Guest Blog written by: Camryn Gardner

Today was truly an amazing day for me. The team woke up this morning and we all had to be at breakfast at 8:30. All the people who have been before were telling all the newbies “don’t get used to this” because that is probably the latest we will get up on this whole trip. After breakfast we went across the street to do our morning devotion. The devotion this morning was about the different things that God does for us and all the things he provides for us and that really comforted me this morning as we headed out to minster to these people. God does care for us and comforts us and provides us with our everyday needs so what makes you think he cant’ keep you safe to do his work in a foreign country?  Because he will and that really helped ease my anxiousness this morning.  After we finished our devotion, we headed back over to our hotel and broke up into our teams to prepare for the days ahead, and to get our supplies out the trunks.  When we were finished doing that we went to get lunch at Quiznos and then headed off to get our supplies from Sister Elanour’s house.  Elanour is an amazing lady who rescues girls that have been taken from there families, or takes in girls that fear being kidnapped (because that is very common in Honduras) and she takes care of them and lets them stay with her.  When the team finished with that, me and the rest of the women’s ministry team set off to go do our Bible study with the ladies of a local church.  We went back to the hotel and then we were off. We got to where the service was going to be held and started setting up. First the church had things to share with us and then we said what we had to share. That was a very neat experience for me because we got to see their style of worship and they got to see ours. First, Mrs. Stella talked about how when we think about women we relate to in the bible, we may not think of Eve as our first choice. I mean think about it. God made her to be an adult, so she had no childhood memories. She lived in paradise even though it was for a short period of time and she was having a conversation with a snake. When you think about Eve in those types of ways, we don’t sound like her at all. But then Mrs. Stella started talking about how we are very much like Eve. She was tempted by the devil like we are all the time, and she payed for listening and following him.  Even though we don’t get casted away every time we give into temptation, we are very much like Eve in that aspect.  After Mrs. Stella shared her lesson Molly did her monologue on the bleeding women and talked about how God healed the women who had been bleeding for 12 years and hadn’t been able to go to church because she was said to be unclean.   Molly helped tied her monologue into Mrs. Stella’s lesson by saying that even though you may have sin in your life, or even if other people are looking down on you for something thats’ going on, God is there and he will forgive you or maybe even take that burden away from you because he is our father and he will do anything for us.  Later in the service I sang amazing grace and it was truly amazing the way the women in that church responded to it and worshiped.  In Florence, we are guilty of letting our pride take over and thinking, I’m not going to raise my hands or close my eyes in worship because people are going to think I’m weird.  At that service tonight it would give you chills watching those ladies cry out to the Lord in praise.  After the worship service we were blessed to be able to talk to some of the women and they were stopping to ask us to take pictures with them. The service was definitely my favorite part of today because even though the people here have so little, they are so content and happy because they have the Lord and that is truly amazing.  I definitely will be taking that example back with me to South Carolina.  We need to realize it doesn’t matter what materialistic things you have because that is not what gets you closer to the Lord.  Your faith does and reading the Bible does and worship does and if people think your weird for that – so be it because the only persons opinion that should matter is the one who sent his son to die for my sins all those years ago.  I had an awesome day today and I cant wait to see what God has in store for the rest of the trip.  Please still be in prayer for us as we set off into our different ministry teams and share what God places on our hearts.
* The cross was passed today from Dean to Mrs. Anita