Juegos aguas, gigantes, y pizza

Jojo

11:45pm

"Today was the second day of VBS. We spent yesterday evening learning songs in Spanish to sing with the kids. We practiced them this morning. The kids showed up at around 11 and we played water games and made superhero masks for the craft. I helped with the crafts and with the games for the little kids.  

Then we sang songs with them in Spanish. We even learned "Praise Ye the Lord" in Spanish!

The superhero for today was Thor and the Bible heroes were Joshua and Caleb. We gave each of the kids a jellybean. Some of them were gross and some were good. They had to eat them. We were trying to illustrate bravery to them. The theme of the lesson was that Joshua and Caleb were brave even when they saw the giants in Canaan. Christiana and I read the story and the rest of the team taught the kids hand motions to go along with the story. 

The day went very smoothly and at the end of VBS we walked to a soccer field with some of the children and they played soccer with some of the team members. We are learning a lot of Spanish phrases to use with the kids. 

We came back and ate chicken and rice for lunch. Elisabeth, Stephen, and Jamilyn did the cleaning up after lunch today. We are taking shifts doing clean up.  In the afternoon, some of the team members prepared for tomorrow's lesson and the rest of us worked with Chuy on moving sand and sifting gravel for the playground. Some of the girls and I also cleaned the street in front of Ranchito.  We also ate the leftover jellybeans from the morning. Some of the tastes included canned dog food and grass clippings. 

After that, everyone showered and we went to Cocula (the town where Mariachi began) for pizza. The pizza in Mexico was better than most pizza in the U.S.  We walked to the grocery store and picked up candy as prizes for when the kids say their verses in VBS.  Some of Chuy's cousins who help at Ranchito came with us and we enjoyed trying to talk to them in Spanish. It was fun and relaxing just to walk around. Then we came back and had a devotional. Now everyone is in bed excpet me and sarah and joe and mai-khanh and we are sooo tired is this good enough?"

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Sarah

"This morning we were woken up by "And I will Always Love You" sung in Spanish over the loudspeakers. After everyone was awake, we went down to breakfast and then prepared for our second day of VBS. The morning went by really quickly and before I knew it, VBS was starting. I helped with crafts again today. We had the kids put stickers on plastic masks. They turned out really cool. It is really encouraging to be able to start to speak more and more Spanish with the kids as the week goes on. We sang a lot of songs in Spanish today with the kids. The songs are a lot of fun to sing and the kids really seem to like them. Today the VBS lesson that we taught the kids was about bravery. We had them do hand motions to participate in the lesson as Joanna and Christiana read them the story. 

One of my favorite parts of the day was when I had some time to play with one of the little boys at VBS. I played with him with his little toys cars for about 15 minutes. He was so cute and although we couldn't speak to each other very well, we had a lot of fun playing together. He liked to crash his cars together and see how far he could get them to go across the courtyard. He liked to race them, too. After that, we played some water games which the kids really loved. It is so hot here and everyone loved getting soaked with water. After VBS, we took some of the kids down to the soccer field to play for a while. 

After that Elisabeth, Joanna, Christiana, Jami, Anita and I went out in the street and picked up trash. Then we all went and helped shovel sand and rocks with everyone else. We have been shoveling this one pile of red sand and rocks for the whole time we have been here. We have to sift the rocks out and then we take it to the playground. Hopefully when we leave, the pile will be gone because it seems to be never ending. When we were finished with that, we all got ready to go out for pizza. After we ate, we walked around the city in the rain. It was a lot of fun and the city was so beautiful."