Our day began with another great breakfast from the Hotel staff here in Leon as we got ready to head to the two same churches as yesterday. Once again half of our team stayed in Leon and the other half went to Posoltega. Each team got off the bus excited to continue the relationships they had begun the previous days. In both locations our teams first gathered with all of the staff at the churches to discuss the challenges and vision involved in leading a church. It is impressive to see the staff at these churches eager to learn and improve. They truly desire to serve their communities and bring the Gospel to as many kids and families as possible.
After the discussions on leadership, both groups went out into the surrounding community to hand out flyers inviting people to a talent show in Leon tomorrow night. The pastors of these churches hope to use a fun talent show as an opportunity to reach some new members of the community that they would not have normally reached. In addition to the invitations for the talent show, everyone had another opportunity to see the actual living conditions of these families. Most of the buildings are just single story homes made out of cement blocks without any doors and only a few rooms. Oftentimes, there were three generations all living under the same roof which made for tight living conditions in spaces that were already small by any American standard.
Upon returning to the churches, both groups were welcomed by kids that came running excited to see our teams. We have started learning the names of the kids and they have learned our names, so the relationships have become much more personal and meaningful. Our teams helped all of the kids wash their hands and sit down to eat lunch. We ate our own lunches and then prepared for our final VBS lesson of the week on Jacob and Esau. We watched an animated movie that documented the story of Jacob and Esau and then talked about forgiveness. Then, each team had a couple people share stories from their own lives about times in which they either received forgiveness or extended forgiveness to someone. We ended our VBS lesson with some discussion on the topic of forgiveness and then got ready for our celebration with the kids to celebrate their participation in VBS. Our celebrations mainly involved a big piñata filled with candy for the kids to bust open and enjoy. It truly was a celebratory moment for all the work God has been doing over the past few days at these churches.
After both teams re-united, we all headed back to our hotel for the evening. We enjoyed another delicious meal and then got ready for our evening "porch time" gathering. Tonight, Tommy Vereb spoke to us out of Matthew 13 about the parable of the sower. He challenged us not to simply think about what it means to sow seeds in others, but to take seriously the "soil" condition of own hearts. Life is filled with different "rocks", "thorns", and other things that hurt the health of our soil, but until we take seriously the condition of our own hearts then we will never be able to sow healthy seeds in others. Finally, we ended the night with another time in small groups to keep processing all that God is doing and then headed to bed.
Check back tomorrow for more stories about our with people from the churches in Leon and Posoltega.
