God's Calling Doesn't Have a Retirement Plan - Haiti : Day 4

The more time I spent with those eleven other individuals it really excited me at how many of God's people truly are capable of stepping out in faith and serving. No thanks or credit is expected, just merely service at it purist form. 


"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people,"
Ephesians 6:5-7

Journal Entry : Day 4


I didn't sleep well last night but good enough to have the energy to get me through the day. Breakfast was okay as I can recall, with a short devotion to follow. Pastor Milot came out for another short sermon as usual. So we made our way towards the church for VBS. As we opened up with singing songs not as many kids arrived today, maybe 60 or so, but we wouldn't let that damper our time there. This time we decided to switch up the scheduling for the day and have half of the kids go do recreation while the other half would do the craft and have their snack. After 30 minutes or so we would then switch the two groups. Bill and myself along with Clifford went over to lead recreation. 

Clifford and I in the hot sun playing soccer.

At first we attempted to teach them dodge ball. It was quite hilarious as the kids would just be hitting each other with the balls or tagging one another with them. Nobody ever went out on the sidelines either, it was like continuous dodge ball. After about 10 minutes of chaos we just switched it to soccer since it was a sport they understood no problem. It was extremely hot this morning especially running around with the kids. After both groups had their rec time and their craft/snack time we brought them all together for story time. Pastor Bill led the story again today about Noah and his faithfulness to God. For some reason the kids didn't pay attention quite as well today as yesterday, I guess we will have to restructure our curriculum for tomorrow.


So at about 12:00 we made our way out to the other church to see if we could get geared up for some more construction. When we arrived I noticed the team had made a lot of progress since yesterday. Come to find out they didn't receive any material yesterday until about 12:00. I helped some cutting a few boards and assembling a bench or two. We also got a couple of rough 1"X12"X16' board which we had to sand down. It took quite some time with the size and with the limited resources we had.

Hard at work!
Pictured left to right: Jennie, Me, Lance, Jerry, Stanley, Bill

On the work site I also spent some time with Jerry today and we chatted for probably close to half an hour. I discovered in his earlier days he used to be a cyclist and he told about some of the long rides he had taken back when and some the sights he has seen. He told about several mission projects he and his wife had been involved with over the years and it was quite interesting to say the least. I also discovered that after this trip he was going to be making his way to Ethiopia in 3 weeks. He is truly using the time he has left to to serve the Lord. Scripture never tells us when to retire from serving His people. It should always be a passion held close to our hearts until the day we breathe our last. 


We left at 3:15 to make it back to the house in time for dinner. I don't recall what we had but dinner was really good that evening. Afterwards we had our debriefing and it went well. Then the VBS team decided to knock out tomorrow's planning early. I would be leading the story tomorrow about Jonah and the whale, using the central theme that God's purpose will be done despite our selfishness. I was going to make it an object lesson with the magic trick of using a twisty balloon. I learned it several years ago but it stuck with me as to how to do it quite well. I really look forward to it being quite captivating to the kids. I shown the trick to several members of the team and they then wanted to attempt it. Many tried and failed and one couldn't help but laugh at the hilarity of seeing a group of adults playing with balloons. Mike figured it out pretty quick but I think he has a little experience with balloon animals and such. 

This is what it is supposed to look like.

Not too long after I began working on my story I would tell tomorrow. I then had a verse come to mind that I wanted to use but I couldn't cite its location. So I found Alison upstairs in the patio area to see if she could help me figure out which one I was trying to find. Neither of us found the exact one I was searching for but I settled on one we found in II Timothy 2:13 - "If we are faithless, He Remains faithful." I felt like it captured the summary to the book of Jonah perfectly. Alison and I continued to chat for a while, in fact it was the first time she and I got to talk by ourselves since we left on the trip. I really enjoyed getting tuned back in to each other's hearts. Some time later Jennie came out to join us asking if we wanted to play a few rounds of Nerts. We obliged and enjoyed the friendly competition. Monique came along much later and joined in with some casual conversation to end the night. Overall it was a pretty solid day.