Viva La Vina

This here building, in the middle of the slum area, 
 is the La Vina Church. When we talked the day before, the pastor said: "The people around this neighborhood, they hear the music, and the music brings them to church!"
Now, what you have to know about foreign churches is, worship is a HUGE part of their service. The worship can easily last an hour. And what wonderful music it was. It was so beautiful and joyful!

I wish you could hear it, it was wonderful! One of the most touching points was when they sang a song in Spanish and then in English, it was so nice of them to try and relate to us in our language.
After the worship, we left to go help teach the little ones. We were going to tell the story of Feeding The Five Thousand with the help of Alison, but before, we let them color. 

 

We talked to them too.  There was a little boy who said that his mom had taken him to America before. He said he didn't like it. However, he did say his mom had bought him a Prince Caspian costume, which he did like.

I can only imagine what America must be like to a little boy seeing it for the first time. He probably went to San Diego, which isn't too different from Mexico near the border.

I wonder what he would think of my neighborhood. Or the Grand Canyon. Or Disneyland. Or our pine forests. There aren't anything like that in Mexico.

What would someone who is used to living like this:

think of this?:

 

 Think of you favorite place in the whole world. Then imagine what would happen if you took one of these kids who'd never seen anything but slums in his whole life and took him there. 

                                 

 

Some of these kids will grow up, live, and die without ever seeing the outside of their whole neighborhoods.  That was one of our goals; to open new doors to these kids, not only physically but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. To teach them that they could be something other , bigger, better, than what the world expected these slum kids to be.