Valdez-The Journey and Day 1

This week my team is working in the small town of Valdez. It's over 220 miles from the Palmer-Wasilla area. Normally it takes about 5 hours to drive from city to the other, but we made a few stops on they way down. We got to stop and have a picnic in the largest national park in the world! We didn't get to see much of the park, but what very small part we saw was beautiful. We also stopped at a glacier and two waterfalls. The mountains we saw on the drive were amazing! It's hard to believe that we were in the car for almost 8 hours( including stops!). When I have a chance, I'll post some of the pictures. The homes we are staying in this week and the location for the Kids' Club we are working is actually in Keystone Canyon. We are surrounded by waterfalls and beautiful trees. The area we are in is actually considered Rainforest! (It was barely 50 degrees today and we were all bundled in our jackets. Have you ever heard of a cold rainforest???) This area is gorgeous!

As I've mentioned, we're doing a Kids' Club in Valdez. The club is scheduled for Tuesday-Thursday. Preschoolers come in the morning from 10:00-11:30 and then older kids come in the afternoon from 1:00-2:30. This is the first type of Bible Club for the church in this area so they are very excited.

Today we had 9 preschoolers and 6 olders kids. That may not seem like many kids, but for this area that is a big success! (We had a Backyard Bible Club a couple of weeks ago and only had 2 kids on the very last day. We were ecstatic that they came!) Most of the kids seemed to at least have heard about Jesus before, but I think they still learned something now. The younger kids talked about Noah and why it's important to obey God. The older group talked about Jesus's birth, the wise men following the star, and about the special gifts the wise men gave to Jesus. We also played some really fun games with the kids-Elbow Tag, Simon Says, Human Knot, the Trash Can Game (I won :)), and Gorilla, Man, Gun (full body version of Rock, Paper, Scissors). The kids really seemed to enjoy everything we did today! Here's hoping that we get all those kids and their friends tomorrow!

This week seems like it is going to be tons of fun. Please pray for our team as we prepare for two more days of teaching and loving on these kids. Also pray for the kids and their families and that this Kids' Club will open up the door for families in this neighborhood to share the love of Christ with their neighbors.