Saturday, July 12, 2008

Day Two - San Lorenzo Church

It's Saturday, and after turning in early last night for some much needed sleep, we started with a simple breakfast with Bob and Brenda of Croissants, Bananas, Papaya, and hard boiled eggs. Following breakfast, Bob took the team over to San Lorenzo Church.


For those that followed the Church of the Foothills trip a few weeks ago, they added this fourth story to the back of the church. Next week we'll move our painting work up there.


We split in three little teams - Lisa and Joe varnished the inside and out of a cabinet to be used by the ladies ministry, Susan and Fran rked with Vincente, the young pastor of the San Antonio church, to painted the ceiling of that room white. Rather than them working on fairly rickety ladders, Joe found some long 2" PVC and some wine bottle corks, and wedged the paint brushes in the PVC with the cork. Worked pretty well. Surprised to find the bag of corks. There's significant problem with drinking and alcoholism here, and the pastors and missionaries have a vow of abstinence from alcohol, and the church membership in the area is being asked to support the staff by doing the same until November, except for a toast at weddings. Jenn and Dominique worked with Alberto started painting the walls of the adjacent room, the only remaining room from the original church building before the transformations began.


We took a break mid morning, had some local coca cola out of a liter glass bottle, introduced ourselves to Alberto and Vincente, with Bob translating for all of us, except Dominique, who did an excellent job of introducing herself, when she accepted Christ, and what she does for a living in spanish. Vincente then told us his story about when he was saved, how he was called to become a pastor, and his current challenges with the San Antonio church. As a young, single pastor, he isn't respected by older, married members of the community. We prayed for him to find a wife and for him to earn the respect of the older community members he works with in his church.

2 comments:

Roxane said...

Hi Frances,
I see that you are already hard at work, hopefully you had a restful sleep last night after the long journey to get there.
Glad to see the smile on your face as your are working:)
Love ya,
Roxane

gr8mom said...

Hi Frances,
Ohh, it was so nice to see that smiling face. I see you're doing what you left here doing in your bathroom...painting! Looks like you guys are having a good time.

Missing my buddy at work!

Denise