Beautiful Feet: October 10, 2015

Why can’t we find anything to do? After working until midnight Friday night we were back up at 5 (Charlotte) and 6 (me) Saturday morning. While Charlotte got ready to go I loaded the food and somehow got it all to fit in the trunk. At 6:50 Zuleyma knocked on our door ready to go. They were off to the seminar by 7. I have heard fantastic reports, especially about Charlotte’s part, but she will tell about her day. After they left I spent most of an hour washing dishes then got a lesson ready for Nelson, looked back over the English material and wrote Friday’s blog. About 11:30 I ate a bowl of soup and at 11:45 headed out walking for Regina’s house on the other side of Juayua. I had all the English materials, computer and speakers and bread Charlotte had baked for the snack. Plus I stopped at Selectos and picked up a drink. I walked pretty slow with all that load and got there about 12:30. Nelson arrived about 5 minutes later and we had a good study on the steps to becoming a Christian and covered all but baptism which will take all of next time. I only had Nelson and Carlos for English class so I practiced with each of them for the first half of the class and let them practice between each other for the last half. I tried to call Cesar to see if he could come after class and give me a ride back over to Jose and Kelly’s which is next to our house. He did not answer so I headed out on foot again but caught a taxi when I got to the main street so I arrived in plenty of time. Cesar arrived about 10 minutes later. He was walking also and said he had forgotten I did not have a car. Everyone was there including Kelly’s brother Bennie and his girlfriend and we had a great study on repentance since Kelly had missed last week. Next week we will study baptism with them also and I said it could be at our house and they were excited about that. When we came out of their house our car was in front of ours so we got to ride back over to the 5 class and Bro. Osvaldo came with his family and taught on the Jehovah Witness. We still had dinner and skyped some with the kids when we got home but were in bed about 9:45. I wonder why?

Beyond expectation. Zuleyma, Kenia, Lisbeth and Arnoldo rode with me to the seminar and we arrived about 8 for the seminar to begin at 8:30. There were about 60ish who attended. It was neat that people from nine congregations came and devoted their day to becoming better teachers. First Rachel gave a lesson for about an hour regarding teaching. Then, the ladies broke into groups and started a rotation so that Rachel, Linda and I each presented our one hour lessons three times. Rachel’s lesson gave a variety of ideas on how to present a lesson to children. Linda packed her hours with crafts that all the ladies got to do. My lesson was how to do object lessons and of course I used many science ideas. Some of my favorites were burning money which was not consumed in the end to give the children an idea of the burning bush. Another was creating a real column of fire and cloud to illustrate the pillar of cloud and fire for the Israelites. Arnold had made a pillar of cloud and I had made a pillar of fire for props and a game. That took about 6 hours each pillar. We let those go for a door prize at the end of the day. The themes included the Life of Moses and the Life of Jesus. I had also cooked about 160 cupcakes. Half were used for Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, which included a picture to color and the other half had a gummy worm piled on a chocolate cupcake with oreo ‘soil’ on top for the parable of the Sower. Dwaine had made a ‘pillar of fire’ fruit stick with red, orange and yellow fruits and some of the girls helped make a ‘pillar of cloud’ marshmallow stick. It was so much fun and all the ladies just loved the snacks. Several preachers were also there and I got to share some of my favorite illustrations with them after lunch. At the end, we gave each congregation a gift bag and then drew for some 40ish door prizes. It was so much fun and then all the ladies asked great questions and were so interested in all the stations. It was amazing. We wrapped up close to 4 and made it back to Juayua about 4:30 just in time to pick up Dwaine and go for the evening service. It was an encouraging day, especially hearing about all the studies done day as well!