It was a wild scene here last night as members of the team that are flying to Ougadougou, Burkina Faso this Friday got together to pack our bags with items needed for the Haggai Fest we will be participating in as well as gifts to an orphanage there that is connected to one I've visited previously.For the orphanage, Claire and I had already packed one bag with 11 dozen cloth diapers and 41 baby blankets made by Sandy Bouquet's group up at Country Bible Church in Blair: Sandy, Riley Rasmussen, Ben Bouquet, April Bouquet, Eli Edens, Jacob Edens, and Maddie Lacey. (See photo.) Thanks, guys!
Among the things we then packed for the Fest itself were 17 Frisbees; 10 deflated balls; 2 dozen tennis balls; 10 bottles of tempura paint powder and dozens of brushes and face-painting utensils; hundreds of toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste; thousands of stickers and wristbands; hundreds of plastic eggs and balloons; and still quite a bit more fun stuff.
All of it in preparation for the activity stations we're creating to accompany the gospel rally that hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Burkina Faso kids will be attending next week.
In addition to the Haggai Fest itself, members of our team will be teaching seminars on children's ministry to a select group of 200 leaders from all over the country, conducting marriage seminars, preaching at the Haggai Fest crusade, visiting the orphanage, speaking in churches, meeting the U.S. ambassador, and more. It will be an action-packed week and we certainly would love to have your prayers.
I'll be taking Claire's laptop with me and I'll try to maintain (in an understandably reduced form) the work of Vital Signs blog. So stay tuned. Also, Patrice Kabore, the architect and inspirational leader of this project (though he won't be accompanying us to Burkina Faso) is constructing a Haggai Fest blog! That's in addition to the website he already created which informs visitors of what's going on.
