#tickletime

Good morning to you all!!  Today is our last work day in Costa Rica.  I cannot believe how quickly it has gone by.  I will cover June 27 and 28th in this blog.

June 27.

On June 27 (Tuesday) we had another day of VBS.  We went to a local school in Sarchi, the same as the one the day before.  We only had a morning session on Tuesday.  We had approximately 150 children Tuesday.  The kids learned about was forgiveness.  They learned the story from Mathew 18: 21-35 where Jesus is teaching the Apostles about forgiveness.  The kids were wonderful.  They listened and answered questions.  I am always encouraged by the children's eagerness and love.  When they  answered questions they always added something to the effect of "we can do this because we have God."  So pure and innocent.  This is why Jesus tells us to be like little children.  The kids enjoyed a craft, a fun activity, snacks, and a skit.  They were very well behaved and participated.

At the camp Jon Hackett led his final leadership seminar for the morning session and Diane Adams held her final lady's class.  The group met back at the camp for lunch.  After lunch the VBS team went to a local farm and day care to do a service project.  We spent the second half of the day cleaning the day care and sorting through good and bad plants.  The good plants were kept and the bad plants were thrown out. While the team was doing the service project, Chase started his portion of the seminar.  He worked with some of the local preachers and wives on accessing data for lesson plans.  They were able to gain access to apps for their smart phones and material to add to their computers to continue the work.  We met back up at camp for dinner and had our evening devotional.  The devotional was pretty awesome.  Diego and Terry took some songs and we sang them in Spanish and English.  For example: "It is Well With My Soul", we sang the first half of the song in English and switched back and forth from English to Spanish.  It was beautiful.  I know it sounds confusing, but it worked and it was beautiful. 

After Devo we received instruction and headed to bed.

June 28

Yesterday we had an early start to our day.  We had breakfast and loaded the bus to head to the school.  We had two sessions at the school before noon.  Today the lesson was on Patience.  We told the story of Hannah and Job.  The kids enjoyed the skits very much yesterday.  We followed the same plan where each group went to do crafts, hear the lesson, do a fun activity, and have a snack.  This was our last day of VBS at this particular school.  June 29, we will split our team into 2 and go to 2 different schools.  We will either do the story of David and Goliath or Peter (forgiveness). 

After VBS we went to camp and met with the group for lunch.  Chase had just completed his final session on the use of the technology to spread the gospel.  After lunch, we went to our cabins and began cleaning up and sorting things to prepare for leaving on Friday.  It was a much needed clean up time.  We also said good bye to some of our Costa Rican brothers and sisters.  Saying good bye is the hardest part of the mission trips for me, but the beautiful thing about it is God gives us hope we will see each other again no matter what.  It may not be on Earth, but we will spend eternity in Heaven with our brothers and sisters WITHOUT a language barrier.

We had dinner and evening devo to close out our day.  After devo, we said goodbye to the rest of our Costa Rican brethren who left at 2am to make it back to their homes for work.  We sang songs and hugged one another and said our goodbyes.  We all made our way to bed for a good nights sleep to prepare for our final day of service.

In your prayers remember all those traveling and the continued work in Costa Rica.  Pray for our final work day and safe travel home.  Thank you for reading and praying.  Please remember those who will be continueing on to Honduras on Friday for another 10 days. 

Thank you and God Bless
Brandy Barnett