Ecuador Day 2: VBS at the project and Home visits

Today has been incredible and at times some of the experiences have taken my breath away (and may have brought a few tears to the surface!) First of all, we started our morning with Jan Rudd at the breakfast table. We are so excited to have her back with the team...she said she has an amazing testimony to share with the team tonight about how she could see the hand of God in everything that happened the past two days.

Today we started our day going to visit the CDSP with Compassion. This is different than yesterday because they are the sponsored children who are in the project. This isn't the mom and babies. All of these children are between 3-18 years old. They were so excited to have guests. They were waving balloons as we arrived and then they put on a special assembly for us. They sang and played instruments for us. The youth praise band led us in a few songs....I am still amazed how worship is not bound by language. We sang "Here I am to Worship" in English and Spanish today.

After the special assembly we broke into age groups. (50 children per group......yes....I said 50!!) We were able to tell the children (or teenagers in my case) a Bible story and then did a craft. Below are some pictures of the assembly and the Bible teaching.

Then we were able to feed all of the children and adults at the church. I am amazed at how quickly we fed about 250 people. They were so grateful for their rice, chicken and piece of lettuce. They ate every single morsel....there was nothing left on the bone!

Then this afternoon we did home visits. We went to some of the homes where the children in the project live. Many of them do not have access to running water, electicity or bathrooms, but they will tell you....they have Jesus! My home was such a blessing. It was a couple with 4 children. Two of the children were in the project. We saw how valuable the letters are from sponsors...one of these boys pulled out letters over the last 12 years from his sponsor. He is eagerly awaiting another one because tomorrow is his birthday and she always writes to him on his birthday. The sweetest moment for me was the mother praying over US! She prayed for us to stay close to Jesus and to continue to serve the least of these.  She also prayed that God would continue to bless us with wealth so we could continue to take care of the least of these in Jesus name....what a great reminder of why God has blessed us with much....the bless those that have little! She thanked us over and over for coming to her home and blessing her with our visit.

Thank you for your prayers. I hope to post a video on facebook of the kids singing to us on Facebook this evening so you can see how excited they were to sing for us! Feel free to "friend" me on Facebook if you would like to see the video.

Shelley DeBusk