Mattawa Communities Day

   When we were living in the Solomon Islands, I would hear about Mattawa Communitites Day from my sister Ginny and my parents.  Held in the town park, the church and individual members would join businesses and other organizations for a festive day - kind of local fair for Mattawa and surrounding rural communities.  After moving to Mattawa in 2005, Communities Day activities were either not held or we missed it due to traveling.  So when Mattawa decided to restart the event and one of our church members volunteered to organize the booths, I was excited that I would get to be involved. 

   August 27th  was a hot day that began with a parade down the main road through Mattawa. The vehicles ranged from a balloon festooned 3 wheel bicycle and old classic cars to highly decorated floats and even huge combine driven by a young woman.

  The current Miss Washington was there promoting her platform of education for the poor. Once at the park there were dancing horses, booths from various school and business organizations, and of course food stalls selling typical fair food. 

   Our church, Saddle Mountain Bible Church, put up 2 booths side by side. Jim helped some of the other men put up plastic sheeting for one end.

    One was for adults to sit around and listen to Christian music, have a cookie, and talk - hopefully about spiritual things.  The other was for the children to hear Bible stories. In between them was a cooler with free water for all who were thristy.  Displayed near the cooler was John 7: 37-38, "...Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, 'If anyone is thristy, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me,as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.' "    The men, including my brother-in -law, Mark, pictured below, had some meaningful conversations. 

  The plan was for the children to have a different story presentation every 20 minutes or so.  We had a couple of flannelgraph Bible stories, a missionary story from Africa and one about a Japanese POW in WWII, the Wordless book, and a presentation using a giant Evangicube. 

What we didn't plan, was the constant loud music blaring from the bandstand.  I told my story twice but even shouting I am not sure anyone past the front row heard me.  Since I was the one with the camera, I didn't get any photos of me but below are a couple of the other women doing their presentations. 

 

   My sister, Ginny shared the Evangicube with a small group toward the end of the afternoon.  The young boy on the far left in the photos had heard the gospel for the first time via the Evangicube earlier.  He came back later and ended up explaining it himself to another boy.  Ginny gave him a Bible and we pray God will continue to help him mature in his faith.

 



 Pray for all those young and old that heard the stories and talked about spiritual things during the Mattawa Communities Day.  And pray that our small congregation would be a light in the community every day of the year. 

How does our garden grow??

         Back in May, Jim and I cleaned out an old garden area of the yard and planted our first "real" garden here in the USA.  We had one that lasted one season at our Munda house when Jeffrey and Emily were small by carting soil from the bush to cover over the coral base left over from World War II.  Another attempt at a garden was at our Honiara house in 2000 which was planted just before we were evacuated due to the ethnic conflict and didn't get back for 14 months. We never saw the "fruit of our labor" for that garden. 

So it has been exciting to see this empty ground fill up with plants

and produce.

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 We enjoyed fresh peas and a couple of peppers and currently have an abundance of summer squash and cucumbers. We are waiting for more of  the tomatoes to ripen.   It is always nice to find people without a garden to share with and I even found a recipe for a summer squash coffee cake/ bread.