Westserve

V-Team Report

Dear Everyone,

Thank you to those who have sent us emails, we have been very encouraged!!

We have been really busy here. Last night we continued our “V-Team Band” adventure, as all of us (even Mark!) sang to well over 100 000 people!! Glen preached to the same masses of people, and played guitar to accompany us. It was only the second time he has ever sung in public!! How was this possible? Well, we were on Vanuatu Radio – a international station that goes out not only to all of Vanuatu, but also to North Queensland, PNG, Fiji, Solomon Islands, and other South Pacific Countries. We were incredibly blessed with the opporutinty to fill an hour slot in the radio last night using Glen’s sermon, Rachel’s testimony, and all of us singing and praying, as we had done in the church service we ran yesterday morning at PMC Church.

Oh, and if anyone ever complains to us about getting only a week or so’s notice to write a talk, well, we have been learning how to prepare a talk being asked at 9pm for the next morning!!

Some Highlights from our trip:

On Wednesday we took a very long and bumpy bus ride to Onesua High School. We again experienced Island time when the bus that had arranged to pick us up at 8:30am arrived just after 10. But we entertained the locals by asking where the bus was, as though it was actually late – they thought us very silly! After a brief tour of the boarding school, we did a presentation complete with drama, bible talk, testimony, mysterious dan the magic man, and songs. The kids were at first very shy and sat far away, but after Kathryn spoke to them in Bislama they came very close! They were so in shock from hearing a white girl speaking their language that we had to wait for them to finish laughing before coming forward! Perhaps it’s just Kathryn’s fluency not being so great!!! It was a great success, and by the time we stopped in at a tourist village on the way back to Vila they had already heard news of our “pig drama” (as we acted out the story of the prodigal son). News in Vanuatu really does travel fast!

On Wednesday night we ran a womens and mens fellowship night at Selime church. The womens’ night was very encouraging with Ni-Vanuatu singing and harmonising putting us to shame! Together we studied Galatians 5 – a passage about the fruits of the spirit, then the women expressed what they had learnt in dramas and then by painting on cloth squares which we have since put together into a quilt to present to the church when we return on the 23rd.

The mens night was an enormously encouraging night, especially the time of group prayer. The boys were blessed with a performance by the mens choir that “knocked our white, toneless socks off!!” (as Joel says)

We have been busy all week, with more dramas and songs and tricks in the market place, running a workshop for sunday school leaders, leading and preaching at the church yesterday morning, running two youth group nights, visiting schools, and every now and then stopping to look around the island, swim, prepare our ministries for the next day and sometimes even eat and sleep!! The team has worked very hard and have been very faithful in telling people clearly and creatively about how god loved us so much that he sent his son to come and die on a cross to take our punishment for turning our back on god, so that we could have a relationship with god.

Please pray for us as we are working very hard, with most of our time taken up in ministry or in ministry preparation, and we have had quite a few late nights and early starts. But especially please pray for those who have heard the message we have been giving, and pray that god would raise up harvesters for the seeds we have sown here in vila.

This afternoon we leave to fly by plane to Santo where we will spend the next week before 3 days on Malo. As we get more remote we won’t be able to write much! We are very excited to see what God has planned for us over there!!

Love,

Rachel, Glen, Kat DC, Mark R, Kathryn S, Dan Y, Stez, Di and Joel.

Ps, some quotes to leave you with:

“Wanem Olsem” [Dan welcoming the church yesterday morning, in what was close to the local greeting “Olsem Wanem”!]

“Heather, kakae yu i nambawan!” [Mark in church yesterday thanking Heather for her cooking – Heather has been cooking many meals for us in the local market – unfortunately what Mark said actually translates to “Heather, eating you is the best!”]

“Joel, stop eating Stezf, there’s plenty of food on the table” [Glen takes leadership]

“Glen did you just stroke Joel’s face??” [Di] “Yes… if by stroking you mean prodding and if by face you mean sholder, then yes, yes I did” [Glen]