Yo yo yo!
The J-dog here (magic man). This morning I woke up, well everyone did and we all did our personal devotion which was awesome! We wake up so early here, for teenagers anyway. Today Meg and John helped out in the kindergarten at Eratap Village, while Jess, Karla, Faye, Polly, And I. Alex was supposed to but unfortunately he was sick and decided to stay at Eratap. Blacksand is a slum area made up of villages of people from all over the different islands of Vanuatu. Not many people there have a job and there church is made out of bamboo! There church is about the size of our kitchen at church. Small? I think so! I did some cards tricks for the kids in the church and they just crowded around and loved it! The children there are so happy and really appreciated us white fala (white men) there! We had bag full of bouncy balls. We got all the children together and released all the balls near them and they went crazy! We also gave them stickers which they put all over themselves, they platted Polly’s hair and put hair ties in Faye’s and Jessica’s. 2 kids really liked me and all though I was only there for 2 hours I got really attached to them, and by the end I gave one of them my cross on my necklace because he already had a chain, and gave the other boy my chain.
When we got back to Eratap we met back up with the other guys and had lunch. The water tank built 4 layers of bricks out of the 8 needed on the water tank today alone. They did a really mint job because it was raining most of the time and they were only sheltered by a ripped tarpolen and sticks; it’s so awesome how they improvise with what they have to get the tank done as fast as possible which is really cool! It was dumb in the afternoon because it rained so hard we were unable to coninue to work on the water tank or run the after school kids programme so we caught buses back to where we are staying.
Tonight we went to the communtiy night in the village where one of the Y.W.A.M bases are. It was really amazing, we were outside under a woven roof and we were sweating from danicing while singing worship songs! There are some other mission teams here staying at the base and for some of the night they were talking about the work they are doing here. Then some of the NiVans got up and did some dancing for us and then we got up! We all introduced ourselves in Bislama and after that Laura, Antony, Jess, and Meg an extremely funny skit, involving Antony getting covered in flour which caused the place to erupt with laughter. Then Polly got up and shared her testimony which was really moving and deep. She did a really good job as she said she was nervous, but you couldn’t even tell. After that I got up and did my linking rings trick and a guy (Jerry) from another team here helped me out. Then I juggled fire, which they turned the lights out for. Everyone’s attention was on me and I juggled for a while, then I got Jerry to try just juggling one club. He was American, and had a lot of trouble doing this. Then some Fiji men got up and sang for us, and we ended the night with the song ”We Are All One Bog Happy Family” which was awesome! Then we had cake after and chatted for a while, and then got into the truck to leave. We are now all back where we sleep, a few people are in bed because today has been a really long day.
God Bless you all!
Jeremy
