Finishing the Campaign

Every now and then I get behind on my blog posts.  I'm never sure if it's worth it to do catch-up posts or just let them go.  Today, my thoughts are to post a final post about the El Salvador campaign. 

Like every other morning of the week, we had devotions at the hotel, picked up the Salvadorans at the church and drove to a school.  Friday's school was just a bit north of Apopa.  

Over the last five years, we've become accustomed to expecting things to change; sometimes the school is closed, sometimes there are fewer classrooms than we planned, sometimes the school is being fumigated and on and on.  What happened on Friday was different--it was unexpected blessing.

Once inside the school, school was full of adults--not a common occurrence.  When we made it down to the basketball court, we noticed that the bleachers were full of parents!

It seems that it was the day for parents to come pick up their children's grade cards and the administrators were talking with them.  We expected to hear that we wouldn't be able to share, but God had other plans.  The principal sent the parents to the classrooms (with their kids) and we were able to share the lesson, testimony and gospel with them.  What a blessing to be able to have the parents and kids together.  

There were professions of faith by parents and children!  A follow-up team from the church in Apopa will contact all of them, and we're excited to see the church grow as a result of this unexpected blessing.

School in Nejapa

This morning we visited a very poor school in Nejapa, which is on the outskirts of Nejapa.  You know the area is a poor one when there is only one paved road in the community.  Six of our seven teams were able to share the lesson, testimony and gospel in classrooms.  The seventh team wasn't used because one of the classroom teachers was sick and so they sent the students home--not quite the way I remember it happening when I was teaching.  There was one class per grade; there were 48 first graders in the room!

The most exciting part of the day took place after the lessons.  The team from First Baptist, Gulf Shores, Alabama, brought three suitcases of clothing and Guillermo had contacted the administration at the school to identify students who could benefit from receiving the clothing.  We had everything sorted by gender and size, so that each recipient received 2-3 outfits.  The principal called their names and they lined up, by size, to get their bag of clothes.  You can imagine the smiles on their faces as they received the packages!  A couple of our team members "loved" on the kids after they received their clothes.  We wanted to be sure they understood that the clothes were our way of sharing God's love.

 

Thursday in Pictures

Weekend Between Campaigns

The Hilo, Aguja y Biblia group continued working on our most recent project . . . . drawstring backpacks.  We are working with a public high school in a small town.  We'll be sharing a value lesson in the classroom and then distributing the backpacks.  Here's a couple of pictures of our work.

Saturday night we introduced Koky and Ena to healthy food from the Daniel Plan and then taught them how to play Cribbage.  It was a fun night!

This morning we went to church in Lourdes instead of the hotel because we had to pick up a second inflatable.  We'll be using two of them during the campaign this week--one will be used in the afternoon VBS and the other in our regular family festivals.  Don't know if it's possible to get them both in our truck, but we'll find out tomorrow.

The really exciting news this weekend is that we bought our tickets to fly to Bogota, Colombia, in January.  The sending service for our new missionaries, David Guadron and Alex Hernandez and their families is the last weekend in August.  They will begin their church planting work in September and will host the first campaign in January.  We're thrilled to be a part of this new work . . . . please pray for them, us and the group of North Americans who will be coming for this campaign.

Final Two Days

The campaign ended today--it was an awesome week.  Even though it was a small team of nine people, they faithfully shared and there were more than 400 professions of faith. What's even more exciting is that some of the people who made decisions this week have already visited one of our churches.
Yesterday morning at one of the schools, one of the team members brought a boy over to me who wanted to know the times of the services.  I wrote the times of our Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night (youth service) and both Sunday services on his copy of the tract he received.  This morning, Pastor Steve announced that one of the boys from the school was at the service last night!  Wow!

Here are a few pictures of the campaign in Apopa last night and then a few of pictures of the school this morning.

End of March Campaign, El Salvador

Today was the final day of the March campaign here in El Salvador.  We went to a small, vocational school called CAPA this morning and since the team from Valley Baptist flew out this morning we had to readjust the groups.  Guillermo, Blake and I were group #6 . . . . I don't normally translate, but today I did "translate" Blake's message.  I asked him if he could keep it simple so we decided to use the beaded gospel bracelet as the basis of the message.  I know that I couldn't have been that clear, but God was able to use it and more than 20 of the students made a profession of faith. 

Since I am the official photographer, I only had an opportunity to snap to school pictures before we went to our class and then a couple of pictures after we finished.