Fiji Day 4

Day 2 of the Kids Holiday Program and the morning was the usual – taking turns in the toilet and making sure that no other water outlet was being used whilst someone was showering. Coffee and freshly baked toast (only $0.90 per loaf!!) and fried eggs with tomato sauce (which doesn’t come in a bottle btw – in a can which we have to open and pour out the contents entirely).

Today’s devotion passage was Isaiah 60:1-6 on which we reflected upon to pick up 1 word that we were most fearful of and another word that would provide comfort to our fear listed. Most of the team mentioned – Darkness. The darkness of the unsaved in Fiji and the urgency that we’ve seen for God’s word to be brought to them. How we are in the light and as a result on this STM everything we do is closely inspected and scrutinized. We are supposed to be a good example for them as a lot of Chinese here are very skeptical of the Christians as they do not show godly behavior (as informed by our host when she was explaining to us the culture of Fiji and a brief history of the church). This is one of the main reasons why the church in Fiji is finding it hard to grow. We are very conscious of our actions in Fiji as we know everyone is watching us – but how about when we return to our comfort zones in Sydney?? This was the challenge posed to us.

So the kids arrived and they started by playing games with Grace Choy and Little Peter whilst the rest of us set up the registration table and the projector for praise and worship.

The first game played was how to create a circle out of a single piece of paper. The kids cracked their brain on how to achieve that and were amused when the solution was showed to them. (The next day – a kid actually showed Peter a circle that he had gone home to make with a big piece of paper. That was so cool knowing that they actually remember what we teach them!)

Today the kids learnt 3 new songs with Ben:

1. With Christ in the Vessel
2. I Love you Jesus Deep Down in my Heart
3. I’ve got peace like a river

Somehow or rather our own Sunday school songs are being recycled. I guess this is what you can call “evergreen”. I can bring myself back to the days and picture myself doing exactly the same actions and singing with the same amount of gusto when I was their age. How wonderful to be able to pass this down to the next generation.

Day 2’s theme was “We all say NO to God” and Hsien used the whiteboard to draw a massive diagram to show how God created everything in the 7 days and how Adam and Eve sinned as a result we all have said “No” to God. The kids understood the idea and successfully memorized Romans 3:23 – We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Hu Die did a great job of preparing the craft work and the kids enjoyed their coloring session. We also started the rehersals for the final dance presentation item on Sunday. The elder kids are dancing to “My Redemeer Lives” And the younger ones are dancing (very happily) to “This Little Light of Mine”. They all get so happy at the chorus whilst “shining” they just jump around and yell so innocently.

Most parents came a little later to pick up their kids and we decided to start showing “Prince of Egypt”. They were soooo engrossed in it and didn’t want to leave even though their parents were waiting at the door.

During the debrief session, we all agreed that Day 2 ran more smoothly and the kids are respecting us more and I feel have let their barriers “down” a little more. This is the result of taking the suggestions on how we could improve the Kids Program into consideration and preparing what we would be presenting/singing/the workshop materials the day before. In this way, we all knew what was going on and could step up to the Leadership role and take control of the kids.

We all went separate ways with Peter, Ben and myself heading to a local swimming pool to swim and Hsien and Hu Die doing grocery shopping for dinner. Grace Choy stayed in church to prepare her presentations for the next day. However, we were all in for a rude shock when we gathered back home.

THERE WAS NO WATER.

Oh great. God had answered my prayers about not giving us any more cockroaches at home but now we had no water. We couldn’t cook dinner…we couldn’t shower… we couldn’t wash the dishes…we were all sticky and smelly from the whole day out + the fiji hot and humid weather. A very kind church member had given us 2 fish for dinner and we were really looking forward to it. We had no choice but to use the drinking water cooler that our host had provided and really ration the water.

Hu Die and Hsien did a fantastic job with the lack of water, and despite the rice being a bit hard, we still had a delicious dinner of fried eggplant, cucumber and chilli fish. The whole shower issue was solved when we tagged along with our host family to head back to church to bathe.

We filled up 7 water bottles to bring home too (this morning the dirt in the water had all settled at the bottom of the bottles and looked like sand). Quite gross but better than having no water at all. See, simple things like that we have taken for granted in our normal everyday lives.

I hope you enjoy the photos from Day 2 of the Kids Holiday Club program and a hilarious video of Ben dancing.

P.s: This morning we had water trickling from the tap. There is enough for us to wash our hands and brush our teeth with, but not enough for us to bathe with.