Love Extreme 2 - June 22, 2010 in IquitosPosted: 06/26/10

We started out our morning at a school that Brittany and Esther have started a relationship with.  Upon arrival the children swarmed all the Extremers wanting us to take pictures of them.  The school teachers got the children back onto the bleachers, giving Esther a chance to explain what we had planned for them.  We broke the children up into 4 groups.  We had four stations for them to rotate around.  The first station was a game that had to do with learning to clean up their school, home and city of it´s trash.  They races to pick up the items that the staff had thrown out on the ground, to put it into recycle cans. 

The second station was for posters.  The children drew posters of how to keep their places clean and what it would look like.  The children were creative and it is good to see that people are stick figures no matter the country. 

The third station was an interactive drama where staff members had posters of various things such as the ocean, the sky, etc.  The children talked through what each was and how God created it for us and we need to take care of it. 

The last station was the lice patrol station.  Jose a new friend of ours told us that he thought 90% of the children would have lice.  After all was said and done, it was really close to about 80%, so he was definitely not far off.  The children were checked for lice and if they had them, shampoo was applied and another team combed out the dead lice and rinsed the shampoo out of their hair.  I found it amazing that the children were so trusting and willing to let us look in their hair, comb, shampoo and rinse their hair.  It was truly a site to see.  The children would show each other their dead lice when they were combed out and were very patient when they had to stand bent over and allow the staff to rinse their hair over and over.

At the end of our time at the school, Esther and Brittany presented the school with new trash cans that had been donated.  The children were then instructed to pick up the trash around their school.  They did an amazing job, and we were able to see the fruits of our labor at evening.  But more on that later.

On Tuesday afternoon we went to the center of town and went door to door passing out the information about the Jesus Film.  Even after the flyers were gone, we would stop and talk to `people on the street and invite them to the Jesus Film and the children to the festival before hand. 

While we were waiting for it to get dark, we had a great children´s festival.  We had balloon animals, water ball game, face painting as well as a puppet show about Jesus love for them.  There were about 100 children.  They would gather around the staff and crowd in to see what they were doing.  Even when the staff were eating dinner, they just surrounded the people that were drawing stencil drawings on paper for them.  They were so excited.

When it become dark, we showed the Jesus Film.  Most of the children stayed and several adults showed up also.  There were even Motorcar drivers that stopped to watch.  It was great.  Children of all ages would come and sit next to staff for a few minutes and allow the staff to love on them a bit.  Seventeen people were saved that night.  It was truly an awesome thing to see happen.  The staff gathered around them, laying hands on them and prayed for them, their families and their city.  After everyone started to disperse, the staff started to pick up trash and make sure the plaza looked good.  While doing this, several children came up and helped us, with one girl just going to town on getting trash picked up and brought over to the adults with th trash bag.  It was truly an awesome thing to see.