Internet is working!! FINALLY!

Well it's been quite the afternoon.. After a multi-hour battle with the internet I think we've finally won. We were having problems with the extender in the dining hall, so I'm posting from John and Darlene's living room. 

We’ve had quite the crazy schedule the last two days. After leaving all of you at Woodcrest, we headed to the airport, smoothly checked into LAX with no problems. We boarded our flight and attempted to settle in and get some sleep on the flight down. Some of us got more sleep than others. ;) We disembarked into San Salvador’s airport and then headed off to our ziplining adventure. Customs took us longer than we had hoped, but after an hour and a half we climbed into the vans and began our 45 minute commute towards the coast of El Salvador. We arrived at the Canopy Zipline company and after instructions, getting outfitted with our proper equipment (gloves, harnesses, and helmets) and receiving an education on how to zipline we all conquerored any fears we had and began the adventure. We flew over a coffee plantation, river, and tropical forests. One of the best parts was being able to watch each other and cheer each other on as we conquered the different sections of the course. After finishing our adventure, we came back to the airport thinking we’d have maybe a ½ hour before our flight boarded, only find out we were scheduled to be delayed until 6pm. We found our gate, grabbed lunch and settled in. We read, slept, and bonded together. Needless to say as it approached 6pm we were anxious to head home, and we were really excited when our plane actually started taxiing on the runway at 7:30pm! When we got in to Belize, we were the last plane before the airport closed. The many prayers you sent up and we were praying were totally answered! The immigration agents and customs agents were not up for the challenge of checking up on our 40 students/adults and the 85 bags we brought with us! Can ya blame them?! Mr. Reynolds paid the $40 duty that was the total amount for the 85 bags we had, and the customs agents did not open one bag! Praise the Lord!!! Our God is sooooo good! All of our 300 bears, supplies for VBS, and gifts went through without any problems! It was the fastest I’ve ever seen customs happen. We walked out the doors and were greeted by Mr. C and Mrs. Orr. We then loaded up our two vans and trailer, and began our 3 ½ hour commute home. We rolled into camp and crawled out of the vans at 12:05am. There were no arguments about heading straight to bed. We started our morning at 8:30 with a yummy breakfast of fry jacks (kind of like fried tortillas), eggs, and ham. We were quite happy. We ate, unpacked and then Mrs. Orr and John (our missionary from Alabama) and the kids headed off on a hike to the creek on the camp property. We unpacked and organized the bags, prepped our crafts for tomorrow’s VBS and practiced our skits. Mr. C, Mrs. Clark, and Miss Frost dropped by the church to meet with Pastor Jose. We ironed out some of the details of VBS and chatted about projects and our hopes for the partnership we have with the church there in Bella Vista. We had hot dogs for lunch and then divided back up to work on crafts and the games group headed in to look at the village field we’re using for games and pick up some snacks for the kids at VBS. Right now we are finishing our craft prep hanging out in the dining room at camp listening to the thunderstorm outside. So far we haven’t had any rain, but it’s definitely cooled off, for which we’re glad. Tonight after dinner we will head to church for the evening service. Thanks for the prayer. We are all doing well and are drinking LOTS of water! J Tomorrow we start our first day of VBS in the afternoon, and Pastor Jose said we could very easily have more than 300 kids! Yikes!!!