Village of Las Brisas

I am posting about Friday and Saturday at the same time. It is raining right now so the internet is slower than usual which is extremely slow as compared to the states. The pictures take a long time to load so I will load as many as I can in the time that I have. I will try again tomorrow.

We left this morning for the village of Las Brisas. Today was the most strenuous day of hiking that we have had. We drove for over an hour on rough, rough, rough (did I mention, rough) roads then we hiked up and up and up a mountain. We met in their Kindergarten building which is one room made out of sticks. The older school is down the mountain. The school had a teacher who is from Honduras but she had received her education in Guatemala so the Honduran government will not allow her to teach so now, those children do not go to school at all. Please pray that Las Brisas will get a new teacher soon.

The village was very welcoming. Billy and Mary told us that Las Brisas does not get many visitors so they were excited when the Gringos arrived. The services were very similar to the other ones. The students do a great job singing and one man borrowed Todd's guitar and sang 2 songs. Mary taught the children "My God is so Great" in Spanish. Edgaurdo preached. Mason told the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and Lee gave his testimony. After Mason told the story, Mary asked several questions of the people about the story. Most of the questions were answered by a man in the back of the room. At this village, the men came inside and did not stand outside and look through the windows. It was so refreshing that they were not too "macho" to learn about God.

After the service, we gave the village soccer balls, crayons, and coloring sheets of Bible stories to the village leader. We played soccer and made lots and lots of balloons . They will stand there and wait for you to make as many balloons as we can make or until we run out.

We want to ask you to pray for Billy and Mary. They work so hard all day long. By 7:00 in the morning, there is usually someone on their porch needing help with medical needs, water, and many other things. They go into the village, give people rides to and from as they go (we had 17 people in the landcruiser today), and they get phone calls all the time of more needs. And, they always have a smile on their face. Please lift them up!

I am going to try to add some more pictures now - I only have a few more minutes. Tomorrow morning we get to go back to the first village, Huertona for a worship service. We are excited to get to back there. Then, in the afternoon we will visit the Bird Park which is known as the most beautiful place in town. We will have a special dinner and closing time with Billy and Mary. If I don't get back on, I promise to post the rest of the pictures on Monday evening when we are in Dallas.