Gotta love the bus trips!

OH MY GOODNESS!!! The 7 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Arenal turned into a 12 hour excursion.  We left at 9:30 this morning and made it to San Isidro, which is about an hour and a half away, before the problems started.  First it was an overheating bus.  We sat for about 30 minutes while another bus came and picked us up.  Then it was the torrential downpours and thunderstorms that started in San Jose and lasted until we made it to the hotel.  Then it was the Panama-Costa Rica game that was tonight in San Jose.  So the traffic was crazy bad in the city, we sat for a looong time.  A couple of wrong turns later an we find ourselves making a 7 hour trip into a 12 hour trip.  But it’s all good.  It wouldn’t be a Torch trip without something like this and if you can't learn to love a bus then be thankful you aren't with us. (haha that rhymes).  We had fun on the bus and the 4 hour lightening show was pretty awesome.  So we are now at Hotel Los Lagos, been here about 30 minutes but I won’t be posting this blog until Wednesday morning because I’m pretty tired and I don’t really want to walk back to the lobby for the wifi.  That about sums up our Tuesday.  It wasn’t fun saying bye to our friends in Buenos Aires but the time for us to leave had come.

But to catch you up on the last few days…. We spent Saturday morning at the Church.  The men’s and women’s Bible classes were continuing while those of us in the VBS skit started practicing a new lesson, Paul and Silas being arrested and converting the centurions family.  We spent a couple of ours on that until we got it nailed down.  After that we went to the Park and walked around handing out invitations to the gospel meeting.  That afternoon at 2 the ladies all went to a baby shower for Daniella, the preachers oldest daughter.  While they were there the guys went to make reservations at a really awesome pizza place.  In order to make sure that it was fit for the ladies to eat we had to sample the pizza….. all for their benefit, not ours…. Later on in the afternoon we all met back up at the Church for the meeting that night and to start our VBS at the Church.  Up until this point a group of 5 ladies from Illinois had been doing the VBS at night at the Church.  They were really awesome and it was great to get to know them but unfortunately they had to leave Saturday after the baby shower.  Since they were gone, we had to step in and do the VBS so that evening we started our VBS program and the kids seemed to love it.  The first skit was of Paul’s conversion.  We then played a few games with them and had a puppet show. 

Sunday we met at the Church for worship and then went back to the park to hand out more invitations.  Since it was Fathers Day and a Sunday, there weren’t many people at the park but we were able to hand out a few anyways.  We then went back to the Church to practice our skit again and threw a little Frisbee with the kids.  We had the meeting that night and VBS.  We performed the Paul and Silas being arrested and converting the centurions family skit which was a huge hit with the kids.  We sang songs and they colored and had games.  It was another great night.  Saturday and Sunday were not slow days but they were a bit off of the pace we had been going and we paid for it on Monday.

Monday morning we were at the Church at 8 for breakfast.  We then spent a little time getting ready for VBS day.  We went to one school at 10:00 and had a VBS until 12:30.  The kids at this school were a little older so we had to quickly change our game plan.  The games we had were not really geared toward kids their age so we had Q&A time and a skit and a couple of games that they liked.  It turned out really well.  We left at 12:40 to go back to the Church for lunch.  We then left at 2 for our next VBS at another school.  This time we had tons of little kids, I mean like 200+.  They loved everything we did.  We ended up doing the first 2 skits and played games until they were ready to pass out.  We left just after 4 and I’m not sure who was more worn out, them or us.  We went back to the church were we had a 15 minute break before we had to assign parts and practice skit 3 for the VBS at the Church at 6:30.  So we nailed that down and got in a few practice runs before we had a few snacks.  The practice runs didn’t look good at all but the skit couldn’t have gone better.  If you had not known better you would have thought we were pros at this.  It was awesome.  We sang more songs and danced and played and all had a blast.  They said they could hardly hear anything inside the Church because we were having so much fun and being so loud.  The kids absolutely loved it.  After that took everyone at the Church out to the pizza place since Monday was our last day with them.  It was Torch’s treat.  We were able to spend a couple more hours with each other before we had to say goodbye and head back to the hotel. 

The Church here is really trying to grow, not just in numbers but in spiritual maturity and knowledge.  They have many young adults who teach classes and assist in leading the Church.  The young adults are a vital part to the Church's functioning, which is awesome to see.  There are lots of kids, not just community kids but kids of the members.  That means that the Church seems to have a bright future.  The kids also weren’t showing up just because gringos were in town, they know the stories of the Bible.  They’ve been taught well which is another encouraging sign.  The only thing I didn’t like, other than door knocking, was how few people from the community came to the gospel meeting.  I mean like very few people came, some did, but not many.  We had many more attend when I was here 2 years ago and we did many of the same things but it just didn’t seem to work well this year.  The VBS’s made up for it as far as I’m concerned.  They really were great.  Jennifer Chavez really made the VBS’s at the schools lively.  She got those kids all excited and ready for us with songs and dances.  She really was the reason we looked like we knew what we were doing.

Jose, one of the interns/translators, and I have become pretty good friends over the last few weeks.  We’ve had a great time but we think we may have another friend following us.  In Panama some of the guys had a room in which the shower would turn on at night.  They thought a Panamanian kid was coming up out of the drain and showering in their shower.  Anyways, random stuff would fall off tables in our room and the face of the air conditioning unit kept falling off but only at night.  So then in Buenos Aires, our toilet would randomly flush on its own.  Weird stuff, someone may be following us…

It was a great 8 days in Buenos Aires.  We had a ton of fun and hopefully we were able to open hearts to the power of the Gospel.  The kids sure did have a great time and hopefully it won’t be the last time I spend some time in Buenos Aires.

For the next couple of days, Tuesday-Thursday, we’ll be at Hotel Los Lagos and then we’ll go back to San Jose where the group will fly out Friday morning and the interns will take a bus that is estimated at 13 hours to Choluteca, Honduras.  We’ll see how that goes but my guess is 16-18 hours.  If you go into it with that mindset then a 13 hour trip seems great….. ok not really.  I hope everyone had a great Fathers Day.


And heres a picture of Dora the Explorer