Praise God for a wonderful week of Vacation Bible School. The theme was Fruit of the Spirit. Each day we focused on a different attribute..love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness. Five of the children lived in my house for the week so I would not have to drive and pick them up every day. Kristel who lives across the street, and Edgar who lives around the corner, came every morning at 7:30 and left every night at 8:30. I also drove to pick up Misael daily. All year the children look forward to VBS "camp". They love to be together with deaf friends and they especially like swimming together.
The picture above is the gang who slept at my house. Gabriel, my then 5 month old "puppy", was was thrilled to have so many people to play with and always was found in the middle of the mix.
This is a picture of Luis playing a Bible memory game. The children were broken into two teams. Each balloon had a word from the verse inside. The children had to pop the ballons to get the words and then put them in order. It was fun. Nicar was the balloon putter downer. I was thankful for his help during VBS week.
Here Hipolito, Sair, Luis and Kristel are putting the words in order.
Alejandro, Edgar, Misael and Sulmi work as a team.
This year Rosalyn Cruz was in charge of crafts. She is 21 and a member of Pastor Chon's church. She was a tremendous asset . Her mother, Fabiola cooked for us. This is the first year that I asked people from Pastor Chon's church to help. In the past I had people from the US who came to help, and I always wondered how hearing people from Pastor Chon's church would communicate with the children. It was great to work in partnership with the hearing congregation. After getting over some initial shyness, Rosalyn did a great job of communicating.
I think one of the favorite crafts was painting rocks. This day they decorated a rock and painted "Patience" on it.
We went swimming every afternoon. It was a good thing to do in the 94 degree heat. It also gave them a chance to get some exercise and "unstructured play". This is Kristel and Sulmi...best friends forever.
Even though Misael was the youngest one in the group at 7 years old, he is very courageous and confident and fits right in with the older children. Although he preferred the shallow water, in five days he went from "not floating" to swimming with a good crawl stroke, kicking and even breathing mid-stroke. I was impressed how quickly he learned.
The older boys liked this water slide and experimented with different ways to slide down it.
Rosalyn and Misael enjoyed the sun and cool water.
When I uploaded these pictures I realized I'm not in any of them. I guess Nicar and I forgot to use the flashdrive to download each other's pictures. Argh! I promise I will get Angelica to take some of the pictures this fall and will get one of me on the blog and in a profile shot, soon.
Anyone interested in being part of VBS next summer? I would like to open this up to someone who can communicate with the children and is willing to be "on call" for 6 straight days and nights. Let me know and we'll pray about it.
Peace to all and thanks for following this ministry and praying for us.
Nancy
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