Yesterday was such an eventful and long day that this blog did not get written before lights out at 10 PM.  May we digress to yesterday for a moment?  We were greeted by the girls wanting to sing two songs to us to start our devotion time on Thursday.  In all five years that we have been dedicating our time to the YES girls, we have never had them want to sing to us!  Our devotion time was based on Hebrews 12: 1-2 and did skits about “fixing our eyes on Jesus”.  Following our skits, Jennifer shared her testimony with the girls.  It was a powerful opportunity for the girls to hear from a graduate of YES who has faced their same struggles and continued to persevere because she loves Jesus.  Erin (YES intern) felt led to lead us in prayer which led two more girls (sisters) to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior (Yay!!).  We just thought Wednesday would be our most moving day with the girls.  We all feel this year has been an extra special year for relationship building with the girls, and Pastor Ruth echoed our thoughts in her final thank you to us.  We just could not leave this segment out of our week’s blog.

Now we turn to Friday, and this again has been a long and fruitful day.  We have been blessed with good schedule adherence all week, but ran into a few issues today.  As the big bus (People Mover) was driving down the road to YES to pick-up the girls and staff, it ran over a nail.  Most of us stayed at the school and made wristbands with the girls while we waited on the bus to return.  So our day at Banana Bank with the girls started at lunch time with our arrival to a wonderful family style meal of chicken, beans and rice, and cole slaw.  The girls then split into two groups to go horseback riding and swimming.  For many of the girls, this was their first opportunity to ever sit on a horse, much less ride one through a jungle.  Diane was beaming upon her return as she saw a monkey while riding. 

At 8 Mile the work crew finished putting together the floor beams and thus completed all the work that was planned for this week.  It was a great day!

Tomorrow morning we head out to an island to take some time away after a very full week and before returning home.  We will have time to rest and play, but most importantly, this time allows us the opportunity to start processing everything we have seen and experienced this week and listen to God’s leading and how He wants each of us to apply what He has taught us in our daily lives when we return home.

Please pray for:

-Phillipa’s children’s church and her vision for this ministry (we worshiped there Sunday night and saw her again today)

-Over each of the YES girls that gave their life to Christ this week, that they would be surrounded by positive community as new believers and may continue to grow in their faith.

-Each of our team as we take time away to really listen to the Lord, that our ears would be open and hearts softened to his voice.