Wednesday, June 29

After a solid night’s sleep, we headed off to Tresford and Fabiola’s. We stopped to pick up Arvan, who was going to help with the cabinets at Tresford’s. When we arrived, we started by preparing bags for today’s home visits. I got to sit with Pearl and talk about the puppet show, drama/skit, and my talk for TOV. We discussed my idea of doing the song, “Undignified” with the puppets and doing a bit of dialogue prior to the song. My puppet is a boy named Paul, and hers a girl named Angie. We practiced a few times and then moved on to the drama, which I was worried about because I was clueless when it came to ideas. However, Pearl had a great idea to do a skit with a girl who has a big red paper heart. She starts off with this hear, and some women will represent sins, for which the girl will trade her hear. By the end of the sins, her heart will be wrinkled and torn. Jesus will come along and offer her a new hear, but she will deny because her heart hurts too much. Jesus will use the verse John 3:16 to convince the girl, who will agree. Jesus will then give her a larger, brand new red heart and she will deny all other sins. We will be practicing this skit tomorrow morning, before visiting the schools. After this, we talked about peer pressure and the things teens are faced with, especially in Arunids. Pearl gave me a few pointers, and I am feeling much more confident about my talk for the TOV conference. Carol, my mom, and I then went on our first home visit to see Caroline, who has been on crutches for about 30 years. In 1980, Caroline was in a car accident that broke her leg. We aren’t sure if her surgery was bad or what, but Caroline’s pain has never decreased and she is unable to put any weight on her leg. We prayed for Caroline, gave her family food and clothing, and then left. After picking up the rest of the team members, we went back to Tresford and Fabiola’s for a little while. We wanted to see Johanna, but we could only see her between 1 and 2, when her mom would be home. So after dropping the rest of the team off for lunch, we went to Johanna’s house. While there, we learned that she had tuberculosis at a young age, and the treatment she received caused her to lose most of her hearing. She also has one hearing aid, but it doesn’t work at all. Fortunately, my mom was able to find her old hearing aid that the doctor cleaned up so she could give it to Johanna. When my mom fitted the aid to Johanna’s ear and switched it on, we could see instantly that Johanna’s hearing improved and she couldn’t stop smiling. As my mom spoke with Johanna, I was able to speak with her mom about how frustrating it can be to live with someone who is hard of hearing. Johanna’s mm them opened up to me and told me how frustrated she gets when Johanna can’t hear her. Because I face this same situation with my mom, I was able to explain to this woman that God made Johanna with this feature for a reason, and that she is beautiful in His eyes. I explained that this is a serious test of patience, as almost every day is. But god has plans for both Johanna and her mom, and will use Johanna’s hard of hearing to show His plans for them. As Carol presented the Gospel to Johanna, she began to cry and accepted Jesus as her savior. We were so excited! She was especially emotional when Carol spoke about how God forgives our sins, mistakes, and past, which we later learned from Fabiola, was because she was recently tested HIV positive. After a lunch of power bars, mom and Carol went on to another home visit while I stayed at Tresford and Fabiola’s to play with the kids. I had so much fun with the kids, and was sad to go. I had dinner of toast and apples, and am now getting ready to play some Phase 10 with mom.