Missions Festival

We held our annual Missions Festival last week. A few months ago I had requested photos of foreign market places from my well traveled friends. They supplied -- we produced. Check them out!

The Market -- without kids. The theme for the festival was "Proclaiming Peace". So, to be a friend with another, you've got to get to know who they are. What they like to do. Where they enjoy doing it. And in getting to know someone - you proclaim peace to them. We wanted to invite our kids into another cultural feel by creating a market where they could learn new things about other places. For instance - you see the table with white plates on it? That was our Turkish spice market. The kids saw, sniffed and felt about 15 different spices -- yum!

We had international foods - scones from England, Perogies for Eastern Europe, Spring rolls from China, hummus and Tsatziki with pita chips from our Middle Eastern friends. Oh, and Daim candy from Sweden. With an exception for Sweden, we have missionaries serving in all of those areas. Pretty Cool. Oh, and look who was eating our food!!!

The Stewarts from Japan!!! Gosh it was fun to have them around for the week!

Above is a station where the kids made their own money.

At the green covered table they made fashion plates out of an assortment of fabric to bring to mind all the different types of clothing people wear.

In Mexico, they got to shape tortillas out of tortilla dough. Thanks, MM for the great recipe. It was a huge hit!!

In Japan, they made some killer Origami.

Oh, and then in China we got to do some watercolors like we've seen of the Chinese landscape. That's me being so helpful! We also had a station where they created mosaics for Turkey. And I checked out 53 books from the local library of all different countries (mainly those in which we have missionaries) that the kids could look at. We had a rug and pillows set up for that area. All the while they got to listen to a slew of international music.

It was great. Made out of bamboo (from a friend's yard), pull ties and cement block weights, it looked awesome. The Art classes at the school here painted my muslin backdrops. And the church brought together all their international gear. It was such fun. Loads of work, but worth it.

Before the market was "opened", we watched a video of the ministry to street children in Acapulco. And when they started to talk about someone who worked there, we had the worker here! She came and shared with the kids about loving others through Jesus. It was truly a great night. To top it off -- our kids raised $401 for Casa Hogar in their Pennies for Peace campaign. It was great to see families come together to raise money by having a bake sale in their neighborhood, cleaning out their sibling's cars, and collecting their Easter Egg Hunt winnings and bringing them in. Definitely Proclaiming Peace to all nations!