Here are a few pictures from the training that Heidi and I conducted for the Evangelism Team.  There’s also a few pictures from Joel’s team’s very 1st outreach.

More explanations in the next blog.

Here are some pictures from the last few months.  Many of them are from 2 Christmas care packages we got (one came in Jan. the other in March!)  We love our care packages!  Its always so much fun to get goodies from the States.

Then there are some pictures of our new kitten: Chase.  Our other cat ran away last year, so lets hope for the best for little Chasey.  He’s a cuddler and a cutie.

We had a beggar come to our neighborhood on a camel going house to house.  So we gave him a couple bucks worth and he let Jakob go up on his camel.  Pretty cool. Enjoy!!

Who knew?

Puppets are the next big thing in our evangelistic outreaches.  We had originally rejected puppets because it seemed like kids freaked out when they saw them come out (running away, etc..).  But when we were home last summer, a school gave us two sweet puppets (thanks Evangel!), and we gave it a second chance.

Joel made a puppet stage, we wrote a puppet skit and prerecorded it into 3 different languages, and took the show on the road.

It’s a huge hit!  The kids especially love to see the dog bite the orange puppet in the tooshie.  Kids are really the same everywhere, aren’t they?

The American Embassy here in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso held their annual Easter egg hunt today.  It was really fun.  We just had to bring 1000CFA ($2) per child, a dish for the breakfast potluck, and Easter baskets for the big hunt!  The Easter eggs actually have real American candy in them imported specially from the States for this event. 

Silas didn’t really understand the concept of gathering eggs, so Mommy pretty much got his 5 that he collected.  But Jakob reached his limit of 12 in no time and could’ve gotten more if allowed.

Here are a few pictures from the OCC distributions in 2009. Those boxes each had about 15 gifts in them - they were HEAVY!!

The kids would line up and receive a booklet that talks about “the greatest Gift of all”. Then we would sing a song together as they wave their booklets.

Can you see the joy on their faces? The shoebox gifts really are full of great stuff!

There are a couple of pictures of the nighttime evangelism. Crowds ranged from 200 to over 1000. We did puppets, skits and a film. Joseph Dayamba would then preach the Gospel. Powerful!

Wow!

Our first outreach of 2009 was a great success!  We joined with the Dr Peter, a Belgian doctor that has been living here for a while, and while he and his team of 5 doctors and 2 nurses examined 370 kids (wheew!), our team took care of the outreaches.

We started with the social skits, using music and fun costumes to show the kids the importance of good hygiene.  It’s the story of Doudou and Toto, 2 school-age kids, as they make decisions throughout their lives.  Doudou makes good decisions (he doesn’t eat the old food, he sleeps under the mosquito net, and he goes to school everyday), while Toto, well Toto has some problems. (he eats old food and gets loud gas, he sleeps outside, gets malaria and has to get a HUGE shot, and he skips school and misses out on a gift).  The kids really get this, and it is all reenforced by a dancing and singing lion who sings “I say yes, yes, yes to hygiene!!”

After this 25 minute presentation, we invite the kids to see more that evening at the soccer field (i.e. large, flat dirt field).

That evening, after the exhausted doctors went home, our team performed 2 dramas: the Gospel drama that we have been performing now for years, and the “sin chair” skit, a great little skit about how noone but God can rescue us from the entanglement of sin.   We had about 150- 200 kids show up.

Later that night, Jakob stayed with Joseph and Issaca (plays Toto) and I to show the kids a film from Book of Hope called “God man”.

About 25 kids came forward to hear about how they can make Jesus their Lord.

What a great first outreach!  Thank you for your prayers:  No car problems, no equipment malfunctions, nothing weird or bizarre.  It was tiring, but VERY rewarding!