First Service News!

Dear Family and Friends,
May 14, 2007

Yesterday was our first church service in Somgande,
and WOW what a day! On Saturday, we handed out over
400 flyers introducing ourselves and inviting people
of the neighborhood to come to our first service. As
we were walking our group grew rapidly with several
children tagging along to join us. We had several
adults tell us they would come, and could only guess
how many would. Blake and Aubrey even got involved.
Blake did wonderfully with the people, shaking
everyone's hand and even holding some of the kids'
hands. I couldn't believe it! I was so proud. Both the
kids walked in the heat like troopers for about two
hours without complaining. Aubrey was her usual social
self, and tried to barge her way into every gate we
came to. We had to tell her we were playing "Follow
the Leader" and she wasn't the leader. That worked for
a minute.
All in all, we were very pleased with how quickly that
all got done. Then I worked with Marceline practicing
our lesson. We had a class of about 15 kids on
Saturday as we practiced.
I never would have imagined the outcome on Sunday.
Mike was hoping for a group of around 20 adults and
had 22 in the service. I hoped for around 50, planned
for 60-70 and had 84 that we counted. WOW! It was
amazing! When we arrived at 8:30, we already had a
group of 8 kids that had been there since 6:00 that
morning! I was overwhelmed. We played the name game,
and let me tell you, very few of these children have
simple names. So they all had a good time laughing at
me when I severely messed up their names. But by the
end we were getting along well.
But I did learn a hard lesson. Candy time was madness.
I think all of them at one point at least had their
feet on my toes. They attacked me! My workers and
other moms kicked in to help, and I could hardly even
pass the candy off to them without the kids pawing at
my hands. So, next week I'll try a different way of
handing out candy. We'll see what works best.
Blake and Aubrey did pretty well. Aubrey was still
very tired from the day before, and decided she wasn't
going to hang out with the kids. At one point, she
escaped from Carissa's attention and made it all the
way into the church service and up to Daddy to help
him preach before Carissa could get her. Blake did
pretty well. He sang with the kids and even tried the
memory verse in French a couple of times. I had him
help me hand out coloring papers, and the poor kid got
bombarded too. So, he did his best then gave the rest
of the papers to a bigger boy. But I was proud of him.
Aubrey helped hand out crayons, and we learned a
valuable lesson there as well. Like they attacked me
for candy, they attacked my poor little helper for
colors. But she held her calm, screaming "No" several
times. Poor thing. We tried and learned.
Well, I must let you go for now. I hope this finds you
all doing well. Thanks again for all your prayers for
us. Our week was interesting and rough as we watched
several, clever ways the Devil can attack and
discourage. But to God be all the glory for our
wonderful day yesterday. He is so good and powerful.
Thank you for all you do: your prayers, your love, and
the ways that you support our family and ministry here
in Burkina. We could not be here without you.

Love and miss you
Pam

PS - I will post pics on our website as soon as I can.
www.bbfi-africa.org/hillhouse

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