Sunday, The Lords Day

So today was a fantastic day for all of us! We had the opportunity to attend Gracy´s church and spend some very special time with the children. There were approx. 50 kids all dressed up in their Sundays best, full of excitement. We were all so impressed with their knowledge of the various bible stories they had learned as they each had to repeat what they had learned over the past Sundays. We brought T shirts for all of them and each of them were able to draw on their own shirts what ever they wanted. I was surprised to see that even the smaller ones had put Jesus as the first word on their shirts followed by Loves You or Loves Me and each one of them couldn´t wait to get their picture taken with their new shirts that they had drawn on. After church they all filed out to get their hand full of candy that we had waiting for them and I think we enjoyed it even more than they did.
After church we went downtown and took a walk around downtown Ica. Wow! what an eye opener. Pepe took us to parts that had extreme damage from the earthquake, including a huge Catholic church where almost 100 people were killed. Apparently there was not only a large group of people trying to get out of the church when it began to fall apart but, there were also many people trying to get in thinking this was the house of God and it could survive the earthquake. This caused a traffic jam and then the whole top of the church with the bell tower fell down on them. We will try to post some before and after pictures on the blog in a couple of days to show you the extent of the damage. It has been about 1 year now and not much of anything has been restored with either houses or buildings.
This evening we went back to church for the evening adult service and, although it was great to hear Rodain get up and speak for part of it, the rest of the service was a little difficult to get into in spanish. I recognized some of the tunes to the songs but certainly not any of the words. We just finished dinner at the local hot spot called ¨Norkeys¨famous for their rotisere chicken as it was a packed house even at 9 30 PM. and we are ready to call it a day. Tomorrow will be our last work day, as we will complete our 2nd house. We will then take Tuesday off, due to their Independance Day holiday and prepare for our return on Wednesday. Please pray that we will continue to make an ¨Impact¨on our remaining days here and, for a safe trip home.
Thanks for your prayers and support.
Chris