5/13/08 Day 5 at Barquisimeto

Vicente, Leo and I started the day jogging at 6:15am. The streets were quiet and cool but already bright. In Barquisimeto, sunrise is about 5:15am. Hard to keep up with Vicente and we jogged for about 2 miles. It took 15 minutes but felt like an hour!

We went to our favorite restaurant Hing Fai for breakfast before heading back to church for our morning devotion. Dr Wan, Pastor Stanley, Vicente and I shared a table. Pastor Stanley ordered 2 big bowls of plain porridge and a plate of plain chee-cheong fun. Funny! I think these few days of over-indulgence in food finally struck a chord in his conscience. Hmmm, I wonder if the fact that Virginia was trying unsuccessfully to get him to speak on the phone for the past 2 days has anything to do with this! He is a really very likeable pastor and we all loved him.

We take turns to lead morning devotion. Today Alison led us on Exodus 3:11-14 and Exodus 4:1, 10-17. Moses gave 5 excuses to God of not wanting to lead the Israelites out of Eqypt after he was chosen by God. In many ways, all of us were like Moses in this passage. We learned about how important it is to obey our God when He calls us. We also see the grace of God was with Moses despite his disobedience. It was a very good devotion.

Brother Keung joined us when we shared in depth about our experiences and observations on the shop visitations the prior day. All in all, everyone feels that we need to visit these folks one more time on Thursday to follow up before we leave Barquisimeto. We also gave some constructive feedback to Brother Keung about our observations of the church’s small group, Sunday School and fellowship structure and proposed some alignment to these activities to make them more effective. Brother Keung also revealed that he will need to undergo surgery to one of his eyes with cataract as he is losing vision in it. This came as a surprise to us. We ended the session praying for him. Each of us prayed for a specific leader serving in the local church.

Lunch is a little special today. We wanted to taste local cuisine. Brother Keung brought us to Areperas La 28, a block away from the rented church. Most of the shops in this area does not have A/C. Seems like this eatery has been around for many years as it looked old and the layout reminded me of a sushi bar. The different little food trays were inside a long row of glass enclosure where people can sit at stools in front of it and order their food. There were 2 trays of squids with vegetables, potato salad, coleslaw like stuff, shredded chicken, chicken inards, beef, some dont-know-what black stuff, fried plantains and many other. I ordered a fried grande (large) plantain and arepas (flour wrap) with shredded chicken and chicken inards. They are really good.

Later, Vicente, Daniel, Toby and myself came back to church to conduct music training for the kids. Vicente taught Allen drums, Toby taught Adolfo keyboard while I taught Lilia bass. It was a good one-to-one session.

Later, we joined the rest of the group for dinner at Restaurant Lucky. Vicente, Daniel and I rode at the back of Samy’s truck. Bumpy but fun.

For the night session, Alison and I conducted the Children Sunday School for adults. We had 12 attendees cramped into half the room size of about our office. Most of these teachers are young adults, probably in the college age group. Their Sunday School has about 5 kids from the age group of 5-6 years old and 3 of the age group 7-9. We had a good interactive session with them and shared our experiences of teaching Sunday School. Sandra, a Hispanic lady just joined to be their Sunday School coordinator and brought with her years of teaching experience. Alison and I learned that not all their Sunday School teachers are Christians and many do not have much experience teaching kids but have the passion to do so. Some of them also do not attend church when they are not on duty teaching Sunday School. We covered many important topics of children Sunday School which includes requirements, roles and responsibilities of a Sunday School teacher, effective teaching techniques, answering many of their questions concerning the challenges they face as a Sunday School teacher and recommending some things that they could do to improve their program. Thank you to Alice and Sibyl for providing us materials which we left with them. They really appreciate it. We ended with a prayer. Hopefully, God will use Sandra and the teachers to help grow this ministry.

-Kenny