Thursday Night

We experienced a fantastic welcome service at the church! Juvenal, the Pastor, had his family there and all were glad to see us. The church was full and included guests from Punta Cardon where Juvenal's sister is the Pastor - which is about 15 minutes away. This is the church we will be visiting on Monday. We performed our Everything skit and it was well received by all - in fact, we have been asked to perform it two additional times while we are here. Juvenal was so impressed that he asked us if Joseph and Rachel could stay in Venezuela to be a part of their drama team! Alejandro preached the word from James 2:18 and was on quite a roll! Rosmeary interpreted in English for us Americans! Juvenal prayed over the congregation (to us it was more of a mini-sermon) based on Genesis 12:1. We all got the opportunity to go to the front and introduce ourselves - in a combination of English and Spanish. Once again, Rosmery helped to translate - we are SO glad she is with us! The church performed for us in many ways as part of the service and we have noticed that a younger group of children are starting to perform and carrying on the tradition of the older teenagers. They did a fantastic job! We have come to realize that although our surroundings our different, our language is different, our style of worship is different - that we all understand the Word of God and feel the presence of the Lord during our worship service.

After leaving the church, we went to eat pizza together with Juvenal's family at a local restaurant.

We then concluded our evening with our devotional period - hosted by Janet, Alyssa, and Rachel. Alyssa read from 1Corinthians 12:12 and Galatians 5:16-26. We realized that we all have different gifts of our own personalities and we are able to bring those to this mission trip to make it an effective and worthwhile trip for all. Each of the newcomers said a brief word about their experience so far and then we all welcomed our sleep time as we were exhausted!