There are many different kinds of churching in Banos. All of them have the same goals of reaching out to people for Christ. However they are not united in doing this together since they have slightly different beliefs. We talked and decided that we needed to do something about this.
So we had to figure out about how much that it would be and the total came out to about $375 USD for 50 people for a good meal and all the supplies that we would need to server them and make them feel welcomed in the house that we were at. We did this though a give campaign (it is a fundraiser though AIM that racers can do to raise money for a project that could greatly benefit the host with a lasting impact. They use this so all the money raised can go to the contact and the team doing it and they can get it quickly without a cut being taken out by a different company). We had only a few people who gave but we did reach our goal and got the money for the project.
So we went out and got the supplies the day prior to the big event. One of my team mates got the meat from the market in the morning before the event and I went to town to get supplies for the kids to make crafts with and to make placemats for all the people who were going to be there for the event. So in the day we got everything other than the meat and the fruit cut up and ready to go. To make the placemats we cut a big sheet of paper into 4 parts and then cut out hearts and glued them on to them since it was Valentine’s Day.
It had also been raining every day for more than a week so we needed a sunny day. So I was talking with Amy from home office (Unsung Heroes things) and I told her that we needed to have a sunny day tomorrow so people would come and we could have the big BBQ and to bring it up and the morning prayer if AIM has one during the morning before work starts. So the day comes and it was a bright and sunny day (we only had like 3-4 of those the entire month that we were there). I am so glad the sun came out if it had not it would have been very hard to cook the food for the people who came over.
We had a lot of people come and we were all very busy getting the food to them and keeping the plates cleaned since we did not have enough for everyone to have one at the same time, but thankfully we made it work by just keeping them clean as people finished with their food. Many of the pastors who came talked with each other and just got to hang out and start to build friendships with each other
After everyone finished Cam was going to preach on why the church needs to unite and stand as one. There was a language barrier so it needed to be translated but we had someone do it. After we got done some of my teammates who can speak some Spanish talked with the people there and some of us got to go to a place that could host teams for future world race teams/squads.
