Charlieville VBS Week

August 20, 2009
Bible School started on Monday evening. I have been in the youth class (13-19 year olds), which my mom is teaching. My dad is teaching the men and Roxy is in the 10-12 year old class. Each of the evenings starts out with some singing (I knew a lot of the songs, but they almost all seemed to be a little different than the way I know them) and the telling of a Bible story. The person telling the Bible story (both my parents have done that one time) has been using the felt board, which I think is very exciting! I like felt boards. The youth class has been very large (one night there were 16 of us) and lively with a small amount of girls in proportion to boys. But, Roxy's class hasn't had many girls either, in fact, some of the time she's been the only one. The men's class, which my dad is teaching has been extremely small. The first night he only had one person, but the second night he had 2, and by last night he had 3! Tomorrow night is the final night and each class is doing something to show what they've learned. There's been more people each night, so I think it's been going pretty well!
-Olivia

Bible school has been interesting and fun. This church with an average attendance of 35 on a Sunday morning had 45 the first night, 52 the second and 61 the third. With the work team still here we have enjoyed several meals provided to all of us on a couple of occasions. Last night we all went for supper to the home of one of the other Mennonite pastors, Richard (and Margaret) Keeler for supper. I love it that the avocados are 3 or 4 times the size of those in Kansas and that they just often slice them as the vegetable.
When we got home and were ready to brush our teeth before bed, however, we discovered that we were out of water - nothing came out when you turned the tap. After skipping the morning showers and consulting with someone we learned that a valve that lets water into our tanks had been switched off. Don't know how or when that happened. We'll have to keep an eye on that. Because water usage is so high in the morning there is not enough pressure for the tanks to refill yet. We plan to go shower at a neighbor's house soon and hope to have water by later in the day. Thank God for good neighbors.
Barb

We have been working on getting into St. Augustine's Girls High School some more this week. So far, everybody we've talked to has said that that would be a very good school for us to go to. But it has been very confusing! We talked to the school, who said that we had to go to the Ministry of Education, who said we needed three copies each of a bazillion important papers, then go back to St. Augustine's, where the principal would need to sign the papers, but she doesn't get back until Monday! So it feels like there's always just one more thing to do!
But my very favorite thing that's happened this week was discovering the Felt Board that lives just beneath our apartment in the Charlieville Mennonite Church!
~Roxy