions that I called Aaron over to answer.

During crafts, the children were asked to draw pictures of what they were afraid of or something they were thankful for. We used a mosquito net as a demonstration of God's protection and desire to bless us. Little did we know, they knew exactly what a mosquito net was for. More on that later. We kept the cards for us and our congregation to pray for them.

When we were done everyone gathered on an open lot behind the church to play games. Duck Duck Goose was fun. But the big hit was balloons. We didn't even play the game we planned. They just wanted a balloon. We couldn't blow them up fast enough. While everyone played with the balloons Olivia and Georgia made lots of friends. The girls were in awe of their white skin and blond hair. They just kept petting them and holding on to them. It was very amusing.While we went back to get the snack, Lophaine and I welcomed a whole new set of kids we were not expecting. He asked me what I wanted to do. I said,"let's do it all again". So we did. :)

Let's get started!

The church

Story time

just getting started

Crafts

I was impressed by how well they listened
and how well they behaved!

Thankful for Jesus

The mosquito net we clipped the prayer
cards to.

Story time

Praise and worship

duck duck goose

The girls were quite star struck by
Olivia

Star struck by Georgia as well

Derek- some just wanted to be held

Once the kids received their snack they were on their way. Some went back to the orphanage and others, well, I don't know. But we all relaxed and tried to take in all that the Lord blessed us with in just a few hours. We didn't expect to be blessed so much!