The Traveling Banana: Conferência Fiel

July 22nd-24th we got to help out with the FIEL Conference. Fiel is faith in Portuguese. And the FIEL conference is a conference for all the Mozambican pastors in northern Mozambique to come and hear some teaching from the Word, fellowship with other believers and to be encouraged. We got to be the volunteers! Fun! We got to help serve at all the meals, except breakfast. Fold silverware before every meal. Clean up after the meals. Help cut up veggies. And do other odds and ends that needed to be done :) It was a blast! Here's a few... ok.. 83 pictures from the week :)

It started off with people signing in with Mr. Peterson. :)

Then we would hand them their name tags :) (Notice the long line by Mr. Peterson!)

The chapas that drove people to the conference.

Mr. Rick took pictures of everyone who came and then at the end of the conference he got them all printed out and gave the families their pics :) It was a really sweet idea :)

Name tags :)

Giving people name tags :) It was fun! They were all in alphabetical order and the people would say their names and we would go searching for them! It was like a fun game :) hehe.

Kent... well you can't really see him and Mr. Seiler. Kent was in charge of the sound stuff during the whole conference and he did a great job too! Although it was sad, cause he was in the tent most the time so we never got to hang out with him. :P

AJ testing the mics.

Hehe, Andrew trying to talk into the mic. A lil' short buddy!

Tent peg! :)

A cool coke can that was just sitting by the tent.

Where the people would wait for their Chapa. It was like a maze! SO fun!

Waiting in line to get checked in! Looong line! and it just kept getting longer!

When people didn't have a name tag... we had to write one out :)... If you can see the names on the name tags, can you see the Simão Simão name and the Tiago T. Tiago. We were wondering if his middle tame was Tiago too. But, half way through the week, Andrew burst our bubble and sad that the guy's middle name was Tome... or something like that :) hehe... Oh well... it was fun wondering :)

folding silverware! Fun fun!

Eating dinner the first night :)

Ready to start the day in a happy way :) hehe..

Bethy serving the trays :)

The cooks served the main meal. Gracie helped out once... :)

Serving :) Elijah served the chamosis. Sarah served the bread. I served the fruit. And Ty served the soft drinks :) Mmm.

Andrew and Sr.... I don't remember his name.. marking off the people who come in to eat.

People going through the line.

Aw! Damarise and Bethy ready to start serving!

Elijah came one day to help us serve! It was a huge help! Thanks Elijah!

Bottle Caps :) So colourful! Love it!

Bethy... or Cinderella :) hehe, She was a wonderful, hard worker :)

Waiting for the meeting to start :) Say cheese!

The meeting tent.

A beautiful sunset... or Earth turn... :)

Folding silverware :)

The place where we served the food :)

The tent all lit up and shining!

Andrew in all the cook garb :) What a cutie!

All the servers minus Ty. Left to Right front row- Andrew, Benaiah, Bethy, Ian.

Back row- Sarah, Gracie, Elsa, Me, Andrew, and Damarise:)

Hehe, sweeping the floor... turned into the Wicked Witch of the West reenactment ;)

Bethy playing with the lil' boy. Mmm making a salad!

Watching the lil' boys sing and play :)

Check out the size of these fish! WOW!

The kitchen crew! They were cooking up a storm all day long!

An albino boy!! :) he was so cute!!!

And he loved music! All he would do is sing!

Hehe, we are fascinated by the albino boy singing :]

Yeah! He's smiling! :)

This kid was cute and he had enormous lips! Aw!

Bethy helping the lil' dude put on his boot :)

Damarise and Bethy! Aww! I have beautiful older sisters!

The tea. Or milk ;) No one really knew what it was. I think we decided it was 3/4 milk and 1/4 tea :) Hehe, but probably more milk than that!... It was GOOD!

Mmm.. only a few of the thousands of cookies that Grandma Stolk and Aunt Julie baked for the conference! They were good cookies!

Bethy demonstrating what the sign says. Only 2 cookies :)

"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way "

The Cups... ready for tea to be poured into them :)

Ready to serve snack.. except Gracie :) hehe...

Bethy serving tea! Wow! look at the loooong line behind her!

Serving tea :)

People eating their snack or Lunche.

The folded silverware! Yeah!

Tangerines and Bananas :D

Andrew ready to mark and punch a whole in people's meal cards.

Damarise and Bethy's trays ready to be served.

All the lil' boys loved Ty! :) I think in this picture he was taking pics of the boys and then showing them themselves :)

Ready to work!! :)

And totally worn out after working :P

Hehe, this was fun! In the big meeting tent the video taped everything and somehow sent it over through the projector in another building that way moms with babies could come into the other room and still be able to watch and hear it. Anyways, Gracie and Sarah went into the tent while everyone was on break and made faces into the camera while we watched in the other room :) Then Damarise and I did it :) hehe.. It was fun.

The serving gang minus Benaiah. left to right, front row- Ian, Andrew, Sarah, Bethy, Gracie, Ty.

Back row- Andrew, Damarise, Elsa, and me :)

Grandpa and Grandma Stolk :) They helped out so much! Grandma Stolk and Aunt Julie cooked all the desserts and Grandpa Stolk set up the meeting tent and did a lot of other stuff, yet a couple of evenings they came and helped us serve food! Wow! How sweet! :)

A group of us getting ready to serve :)

Damarise and Bethy getting ready to serve trays for dinner.

The Andrew's. Big bro and Lil' Bro!

The lady's group singing! It sounded so.. amazing! And African! Mr. Rick put his recorder in the middle of all of them so that he could get them singing :)

This lil' boy was adorable! But, he would never smile for pictures :) So, Gracie tried the tickle method..

Tickle tickle! :) Now they're both smiling :)

The pile of folded silverware!

Bethy's muscles!

Damarise has some fast moving fingers when it comes to playing the piano ;)

Look at Damarise and Bethy's muscles! (those things were heavy!!)

Since it was the last day of the conference we put together some baggies with a couple books inside. We had a fast moving assembly line and got the job done pretty fast :)