Happy Easter from Colombia

Hello all

Well last week was a nice but busy one with it being Easter week. Although many evangelical churches here have thrown the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to easter, it being a "Catholic" festival, and dont celebrate it, not KIDS CHURCH. For us it is a very important week with Monday and Tuesday being a retreat for the kids and Thursday we have our annual dawn resurrection service starting at 5am.

During Monday and Tuesday we had 4 sessions with different kids at each one. During the sessions we followed the "Way of Heros" starting with a drama in which 2 children realised that their heros Spiderman and Barbie were not real and that the real hero is Jesus (he has special powers and really exists to help us) followed of course by singing "Jesus is my superhero" (Yes they have that in spanish too!) We then looked at 3 stops on the way of heros, "know who I am" "obey" and "dont give up". Using many different and creative means for expressing the messages, drama, games, magic, videos and a time of ministry at the end of each section we saw the kids respond well. There are many photos on the El REfugio facebook page here 

 I was a great week, only marred by intense pain in my leg casued by a humungus abscess, which is healing nicely now after a trip to the GP and some anti biotics. Now I am busy trying to get all the general admin stuff out of the way ready to have my 2 week holiday with my Mum and Sister who arrive on Friday. Finally I will get to experience this beautiful city as a tourist :)

God Bless you all
Petra

Then on Thursday, we all got up at 4am, gathered up all we needed, including a big wooden cross, to head to the church we are still using for the services. There we were met by a team from the YWAM base who joined us to do 2 dramas, the pastor and a few members of the church who had came to see if children really would come at that time in the morning! It was about 4.45am when we heard the first child voices outside and by the time we opened the doors at 5.15am about 25 children came running in. Another count at 6.15 revealed 65 children and by the time we finished at 7.00 there were 80 children to serve breakfast too. I was very pleased to see that all of the youth were there before 6am, most before 5.30, unlike last year when they arrived for breakfast!!