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Another group goes to Curacao this summer

From a July 27th email on the group we hooked up with others in Curacao last minute:

I just ran home for a bite and back again to Fuik to attend to the other team from NC. Thanks soooo much for making such a huge difference in our group that went to SC. Finally, yesterday at church we could hear their testimony which was way to short a time for all of them. They are so revived and with such enthusiasm. There favorite words are "more than awesome" when asked about their trip. Doris, your name was mentioned several times. You and Gene are the kind of people I and many others love to be with.... you love the Lord and it shows all the time.

Please pray for me and the team that finally arrived yesterday and some today...Also pray that we can be a blessing to them! I believe they need encouragement and will learn a lot. The leader, Bob, pray for him... I thank God I have learned so much from you so that I can teach others now...I know you will pray and I know God will do the transforming work in all of us.

p.s. also pray for my financial situation, my August support is coming to a low and I do not get a cheque until mid September.

May God continue to bless you all you do and may His love fill you and His joy be your strength to keep going ... and coming to Curacao :)

Curacao '09 Video 1

Friday wrap-up

We had a very pleasant farewell gathering at the home of Gloria (our meal provider). She and her two brothers have a "garden" that is used to host parties right at their house over near the big ball park and public pool.

Friday ended up being their biggest day. The consensus was that the kids were pretty hyper too. Cesar and Emma send their love to you and all at GCF that made this possible. Cesar took the time to note the obstacles they faced over the past 3 months and said he and Emma were convinced the VBS would not have worked without our team and specifically the dedication of our vans to the full day schedule. During the week, he had noted that we were cutting off 60 to 90 minutes off their afternoon chores in returning children. I did not realize that Emma was routinely driving in prior years in addition to Cesar.

Friday update

A rain shower mid morning caused quite a stir. 5 minutes of rain can scatter folks pretty well. It forced a move of the teen boys from a ball field that got too wet to continue, so an hour after we dropped them west of Santa Rosa, we went back to move them to Caracas Bai.

Closing ceremony is in progress now. We likely start our return to home runs for the kids in 15 minutes or so and we have a group meeting after dinner tonight at 7pm in Bonam.

We will leave all our cash here. With the work we have done on Cesar's van and the boys house being a bit extra, it will use all but I feel good about what we have been able to do.

Thanks for your support and prayers.

gene

Thursday update

Today went well. Several of the crew picked up trash early this morning in the ditch we cleaned out last year. Laurel seems to have been a hit with some of the older ladies in the FUIK neighborhood by making brownies for them today as part of a presentation to them.

Chika prepared lunch once again for the group. It consisted of (you now have Doris talking as Gene missed this lunch) chicken stew, white rice, peas and carrots and glass cake. Glass cake in a jello-o type mixture and we were very honored because it is not the norm for them to serve dessert. Chika also served more of her homemade juices. She is trying to encourage the use of native plants in cooking and healing in Curacao. They were interesting flavors. The youth have been wonderful about trying new things and very nice manners have been used to thank our hostess. This is still Doris talking...we met a missionary, Joan, who is now living in Fike and has offered her home for our next visit. She said she could take 20 if we did not mind waiting on bathroom time. She lives on Emma's block and is a teacher now. Her husband is very kind and they have 4 grown children. Joan is about to be a Grand Ma for the first time so we had a lot of celebrating and thanking God for our children, it is just a joy to be here. Now back to Gene...

Allan Murphy took his group to the beach near the old quarantine building this afternoon around 2 pm. Our youth were invited, so they and a couple of adults went with them. The remainder of our group joined the advance guard just as the Alabama group was heading back to the Pearl. The evening was capped off with fine dining at McDonald's along Ring Road. Everybody ate outside. Especially for those that still have their not completely dry swim attire on underneath, the place felt like it was freezing. The persistent Curacao breeze was a great improvement to indoor dining there. Most of us ate on the edge of their very large outdoor playground. At the end, we even congregated in one corner of the area to have a brief devotional. Arrival time at the houses was around 9 pm and we are in those early stages of clean up where you try to get the obvious things in order now since we know Friday night will really be compressed. Saturday morning will be a 4:30 wake-up which is only an hour earlier than we have been observing, but still early enough that we do not want to have to do all the clean up on Friday night.

VBS may end about an hour early tomorrow and we will come back to the house for dinner. We have been told not to eat dessert and we are requested to meet our hosts at 7 pm at a location to be revealed tomorrow.

There are far too many stories to relay here and some will be new to me since the driving we have been doing keeps Steve, Brian and myself away from the action quite a bit. What I do know is that the group here is highly appreciative of the support they have received this year. The numbers remained high today. Another of those rough measures I use to gauge attendance is how many van trips it takes to move folks. The youth were out at Caracas Bai today and it took 8 trips to get them to FUIK. Two of those were Cesar's large van.

I am going to say goodbye for now.

Goodnight,

gene

Brian's mechanical gifts continue to bless

From Gene,

Brian had to change shocks on Cesars van yesterday. One broke Weds afternoon about two hours after they changed the U joints. We have paid for both of those, so what we saved in a couple of places is now gone, which I view as a good thing.

Tuesday & Wednesday

Wow! A busy day both days, but probably give the edge to Wednesday in the ranking.

We were told the group would peak in numbers on Wednesday and it sure looked that way. There may be an official count, but I do not have that tonight. What I do know is that one thing they track is how many meals they prepare. Teen boys get double and the youngest children get 1/2 portions, so the number prepared works out to a good approximation of the total of VBS participants and workers. Today, our kitchen staff rep (Doris) said 360 meals were prepared. There may be as many as 50 workers, so using that as a starting point, it would say there were over 300 children and teens.

Steve Dean and I spent almost all day driving. We each put 230 miles on each of our vehicles. Now that is not a big deal in SC, but in Curacao, it means you did not do much other than drive. The mileage we logged today was all in the mostly neighborhood setting where the combination of traffic, rough roads and two rush hours, makes that about all the miles you can expect in one day. We started at 7AM with pick up of children and some staff and ended a few minutes after 6pm. There was a period of about one hour with no travel during the morning.

Today was a chance for Brian to do some work on Cesar's van. It needed universal joints and they needed to pull the drive shaft. After only 4 trips to the auto parts store, they had the right parts and the van was running for the afternoon delivery of children and workers to their homes. It will be nice to have that one back on the road all day for these next two days. Not only did he work on Cesar's van during the day, Brian stayed through supper to do some work on Ilse's car. It needs more than he can do on this trip, but it looks like we can help them save money by purchasing the parts in SC and shipping them back in the luggage of the Curacao team when they leave SC.

The entire team on the ground in FUIK continues to be everywhere doing whatever is needed. The Alabama team worked the full morning at VBS (which included some very helpful driving) and then went to Antillean Baptist Church for painting. Our entire youth contingent went along and they worked the job together. Except for a bucket handle failure, the paint went on the walls as intended.

All had dinner here tonight provided by Gloria. She will prepare a meal for us Friday and after that we will meet the group from FUIK for a casual evening. Thursday evening, we still have some hopes we may improve the logistics to a point where we can be done by 5pm and let the group cool off in the Caribbean before sunset. Just in case some may not appreciate how hard our group has worked, we did get less than 2 hours at the beach Tuesday evening. So the Thursday foray will be the third outing and all three will total a max of 6 hours for the week. A bit less for the group that left the beach Sunday afternoon to help get things ready at FUIK. While there have been the adjustments that always come with a trip like this, the beach time is not a huge surprise to the group because we talked from last fall that we were going to volunteer to help in the afternoons which necessarily cut way back on the beach opportunities. What is really cool is that this large a number were willing to make the investment of themselves and their money to come be hot, tired and at times frustrated in spite of the limited recreational time. All those discomforts can melt away when you get a moment to see just how much our presence means to those leaders here. It also reminds us that we are here in some measure to model for adults and not just help kids in VBS. By our presence and work, there are youth and parents that are seeing how much commitment is needed to make something like this happen and that they can lead and they can make a difference by committing themselves.

We made our devotional tonight a reading of I Corinthians, 13th chapter. My prayer is that I am always aware that no amount of work or sacrifice has value unless it is given in an attitude of submission to God.

Best wishes from all here. The photos may even have to wait until we return. There are a bunch.

Good night,

gene

Update from Curacao

We could not get an Internet connection last night, so this is just to let all know that all are well and you can be sure our combined groups are doing a lot of work. Today, SC and AL join in the afternoon to paint the inside of a church.

We also leave here in 6 minutes and the driver must not be late.

gene

Potential 2nd trip to Curacao this summer by church in NC

Interrupting our normal reports to include this info for a trip that may be taking shape for sometime in the next 6 weeks. Days 1 & 2 from our current trip are below with more coming. dg

This is my email to them today:

Caroline, Cesar, Faris & Herman,

What a neat opportunity is falling into your laps!

I just finished talking to a good friend Kurt Wright. Long story short, a youth mission trip planned for Honduras has likely fallen through due to the political unrest there. Because of the great amount of time and money already spent, they are looking for an alternate site to serve.

It's a youth mission team of around 10. Curacao came up because a sister of one of the youth (Nancy Wright, currently in Curacao with our mission team at Cesar & Emma's) knew about our work there and thought it would be a good destination.

So my question to all receiving this in Curacao is: Are there projects in Curacao that this group could come work this summer over about a week that you all already know about? In other words, do you think you could pull together enough local ministry work to justify this team coming there?

Caroline, I'm looking to you to coordinate this from down there and see what potential there is. This would need to happen quickly as once summer is over here these youth will have to go back to school and the window of opportunity will close.

Cesar & Emma, will there be some follow-up work after this week that you need help with?

Herman, do you have projects that this team could help you with? They can work with children or they can paint or do manual labor.

Calvin, I know you're coming this way, but you know what's going on down there. What can you suggest? Can they help your church do some local outreach in the coming weeks? We could coordinate a face to face for you and their youth pastor to plan out a trip while you are here in SC next week (Jul 11-20). They could even come down and participate with you group next week in our local missions effort here to help them get to know you all. Give this some thought.

Faris, what projects do you know about?

Allan, you being there now should be able to shed some light on this once you're back (Jul 11) in the states.

I mentioned Siloam children's hospice, Awana club at Eman's (Cesar and Emma) on Sun., Siloam kid's ministry on Wed. to Kurt. There are other opportunities there as well.

Contacts:

Caroline van Romondt caro_JC@scarlet.an

Local missionary gifted and ready to host mission teams

Calvin Varlack sentrograsia@onenet.an

Pastor of Iglesia Gracia Abundante. He and 6 youth will be in Summerville, SC Jul 11-20 helping us with Mission: Charleston.

Herman Gijsbers siloam@cura.net

Director of Siloam and many other ministries on the island

Faris & Marilyn Weber

Local pastor of Curacao Christian Fellowship

Allan Murphey pastor@northshelbybaptist.org

Alabama pastor who's spent considerable time in Curacao full & part-time. He has a team in Curacao this week working with our team.

Kurt Wright kurtdwright@earthlink.net

Current contact for the mission team looking to go to Curacao

Most of us already have an interest in seeing God work through the Body of Christ working together to bless the people of Curacao. Here is just another example of God orchestrating something special. My prayer is that each of you will be open to the Holy Spirit's leading on this cooperate with Him accordingly.

Feel free to contact me if I can help but I see this as something that will have to come together down your way. I'm praying for just that!

In Christ, we're better together!

Darien