Day 4 - Monday

VBS:

Well…how do I sum up the first day of tutoring and VBS?? Think of 48 children from K-7th grade…all having eaten an entire bag of pixie sticks each previous to coming here at 8:30am. Oh, and none of them stop screaming, laughing, yelling or moving until they leave at 5:00pm. Everyone has a headache, I have glue in my hair, and we are slowly dropping like flies (John being the first…) Really though, the kids were fun to work with and it was neat to see such diversity among them. We’re not sure where all their energy comes from – but the program they have here is a blessing.

Chris, who helps run the program, was telling us that the cost per child is $400 for six weeks of school. That is the cheapest summer tutoring around – however many cultures here won’t send their children to something that’s free because it’s not worth anything. The first half of our day is tutoring, lunch and playing, then we take over and do the VBS program.

We learned that the second commandment (read by one of the kids during a skit) was, “you shall not make yourself an idiot”…he meant idol. J You can also find all kinds of things in the jungle including King Kong and mushrooms. And according to one new child, new friends are easy. All it takes is a few simple questions. “So…what’s your name? So… you wanna be friends or something? Okay then.” We try our best to remember those cute innocent things the kids do to keep us sane!

-Lindsay Bode

CONSTRUCTION:

Have you ever done around 100 deep knee bends or slid around on your knees for a couple of hours? That was the way our legs and knees feel after working on installing the laminate floor in the basement of the Vroom Street Church. We did make some good progress and learned the quickest way to fasten the pieces together. It’s really a two person job so tomorrow we will have at least 2 – two person teams installing and we should be able to do a large majority of the floor. We were able to take a break and talk to Pastor Bill for awhile. We had a lot of laughs and they are so appreciative of all our efforts.

-Mike Miller

Upstairs in the church we had a team connecting the youth room with the classroom next to it by breaking out the wall that separated the two. We had to break and cut away the sheetrock and cut out the studs, as well as add a supporting beam to help prop up the newly enlarged room. We also had to rewire the electric and power circuits that ran through the wall up and over it through the ceiling. Tomorrow we will sheetrock the places that were torn up in the demolition as well as to start construction on a snack stand. This whole project is to help the church to gather more students to there youth program by making a place that is more enjoyable for the youth to come to. It is there hope that his will help bring more youth to Jesus.

-Freeman Linde