We’ve been on a Mission to MARS this week. I bet you didn’t know that Saipan had a space program, did you? Well, actually it doesn’t. Mission to MARS (Meet A Risen Saviour) is the theme of the Vacation Bible School that we’re directing here at Living Hope Church of the Nazarene.

At 9:30 every morning the big church van rumbles up the driveway and spills out its load of children. I’m not sure how many passengers the van is supposed to hold but it doesn’t seem to matter how many kids there are, there’s always room for at least one more!

We started Monday morning with 19 kids and the number has grown each day. We start the fast paced morning with prayer, action songs, and announcements at Mission Control. Next we follow the zany adventures of Zoom Aerospeed and his sister, Twila, on an interplanetary space adventure, via video, of course! After that, it’s time to split into groups and head off to the four centres: Story Station, Bible Memory, Cosmic Crafts and Galactic Games. We meet back at Mission Control to wrap up the morning and then it’s time for a snack.

Feeding the kids a hearty, healthy snack/lunch is an important part of what we do here. During the school year, they get breakfast and lunch at school but many come from very poor homes and though they aren’t starving, we know that some of them are pretty hungry. Like all kids, they’re also hungry for love and attention and what a joy it is to give them that as well!

      

Early in our stay on Saipan, we were involved in a Friday evening/Saturday teen retreat where we were introduced to a hide-and-seek game known as Sardines in the Jungle. The game is played after dark which basically means anytime after 7:00 p.m. here. One player is sent out to hide in the jungle and a few minutes later the rest of the players begin to search for him or her. When someone finds the person who is hiding, they join them. Over time, the group grows as more and more players find and join the ones who are hiding. Crowding closely together to avoid detection, they become sardines in the jungle! Such fun! Sneaking around in the dark, listening for unfamiliar sounds then crowding together and trying to remain silent.

As Richard and I planned the activities for today’s Family Fun Day at the church, we wondered if Sardines in the Jungle would work during the day. Probably not but the jungle all around us just begged to be used for some sort of hide-and-seek game. Rather than playing the traditional game where all but one person hides and waits to be found, we wanted something that would more actively involve everyone who wanted to play. What if we hid something in advance and everyone had to search for it? The initial idea began to grow and this is what we came up with:

I started with a couple of plastic grocery bags

and cut them into strips. The kids have been learning John 3:16 so I wrote one or two words of the verse on each strip, 20 in all. Then, yesterday, we hid them in the jungle.

  

That was fun. I hadn’t really explored our jungle during daylight before and was intrigued by some of what I saw.

  

Can you see the plastic strip hidden in the second photo? Or what about the one below? Maybe that one’s a little easier. Did you know that that’s how a coconut tree begins to grow?

After we enjoyed today’s delicious potluck lunch, it was time to begin the search. The skies opened and one of Saipan’s short lived but drenching rains began to fall but that didn’t dampen the children’s spirits any. We’d told them in advance to be prepared to get wet. We hadn’t expected that to happen until we brought out the water balloons later in the afternoon but they thought it was hilarious that God added water to this game too.

  

When all the strips were found (well, almost all, “perish” is still out there somewhere!) it was time to put the puzzle together and recite the verse. It was great to watch them all working together!

By the time that was done, the sun was out again and it was time for water balloons and the much anticipated slip and slide!

 

 

When we came to Saipan, we didn’t expect to be invited to meet with members of the Municipal Council and we certainly didn’t expect to see our picture in the local paper but there we are! Municipal Council Chairman, Ramon Camacho, is one of the prime movers behind the new Saipan Neighborhood Watch Task Force and it was his idea to invite the leaders of the various churches on the island to become involved in spreading awareness of this new initiative.

Neighborhood Watch is a program that is designed to reduce crime and to instil a greater sense of security by putting the “neighbor” back into neighborhood and involving individuals in making their community a safer place to live. Petty crime or “mischief” as Task Force adviser, William S. Torres, called it is increasing on the island. He attributes this, in part, to the present recession which has hit Saipan particularly hard.

Though bringing the program to Saipan has been in the works for some time, it’s introduction is particularly timely given the fact that the most heinous crime in the island’s history was committed just over two months ago. Early on the morning of May 25, 10 year old Faloma Luhk and her 9 year old sister, Maleina, disappeared without a trace while waiting for their school bus. The FBI were brought in to participate in the search, as was a search and rescue dog from Hawaii, but not a thing was found that would lead them to the girls. Their faces stare at us from posters and banners all over the island but the search has pretty much come to a dead end. People are definitely ready for anything that will make the island a safer place for their children.

Though it was neat to see our photo in the paper, we weren’t at all happy with the reporting. During the meeting, Rev. Pete Miral of the Christian Bible Church mentioned that it would be difficult to get people to report suspicious activity if they didn’t have confidence that the Department of Public Safety would follow through on those reports. He said that his church was burglarized a year ago but the DPS has yet to solve the case. Knowing that there is general unhappiness with the DPS on the island and knowing, of course, that headlines sell newspapers, the title of the article became “Religious leaders disappointed in DPS” which in no way reflects either the purpose or the focus of our meeting!

In addition to being unhappy with the reporting, we were also very disappointed by the poor turnout from the churches. We were particularly surprised to see no representation from the Catholic church which holds most of the islanders tightly in its grip. Camacho emphasized the important role that religious leaders play in the community and the powerful influence that they can have for good. I’m sure he was just as disappointed as we were.

 

With our first week on our own here drawing to a close and our first busy weekend of ministry behind us there’s no question that the Lord is with us!

The big church van rumbled up the driveway shortly after one o’clock on Saturday afternoon and ten energetic children piled out. The eleventh arrived a few minutes later with her mom who is a leader. Mr. Richard started them off with a game of ball tag. Next we sang some actions songs before dividing into younger and older groups for their Bible lesson. I had the older group and Amor, the younger. They’ve been using children’s Bible quizzing material to study 1 Samuel and boy, do these kids know their scripture! This week was a review of their lesson entitled A Good King Goes Bad from 1 Samuel 15. Can you name the king of the Amalekites? They can. Do you know why God rejected Saul as king? They do.

Following the lesson came their favourite part of the afternoon; the snack! There’s no question that some of these kids are hungry. We suspect that the food we provide is one of the main reasons that some of them come. During the school year, they eat breakfast and lunch at school but that’s not available to them over the summer. They quickly devoured the ham and cheese sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies and topped them off with pink lemonade.

Yesterday, we had 24 children, teens and adults for Sunday School. Richard taught the adult class, I taught the teens and local women, Malou and Amor taught the children. Again, Richard picked up many of the kids with the van which is a very vital part of the ministry here. Without it, most of the kids wouldn’t get here as it’s too far for them to walk and very few of them attend with their parents. We’re hoping that we might get some of the parents out for a family fun afternoon later in the month and for the Vacation Bible School wind-up next month.

   

There were 25 of us for yesterday’s church service. The open porch across the front of the house serves as our sanctuary as well as a Sunday School room (above). Though the house has a formal dining room, we also eat our meals out on the porch so it definitely serves many purposes.

What would worship be without music? Neither of us plays an instrument but our many years in the classroom taught us the art of being flexible and making do, skills that we’re quickly learning transfer well to the mission field! We sang along with hymns and choruses on CDs which worked just fine. We also watched a short video clip about what the church has been doing in Haiti since the devastating earthquake hit there early last year and Richard preached a message from 1 John entitled “Believe”.

Afterward, when Richard had delivered the children to their respective homes and everyone else had left, it was time for us to kick back and indulge in a little R&R. I hadn’t been off the property for a couple of days and though it’s spacious, I was beginning to feel a little claustrophobic so we decided to walk part of the beach path that skirts along the lagoon on the west side of the island. Other than my two walks up and down the steep driveway with the dog each day, we haven’t been doing a lot of walking since we’ve been here and it felt very good to stretch our legs. We figure we must have walked at least 4 miles.