Email from Polly sent 7:15 PM on 7-26-09

Today was our first day of ministry here. It was awesome. First of all,we went to the church service. It is at a compound run by some missionaries. There is an orphanage there and it´s where we will be doing our Bible Study tomorrow. The kids there loved us. I have some fun pictures of the little kids climbing all over our guys. There were stray dogs running around inside the church. Then when they sing and worship they really get into it. The entire service took over 3 hours. They sang for over 1 hour. As they sang, they passed out flags,banners, pom poms, etc which we all waved during our songs. They are very emotional, happy, bouncy people. We especially enjoyed the church dance team. I guess that many of the young people at the church have come from gangs where they do alot of rap and stomp type dance and if they can still use that talent in the church it is appealing to them. Our group totally would have a done a dance routine but we forgot our dance uniforms. This afternoon we went to a very poor neighborhood where we just played and interacted with the people mostly kids there. Our boys played soccer with the local kids most of whom only had a pair of pants no shoes or shirts. they played for a long time afterwards when everyone was worn out the kids mostly teenagers sat down on a log all worn out so along with our translators we were able to share our testimonies and the salvation message with them. it was a cool kind of scary different experience but awesome. Tomorrow we are in charge of the vbs. The kids are tired and worn out but doing a great job. We are still trying to locate del and austins luggage. Hopefully it will arrive tonight. We have dinner and then we will do Bible Study and Worship together as a team. its very pretty here. very tropical. no bugs, some wind. It´s about 80 degrees. very nice. the people are very friendly. Someone tell Brent that I said Hi and I wish he was here with us. Hope all is going well at home. we love you guys. Thanks for all the prayers!