We had three great days at the Assembly of God church this week and today was our smoothest and final day.  In all we did we were very relational.  I will now give you the visual.  As the key driver of our small 12 passenger van we had just enough room for our team of 12 and the remaining flat surfaces were, most of the time, our laps, which held our daily supplies of sports equipment, crafts, object lessons, poster boards, a spinning verse wheel, a 5 gallon thermos, supplies for lunches that fed 150, our water bottles and Nick’s guitar.  It was tight!  

Here is the second visual!  Once we were unloaded at the church, I took 23 trips back and forth during our three days from the church to the villages to pick up and take home the parents and their kids.  Being that it was a short distance back and forth things became a little illegal in that the parents and I stuffed the van with 20-23 kids and parents for every trip.  They were well cared for.  Although a little tight It’s been a joy spending time with everyone and getting to know where they call home as they live in their 800 sq. ft wood houses nestled in village style tropical communities with pot hole, rain rutted, bumpy, red clay dirt roads. 

Once at church, we concluded our day together with the passage about Jesus leaving the 99 sheep on the hills and going to look for the one that wandered off.  The great part was that we found 44 lost who came to Christ this week out of 120 kids.  We blessed the pastor with backpacks for the less fortunate kids and gave all the kids pencil pouches filled with school supplies.  It was a fantastic day with many blessed kids, parents, church leaders, and our wonderful team

 -Brent Riffel