July 22 Update

Today was an amazingly blessed day—and a LONG one (in a good way). The first three lessons with the kids went really well. We played ‘getting to know you’ games and learned quite a bit about the littlest ones and 8-11 year old girls. We had good conversation over lunch about how to better help the youth connect with God in a relationship (vs. just learning about behavior modification) so that God could transform their hearts. The lesson with the 8-11 year old boys completely went out the window. While that group has typically been good, today they had uncontrollable energy and were not in any way in a receptive mood for anything less than war—which is about what our playtime was. We had some very deep sharing and conversations with the oldest groups of kids—it was evident by the way they listened that some of the stories from our lives impacted several of the listeners very heavily. I was extremely grateful to hear that.

Between two lessons it was requested that our group share during the afternoon service. Since the lessons are finished around 4:50 p.m. and service was at 5:00 p.m. and we had to drop our things off at the casita (little house—where the missionaries (us) stay), that meant we had no time to prepare. I was a little nervous, but we prayed and I knew the Holy Spirit would do what He wanted. The service was awesome—I LOVED the thunderstorm partway through that blew a fresh breeze through at several opportune moments as we sang and prayed. When the Americans shared, I could feel the Spirit move—each had something right to say. God helped me get through the interpretation (verbal translation) as each spoke to the audience. I was able to share something about how I DEEPLY desire for all of the youth to either have a relationship with God or a stronger relationship with God… Then we read 1 Corinthians 13 (the beginning and love section) and we replaced ‘love’ with God when we read it a second time (to help the youth know the nature of the one they should seek relationship with). It seemed to go very well.

Immediately afterwards we practiced Spanish worship with Armando (the worship leader) for two hours and then headed up the hill to grab supper. Three of us left it cooling on the table so we could catch as much time with the kids as possible while the others ate and recuperated—then they joined us. During the oldest girls’ lesson we had offered to pray in the concha (the court where they play basketball). I was very pleasantly surprised to find that they not only remembered but were asking when we could start. We got together and asked them what to pray for—we prayed for quite some time (in English and Spanish) for the Home, for unity, for relationships, families, health, and a few other requests. After we were done we got back in time to eat and cool down for a few minutes. Exhausted, we sat down to chat.

I was excited because even though we were all dog tired at least two were brimming with excitement and energy from our experiences today. That’s when I was able to surprise everyone with the letters of support from you (those who love us and had the time to write one for a trip-goer). Thank you SO much! I saw so many smiles and more than a few tears. Your letters provided a powerful push when we were excited but very very tired. Thank you so dearly for your love and support—it along with God’s love will give us the strength to push through successfully to tomorrow. Now we are going to write up encouraging things for each of the kids for tomorrow—we are going to give them to them for them to keep (a page with their picture and things like ‘you have beautiful eyes’, ‘you are a great artist’, ‘you have so much energy and excitement’… I know that, at least for the little ones, it should have a very big impact to be so encouraged. We are all excited to complete our project for tomorrow. Thanks again, and good night!!!--Brandon