Worship in Caracas

Today we worshiped in two churches. In the morning we attended the worship service at "Iglesia Bautista." We only had to sing two songs. Joining us was another church from Canada that had another STM team. Their pastor gave the message. After service the members of the church cook lunch for everyone. This church has about 40-50 people including children. Mostly are women. But in spite of the lack of man (or woman) power they whipped out food very quickly. That is thanks for the commercial wok stove that puts out mega btu's that cook things very fast.







In the afternoon, we went to "Iglesia De Cristo" which is the other Chinese church in Caracas. Our team took over their entire service. Our team split up and we taught 3 separate Sunday Schools. Their Sunday School normally starts at 3pm and their service at 4:0pm. I taught their young people and I had a marvelous time. These guys/gals were so right on and we had great time sharing and learning on 1 Sam 26.





After the Sunday School we lead worship and Pastor Stanley gave the message. I translated to Spanish. I think I did better than last time because Stanley used more conversational Cantonese. This was the second time I translated this message, but I still got a blessing from it.





After the service, they gave us hats and again: food. They cooked dinner and we again had a great time talking and sharing.






When we got back to "Iglesia Bautista" we had our last briefing. However, Kenny and I tried to play a prank on Dr Wan. We wanted him to sing a song and do hand movements for "InRight, OutRight, UpRight and DownRight." He very smoothly talked out of singing, but we got him to do the hand movements. We had a lot of laugh and we also took a video which we will post later.


So here am I, typing these last words from Venezuela. Hope that we had a safe trip back home tomorrow and after that, we are going to have to discuss and evaluate our long term missions strategy. However, we owe this trip to Dr Wan. Without his leadership and help we would had never have this experience and for that we are thankful. So here's is to Dr Wan.





Vincent

Beach Day

Today we went to the beach. It was a 1 hour drive from Caracas. Caracas is build on a plateau in the mountains. So to go to the beach you need to come down the mountain. The beach that we went is next to the airport. We went with another Short Term Missions group from Toronto. They were 5 members in this group. They Iglesia Bautista invited few non-believers families to come with us. The purpose is to share the gospel with them. Few of us had diarrhea. It looks like the food that we ate at the bus stop yesterday was not very good. Please pray for Dr Wan as he had it the worst.





It was a very nice beach with big waves. They have two wave breakers that protected the beach. We played with the waves and then sit around, talk and take naps. Several of us had the opportunity to share the gospel with these non-believers.





At night, the other Chinese Church in Caracas "Iglesia de Dios," invited us for dinner. We are staying at the Iglesia Bautista. We had a very nice time talking to them and getting to know them. Afterward, Toby, Daniel, Kenny and I had time to practice our songs for Tomorrow.






Vincent

Arrival in Caracas

We left Barquisimeto after saying goodbye to all the brothers and sisters in Barquisimeto. We are so thankful to be able to meet them and work with them. Hopefully we will have an opportunity to work together again.





We arrived safely in Caracas. The bus ride was pretty good. We rode a two level bus, but the AC was set to -10 F. It was so cold that everyone was shivering inside the bus. The bus has inside entertainment and they showed "Iron Man" in Spanish. Yes, and you can hear the public laugh and get up and go to the bathroom.


Now the bus service, they run it like it was an airline company. They have check-in and ID identification, security checkpoints and luggage check-in/check-out. They even have an conveyor belt for the luggage. The driver has an uniform that looked like an airline pilot. The only thing missing was the hostess.


We arrived in Caracas and we eat at the church. The church members cooked for us. After that we had a prayer meeting and we shared our experiences in Barquisimeto. The church in Barquisimeto is a sister church to the one in Caracas. So they were glad to see that we helped them. After that we split up and pray. I prayed with Lilia, Mimie and another young man in Spanish. They shared that there are less than 300 Chinese Christians in Venezuela. The Chinese population is about 160,000 in this country. There are only 4 Chinese pastors in Venezuela. So please pray for Venezuela as the need for minister is sorely needed.






Vincent

Thrusday

We started the day with breakfast in our favorite restaurant Hing Fai when we heard from Grace that Mr Tong has passed away. We previously meet his brother and his sister-in-law at Hing Fai on our second day in Barquisimeto. We prayed with his brother for Mr Tong because he was in the ICU for 4 months due to car accident that damaged to all internal organs. After we heard the news we went to the hospital to pay him our respects. It was a sad moment for the family and Pastor Stanley said a prayer of hope since Mr Tong is a believer as well as some of his family. All of us felt God's timing for us to be here and have an opportunity to touch the lives of these people in such a time. As we visited them, pray for them and just be there, we all hope it encouraged them and helped some of them to become believers. Please pray for this family.


After lunch we continued some more music training and Pastor and Kenny did more visitation.






For dinner we went to 5th uncle house. It was a small house about 20 minutes away. They cooked a lot of food and it was great! We loved the patio chicken: tough but so tasty.








After dinner we then went to the funeral of Mr Tong. Mr Tong is going to be buried tomorrow. They gave each of us a napkin, two candies and $2000 Bolivares. The napkin symbolizes something to dry our tears, the candy symbolizes to help sweeten the moment and the money is just to express their thanks for us to be there.





This was our last day in Barquisimeto. In retrospect, our stay here seemed to have gone very fast. I can't believe that we are leaving tomorrow. We have developed new friendships, done a lot of work and ministry with the "Iglesia Nueva Jerusalem" and visited a lot of people. I am going to miss them because they have been so nice and generous.





Vincent

Wednesday

Today we did some more visitation again. We rely on help from the church members to bring us around town. So we are taking a lot of time from Brother Keung and 5th uncle. We are thankful for them also for their work.


Anyways, Stanley and I went back to see Mr Sun again. This time his wife was there. She is a believer and has tried for many years to convert her husband to Christianity. We had a good talk. However, this small grocery store was very busy. People were coming constantly and there was not a single moment when Mr Ng was not handling the cashier. But his wife helped, and she relieved him from this duty, allowing us to talk to him some more. We gave him a VCD, and tracks and we prayed for him. We hope that he reads them and find his way to God. We also got the contact information for his children that live in Houston. Hopefully we can do some contacts and develop a way to follow up with Mr Sun.


After that we went back to church and we had a simple lunch: bread. Kenny went and bought all this bread. While we lived in frugality Leo and Dr Wan had sushi. So we believe that we set a better example by the way we chose our meals. I heard that Leo and Dr Wan were so hungry that they were ready to faint and the closest thing that was available was sushi so it was a necessity not a luxury. So brother Keung was oblige to treat them since they had no money. When we heard about it, none of us felt any jealousy. In fact we were all glad that such meal was such a blessing for them. ;)





We came back to the hotel hoping to use the internet but it was down since last night and I just got it back this morning. We returned to church around 3:00pm and we stopped by Hing Fai to order some food to go. Then we had another worship training session in which we taught the youth songs and worked with they way they played.


After dinner Leo gave a session on Fellowship while Daniel, Kenny, Toby and I had another session on the guidelines of worship. We share how long we practice, the requirements of a worship members and the need for a personal walk with Christ.





The church presented us some gifts of appreciation. They gave each of us a T-shirt and some snacks. We really appreciate this church for their kindness. Afterwards we had musical training in which we learned and taught them few new songs.











Vincent

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

Tuesday

Today was a slower day for us after all fast pace work that we have done in the last couple of days. To start the day, Kenny, Leo and I went running. We found a big avenue that is pretty clean and we ran for two miles. It was a first for Kenny and Leo while for me, it left me wanting for more. However, we do need them healthy and not in pain for the rest of the trip so I did not push them that hard.


We had a meeting with Brother Keung and we discussed the results of our visitation yesterday. We had a good discussion and that helped us plan for continuing our visitation tomorrow and Thrusday.


We meet again at our favorite restaurant, Hing Fai, for more great food. However, it seems that our $$$ is getting low so we offered to wash the dishes. But the owner threaten us with .... just kidding. But we took a group picture to let you see that we aet happily and stayed in one piece.





After that, Kenny, Toby, Daniel and I had some down time and went back to the hotel. We hang around in the stairway, because that is where we had the best wifi reception. Leo, Alison, You-Kin and Edith were at Brother's Keung home working on his computer.





We went back to church to start another worship training at 3:00pm. We knew that the kids were busy with school, but three came inspite of it. So we taught Lily to play bass, and Toby taught Adolfo to play the keyboard.








After dinner, I came back to the hotel to prepare my devotion for Friday, read Stanley's next sermon and do this blog, while the rest of the team went back to church to train Sunday School Teachers. The response was very good. They had over 20 people show up and seemed like they had a good