Last Day With The Kids

Sorry for the late update, but here's a recap of our final day with the kids:

We started off our day with the normal routine of bible lessons, then arts & crafts, and free time. Team "A" was up and they were closing out the week's theme (Covenant) by teaching about how God fulfilled his Agreement with Noah and promised never to destroy all life on Earth again. He illustrated this by creating a rainbow as an outward expression of this agreement between Noah and God.

The craft of he day was having the kids decorate their individual piece of 8x8 cloth. Most of them drew rainbows to go along with the lesson, but some of the kids got creative. I think I remember seeing a tiger of some sort on one. Ha! We then strung each piece together into a big quilt to symbolize how Relationships, Obedience, Trust/Faith, and Agreement all come together to create a Covenant with God.

We broke for lunch and we could help but think of the limited time we had left with the kids, but we still had so much fun planned for the rest of the evening. We got back to the orphanage around 2:00pm and were super excited to see the ice cream that we had ordered for the kids was about to arrive. Woo hoo!

After that we headed to the New Life Church in Bantey Meanchey to meet up with Pastor Navy.  He wanted to show us the church and have us pray with him about the growth of it.  What an incredible man!  He's come a loooong way since gather under a tree with a handful of people to worship God, and now the church has about 75 attending.  It doesn't sound like much, but Bantey Meanchey is a very small province.

Back to the orphanage we go!  Since it was our last night with the kids we decided that it would be fun to have one last hoo-rah, and we loaded them all up in our little bus and headed to "the gardens."  It was like Disney Land for them.  There were life-sized statues of different animals and superheros, a playground, music, fountains, and awesome food.  It was really the only time that we got to eat together - just us and them.  Such a bonding experience and the kids LOVED it!

After "the garden" it was time to say our goodbyes :(  We had prepared a quick 5 minute slide show recapping the week, so we showed that and then prayed for the kids.  This was one of the most amazing things that happened all trip.  As we encircled the kids, we all started praying at the same time.  Yes, everyone... at the same time.  30 voices praying to God out loud.  Powerful!  And although it was hard to hear your own prayer through all of the voices, it was amazing to think that our God hears each and every word that each and every person was saying.

Tears, tears, and more tears, but we have no doubt that the kids know just how much we love them.

-Mike