Planning things like this festival is one of the hardest things to do together. We come from different cultures, have different strengths, and different ways of doing things. But after getting frustrated a few times, on my end, Franci rarely gets upset or frustrated….we finally got the plan together in agreement, with a few compromises.
Over the span of a few days we passed out flyers and invited kids, parents and grandparents to the festival. We told everyone we will be teaching English and valores (good values) along with candy and balloons, all for free. We woke up Friday morning, the day of the festival, to rain. Which is normal and frequent this time of year. But there wasn’t a hint of sun or blue sky on the horizon. I was praying for God to clear up the rain as our festival was to be held in a park. We went along and prepared as though the rain would clear up. I called my Dadda and vented to him, asking him for prayer too. Finally, the rain cleared up! Praise God! We were ready to get all the stuff out of our “storage” room and when I turned the handle, nothing. The door was locked and no one was inside. Everything we needed, the speakers, the generator, the cuy costumes, were all in this room! But Micah worked hard and with the use of Trevor’s old Visa, they picked the lock and got the door open for us. Finally, we were ready to leave. Franci and I along with all of our brothers, went to the park in Huascar and set up for the festival.
When we got to the park, Franci and I read Psalm 20 together (as we read one Psalm per day) and prayed. Psalm 20 was perfect, a gift from God this day! It said in verse 1, “May the Lord answer you when you are in distress.” Then in verses 4-5, “May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed. We will shout for joy when you are victorious and will lift up our banners in the name of our God. May the Lord grant all your requests.” But even after we read such a promising word, as we were setting up, and it was time to start with no kids in sight, I was frustrated. I asked God, ‘Why clear up the rain, why unlock the door, why get us all the way here and not provide us with any kids? What is your plan?’ I asked God to give us the desire of our hearts, to complete the plan.
We started with two kids and they played with the parachute in the street. We had the cuies dancing and the kids music blaring. Finally, a few more kids came and we stopped the parachute game to start the English lesson. We just went ahead and began with the few kids we had. But the entire hour and a half we were teaching the kids, singing, watching puppets and coloring….more and more kids kept arriving. At the end, we ran out of coloring sheets there were so many kids! By the end we probably had about 30 kids with 7 or more mothers sitting with us, listening and interacting.
This festival provided us with four contacts, and a friendship with the president of the park. Also, we have invited everyone to join us again each Friday afternoon for more lessons on English and the Bible. God truly blessed our first impact event! We are grateful for all He did to clear the path and provide for us during this afternoon.
Psalm 20:5a We will shout for joy when you are victorious and lift up our banners in the name of our God.
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