Another Sick One - Last night after I finished posting yesterday's blog, I went out to the communal bathroom and heard some unappealing sounds coming from the second floor. I went up to investigate and found Tanner in that restroom being sick. He didn't feel better this morning so his mom, Mary Ellen, stayed behind with him as the rest of us left for the day. He was fine when we returned and the guess is that he had too much of something from Walmart yesterday.
Power of Prayer - The theme for our trip is "Pray continuously." (1 Thessalonians 5:17) Here is a story from Erin that shows this theme in action:
Tuesday night Megan, Jessica, Katie and I pushed the beds together and ended up staying up. When we all became tired we decided to pray for energy in the morning. This small prayer became a very long one because all of us felt called to just let it all out. We started praying for everything we needed help with in our lives. We all could feel the Holy Spirit there with us and the relationships becoming stronger with all 5 of us.
I prayed for my sister, Kristin, to look like Bob the tomato. I was just playing and when I got on the bus Wednesday morning Kristin was wearing red and green. She really did look like a tomato. I laughed when I saw God has a sense of humor. It's true!
The rest of the day things we prayed for were changing. We all feel awesome. I feel like everything is lifted off my shoulders. We are starting a prayer group at our houses when we get back to Houston.
None of us can wait to see what God does with us. We all gave ourselves to Him together. We are working together to help each other in our walks with Jesus.
VBS Story from Tuesday - Today our VBS team went to Walmart to pick up supplies for the kids. Among the many treasures was colorful hair glitter spray which we did not have enough of. At first they were very apprehensive because "calor en tu pelo" did not seem "muy bonita". However, after one girl had her hair done, all the kids were lining up. In the end, Madisen and Jenna were actually covered in green and pink sparkly paint which would not come off.
VBS Story from Today - Our face painting stuff was accidentally thrown away, so Madisen crawled into the dumpster to retrieve them while Jenna swatted the flies that were buzzing like crazy.
News Flash - Ellen proclaimed: "I learned that I can live without electronics". She was playing cards at the time.
Serving the Servant - Some of our team commented that this trip didn't seem as important because we were working at a mission instead of building homes for people who didn't have houses (as we do in Mexico). While leading a devotion on one of the buses this morning, Ryan pointed out that we are serving the servant. The work we are doing will help those who serve this community with Christ every day.
Lunch - Since we figured that we shouldn't expect lunch to arrive before 1:00-1:30, we brought lots of extra snacks and planned to have the teams take a snack break at 11:30 to energize them for the next hour or two before lunch arrives. Within 5-10 minutes of taking this break today, I was told that we weren't having the normal Subway sandwiches because the church breakfast ladies wanted to cook tostadas for us. Lunch would be delivered within 15-30 minutes.
It turned out that while the lunch van arrived not long after our snack break, it needed to be plated and then a last minute run was needed to get some more tostada shells. We had the students eat first (ladies first) so they could be recharged and get back to work. The adults ended up eating around the normal time after the tostada shells arrived.
Affirmation Card Battle - I believe I mentioned before that everyone is writing affirmation cards that mention things they appreciate about others on the trip. These cards will be distributed to the individuals on our bus ride home Saturday morning.
It turns out that a fierce competition has built between the two buses to see which bus turns in the most cards. (I might have something to do with stoking the flames of this competition.)
Bus 1 (aka "Right Shoe" - a name developed by the great wisdom of our senior boys: Casey, Ryan and Andrew) won the contest yesterday by a significant margin. They even bought more index cards during their early visit to Walmart yesterday to get VBS supplies. I showed those on Bus 2 (aka "Left Shoe") how badly they had been beat and the race was on.
I was ready with many more cards for both buses today and the competition took off. I gave updates during every bus ride and hundreds of cards were turned in. Bus 2 won by a huge margin. The buses are tied and we'll see who wins tomorrow.
It seems my tactic to get more affirmation cards to encourage each other worked, but now I have lots of time ahead to separate these cards into individuals' envelopes. My roommate Dave will even moreso regret his room assignment when he gets roped into helping with this task.
Pre-Worship Game - Tonight's game that was held before worship involved a representative from each church who would consider whether some strange and obscure state law was really a law or not. Gloria Dei was well represented by Sam who handily beat out all challengers.
Small Group Time - During our small group time tonight everyone received letters from home. These are encouraging letters that parents had written and secretly turned in before the trip. Everyone was thrilled to get their letters.
Tomorrow's Plans - Tomorrow is our last day on the worksite. We'll work until lunch and are being blessed by a lunch that will be given and served to us by Teresa, the Mission Director. We'll then return to our dorms and change for an afternoon at the beach. This time it will be a Gulf beach. We're hoping the water will be cooler, the waves more existent, the seaweed less prevalent and the water bottom less sea-urchined than the bay beach we went to yesterday.
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