Indiana Team Connecting

Hi friends! Man what a week. I got about 25 hours of sleep since Monday. That averages to about 5 hours each night and it may have been a little less than that. BUT.... I loved it! It was like slumber parties every night, talking to my new friends until 2 or 3 in the morning. We cleaned a river, had an entire day of VBS, had dinner and Bible study with a family, visited with a neighbor and saw how pottery was made, visited the 14th largest Catholic church in the world, made lots of new friends, took more than a 1000 pictures, ate a ton of food, laughed until we wet ourselves, (which wasn't hard with one bathroom) visited our old village and shared with a lot of people the love of Jesus.

I can't tell you how blessed I am to know these people. They never once complained about anything, they smiled and laughed and were just joyful to be here with our people. Our people knew that they were happy to be here too. They all made many new friends here and I do hope they won't forget them. I am going to have some of them post over the next few days and that way you can see how this experience has  effected their lives.  I heard many times from them how they thought they had nothing to offer these people, however after their first day, they realized they were wrong. They had the love of Jesus.

For some reason I have not had any luck uploading pictures on my blog today. However if any of you are on FB and would like to see the pictures on there, just invite me to be your friend and I will except. I just uploaded about 30 or so photos on there. I am going to save the stories for our team to tell you and I am going to take a nap! ;o) They are all on their way home now, please pray they all have safe and uneventful travels! Love, Missy

Our day at VBS!

Singing songs

Greg and Jamie doing the motions 

The Zacchaeus drama. 

Zacchaeus, you come down! 

I am going to your house today!

Zacchaeus telling him he will give back 4 times the money he has taken from the people.

Now this story is really neat, but it is even more special when you realize that the little boy who was acting it out was a deaf mute. 

 Jamie holding a precious little boy.

 Rachael playing with the kids.

 This little boy would not smile at first and whew, that is all it takes to make me go to work. By the end of the day, we were friends!

Robin with the famous little boy who Jamie was with.

I had to post this pic, b/c it is priceless. She was in a relay and just happy, happy, happy. I don't know why it is so big, but I am going to leave it that way b/c it is sooo good! 

Jeff ready to eat.

The kids watching the Zacchaeus drama.

Pam and Rachael serving drinks to the kids.

Alex playing with the kids.

Waving good-bye after the first half of the day. We came back a few hours later for part two. I have to run or I would post more pics. Hope you all have a great day and are blessed by these pics!

Team Indiana and VBS

Hi everyone we had a great day today! A very long day once again. One of the team members, Jamie is going to write a post now. Here is what he has to say:

To say it was an amazing day serving alongside the Wood Family would be an understatment.  The privilege to meet about 50 kids in a nearby village today and some of their families was truly humbling.  We started about mid-morning and finished tonight about 9:00 PM.  However, we did have a three hour break inbetween activities.  From games to puppet shows, to music to just hanging out, it was a memorable time for our team.  I'm confident the time today was fruitful for the kingdom. 

For me I was excited to see the joy the kids expressed as we interacted with them and played games.  The hospitality the adults showed us was above and beyond the call of duty.  One instance was a make-shift bench they made us to sit on and view the puppet show.  One older gentlemen noticed the seat was wet so he proceeded to take newspaper and cover our seats.  Just one example of hospitality.

I can honestly say the week has been personally refreshing and encouraging.  The Wood's are serving with distinction and it is a pleasure to be called their friend and co-laborer.

I look forward to the next couple days.  It is sure to be memorable.

Jamie Woodyard

As Jamie mentioned it was an amazing day and if I wasn't sooo tired you might get to see some pictures. However, you will just have to wait until tomorrow. It is now almost 11 and I am pooped! I will post more tomorrow!
Love you all! Missy

This team is AWESOME!!!

Our team from Indiana arrived on Monday and we were so happy to see them! 2 of them came last year and 2 of them are spouses of the men who came on their team last year and one of them is completely new!

Our community service project today was to clean the river where the women wash their clothes. It was filled with trash and will filled 20 bag loads of trash in 3 hours.  We all worked hard and were blessed by the end result! 

This was a woman who we saw as we were leaving, she was curious as to what we were doing, but stopped looking as soon as she saw us looking at her.

This was after our hard work.

Resting.

This is Jeff, he came ready to work, he will leave a changed man. He has made an huge impact on all those he has met. 

This is Pam and I almost knee deep in the water cleaning all the junk out. It was fun!

Here is a really neat story!! This woman pictured on the right was in the street when we were trying to find our way to the river. Greg got out to ask her for directions and she openly shared with him that her 23 year old husband had just died. He was on a tractor and it turned over on him and killed him. She was heart broken and said he was a good man and a good father. We stopped right then on the way to the river and prayed with her. She told us we could park at her home. We met the family who were there grieving and her 4 year old son. We offered to buy him some of the things he would need to start pre-school. She was very happy! So on the way back to our truck after we were done with our job, we helped clean up her yard as well (when someone dies it is customary to mourn for 9 days after they die and tomorrow completes the 9th day) b/c there was a lot of trash from the company they had. She hugged us and invited us back anytime. I think we have a new friend in our village. All b/c this team came and we went to clean up a river. He always has a plan!!

This little kids were playing beside the home where they were mourning. 

Rachael hard at work

The dirty team.

This little fella was just hangin out in a tree and wanted his picture taken.

These women were crossing the river and Jeff got this picture of them, isn't it great?

Here is Pam with Maria, the widow with her son.

Jeff eating tamales at our Bible study tonight. 

Jerod was enjoying his tamales too!

Alex was busy playing with his friends.

As was Annie.

How precious are they? Tonight they asked for prayer b/c she can't hear and he can't see. Please pray for them.

Pam and I enjoyed getting to know this sweet lady better. She was so happy we were all there. I think we encouraged a lot of people today. We have VBS in a small village in the morning and then again tomorrow night. I will do my best to post some pics earlier in the day, but we are running a mile a minute. It is 1:15 am and I am just now getting this done. ;o) Pray my eyes will open in the morning! We are having a great time and are just loving this team more than they will ever know! What a blessing!! Pray they all stay healthy!!

He's working!!

Hi friends! I wanted to give you a quick update on what is happening. Last week we were gone on a week long meeting with our company and it was a great time of fun and encouragement to our family. Now that we are back it is work, work, work!

We arrived home at around 5 and Greg took about 15 minutes to get his stuff together and then he headed to our other village for their meeting. The kids and I stayed home to unpack and get ready for our team that is coming on Monday.

Greg said it was a really good meeting.  You see each year they have a big festival in each village to celebrate a saint. Well in our old village it is time for them to have their big festival. The festival costs a lot of money and the only way to pay for it; is for the leaders of the village to go around asking each family for their "contribution" to the festival.  (which is usually a lot of money for them, last year it was $70 per family) They tell you how much you have to pay and this year they are actually threatening jail time if you don't pay. Now many Christians don't pay this fee. They simply take a stand and say they won't pay. We have always paid it and seen it as a tax. We never go to the festival b/c it is really just a time for people to get drunk and nothing good can come from it. Everyone knows this and now our little church is trying to figure out what to do about paying this fee.

So last night they asked Greg what he thought and Greg told them what I just told you about how we saw it as paying our taxes. However, he did say he would never put anyone down for taking a stand against paying this fee, but for us we saw it opening doors with the non-believers as opposed to closing them. This is where it got good. Greg said one of the leaders in our group, who a few years ago didn't know the difference between the Old and New Testament quoted a scripture from Romans. Then another leader told the story about when Jesus told the Pharisees to pay to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.  They also talked about how sometimes when paying taxes the people who make decisions on how to use that money make decisions that they sometimes don't agree with and this is just like that. They don't have to agree with the festival, but as part of the community, it is part of their responsibility to pay what is asked of them. Greg said he was proud to just sit back and listen to them as they spoke in their own language about what they felt the Bible said about this issue. Love it!! I will keep you all posted on all we do this week as we will be busy, busy, busy, with our team from Indiana. Love to you all! Missy

Storying!

Tonight we had our first storying group in our home village here. It was awesome! They were so interested and had many questions. There were 13 there for our first time which we thought was awesome! We have plans to continue this every Tuesday night. We are excited. We now have one storying group in one village on Tuesday night and one in another village on Thursday night. 

After the story our new friend, Carolina served us Tamales and lots of other goodies. 

This was one thing she offered that we had never tried. It is a type of fruit that grows on the trees here. They were okay but didn't have much flavor. 

These are Carolina's parents who also came to hear the story! It was a great night. God is moving! Yippee!

Things are going well for us and we are so appreciative of all of your prayers! Thanks so much! Blessings! Missy

Blessings!

Hi everyone!

Okay so you know that our yard has been an issue for some time now. It has been like a lake for about a month. I hated it. Our dog hated it. Everytime he came inside I would have to clean off his paws b/c there would be mud all over them. It was NOT fun. Well.... after our wonderful 3 day marathon of VBS in the village ( which was a blessing in every way!) we arrived home at about 5:00 pm on Saturday and so did this.

Now any other day I would have been overjoyed to see this heap of grass arrive. However after running myself ragged for 3 days straight all I saw was work. So it was another Amazing Race challenge! We worked together as a family and by around 8:30 we had a new lawn. And.... we were smack tired! Jerod isn't in these pictures b/c he was inside the house mopping up all of the mud that was brought into the house with the wheel barrow. So he did his part too!

This is what our yard looked like last week.

 This was me and Greg after we moved dirt all over the backyard  to try and make it level. Above is the picture after we got it level. Of course we did that in the rain.  We made lots of memories!

This is Annie and Alex after we laid down the sod.

These are their muddy feet!

Those are Greg's shoes.

These are mine. All of that is stuck to my shoes.

This was our yard after we got it all down.

Here our Annie and my feet afterwards.

That is one happy dog! His first home with grass!

So happy, so blessed!