Monday

Psalm 19: 14
“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer”
Our mission team woke to beautiful morning here in Barquisimeto, VZ. Our day was spent at the seminary improving the grounds here and there. Before we started, Stacy began our day with prayer and an emotional devotional. Pastor Alexander arrived on his day off to assist us in construction. We also noticed that throughout the day we were visited by important people in the community (the Bishop and a local Pastor). The Venezuelan people are very appreciative of us giving our time to help them in any way possible. We were also visited by Yoe who in the past was a translator for our mission team. We were blessed to have all of the people come visit today and share in fellowship.
We had four goals that we set out to complete today: Custom built cement columns, Interior painting, repairing faulty wiring/installing lights, and hospitality. Kim and Stacy were hospitality and we could not have completed the day without the help of these two. “Water anyone?”, “Orange slice?”… I heard this echoing in my head all day. Their words of encouragement were also a necessity. John, Kathy Green, and Steve were in charge of rewiring certain light fixtures and an AC unit, and they put in new light fixtures on one of the exterior buildings. This group was very diligent in their task making them scarce all day, but when our amazing lunch was prepared the Green’s came’a runnin! Dillon, Jessica, Pam, Agnes, and I (Parker) were presented with the task of painting the two rooms on the interior of the women’s dormitory. With the quality of paint, it took 4 coats to complete each room. Once completed Pam did an amazing job cleaning the floors that received more paint than the walls. And Agnes put the finishing touch on the beds, making each with love and placing a chocolate on every pillow case. Last but of course not least, there was the crew creating the cement columns from scratch. Rick, Scott, Matt, and Kathy Reeves spent all day creating columns to be mounted on the exterior wall of the complex. During the several trips I took outside to see the progress, I always enjoyed seeing the smiles on everyone’s faces and hearing the constant laughter. To reenergize everyone near the end of the day, the song “Eye of the Tiger” was played. Scott once again took out his incredible dance moves to help bring laughter to the group. Unfortunately, I do think those are his real and only dance moves.
Dinner could not have come any sooner. Stacy and her lovely assistant Pam prepared sandwiches for everyone. I had a fried egg and cheese sandwich, and let me tell you, it was DELICIOUS!
Pam (woman of many wonders today) was also in charge of leading us in our nightly devotional. The exercise we did with Psalm 46:10 was extremely powerful and everyone took so much from this. With the room completely silent, we spoke this verse… “Be still, and know that I am God.” We are down here in Venezuela not only doing, but BEING who God has called us to be. Through being still and knowing, we continue to grow closer to Him each second.
We have thankfully been able to speak to some of you today and understand that some very bad storms are going through the Southeast. Just as you are praying for us…we praying for you. We are having an absolute amazing time over here. Please continue to pray for us, so that we may continue the work God has set us out to do.
Psalm 46:10
“Be still, and know that I am God”