More pictures from Sunday

Anne and Suyapa
Snacktime!
Mirza, Astrid, Ela
Kenneth!
This is me trying to get the kids as they slid down the slide at church!
Keith playing hide and seek
Karen and her new love Genesis
Ana K and Ela´s room. The teenaged girls live in Abel and Toyita´s house now on the property. Much better for them!

Sunday full of Grace

It is only 5:30 and we have already had a full day. Marie thought she would beat the system and get up early to take a hot shower. She let the hot water run for quite awhile to no avail. Finally she gave up and shivered through a freezing cold shower. Minutes later, her roommate Jan K. announced that she had had a lovely hot shower once she figured out the hot and cold faucets were reversed. Marie hopes she has taken care of her Lenten suffering now!

We went to Cristo Redentor, the Honduran Episcopal Church. There are about 50 congregants with the priest Connie, and Suzy and Sallie (!) playing guitar and Mari singing. We started with the Great LItany. Keith, the priest from St. Aidan´s, read the Gospel. Suzy translated the sermon for us exhorting us all to remember to be patient and wait for God´s blessings in His own time. We immediate gratification Americans paid close attention. Minta held and rocked Cesia Maria through most of the service. She was in heaven. After the service, while waiting for the van, I played with Sallie and some other children on the slide. I was a human bridge, straddling the slide with El Mano Malo that tried to tickle them as they slid shrieking between my legs. Lots of laughs especially when they managed to knock me off!

After church we stopped by to see Casa LAMB, the new guesthouse. It really is lovely, lots of room and comfortable accommodations.

After a delicious lunch of chicken noodle with a type of squash called pepian. The pepian was wonderful. Then off to San Buena Ventura! We arrived during the children´s rest time so Wheeler took us on a tour of the new construction. The school is amazing! Huge and will be great. There is still alot of work to do on it but wow. A couple of the older children came running to see us. Gina flew into John´s arms. She didn´t know he was going to be there today and was so very happy. John fell to his knees and completely enveloped her in a bear hug. Next thing we knew there were children everywhere! I guess I got a year´s supply of hugs in about 10 minutes. It was so great to see them all again.

We all had a great time playing with the children. Some of the boys and I played on the playground - they wanted to show off on the monkey bars! The new team members promptly fell in love with the children. It is funny to see how the Americans and the children pair up. I´m not sure who picks whom but it´s not long before an adult and a child have become attached. Thanks to Pat Klausman at St. David´s we gave out tons of brand new beanie babies! The children were so excited! Naturally, the little boys were playing with them like cars and whacking each other with them... Boys are the same everywhere. But they also hugged and cuddled them when no one was looking. One boy, who arrived in September, is Fabio and looks to be about 12. He was thrilled with his Toucan and walked around proudly showing it to everyone. I wonder if this is one of the first times he has gotten a toy of his own. Keith played hide and seek with the girls and, it turns out, does not seek very well! The girls were pretty much easy to see but he just couldn´t find them amidst many giggles.

We had great fun with the babies in the nursery. Oh my gosh. They are so cute. I was particularly happy to see Fanny, Paola, and Lester David. These three were rescued from extreme violence last fall. They are doing so well.

We are getting ready for dinner. Erika is fixing tilapia. Bill is practicing his singing and guitar playing for our evening sing a long. After dinner we will sort all the clothes and such we brought with us. OH! Great news for Anne and Margot. The lost suitcase arrived today at the airport! Danilo will go get it tomorrow. I am particularly pleased because it also contains all the homemade goodies Anne is famous for. (For those of you monitoring my Lenten no-dessert discipline... Fr. Paul gave me dispensation since we are all here working all day for the Lord. At least I think he said that...)

Tomorrow the work begins. Margot, Jan K, and Dorita go to Flor to work with the ladies at La Cantera. (La Cantera is the squatter´s village, extremely impoverished. We support several single mothers,families, and elderly women through the CAP program.)The rest of us return to SBV. We will be painting the inside of cottage 3 where the babies live and some of us will be building a wall around what is now the kitchen. This building used to be the laundry but now is the kitchen. It needs a wall built as a windscreen.

Boys on the playground
Margot and the babies
Fanny laughing! What a change from when she arrived at SBV.
Lovely Angelica
Nursery children
John and Gina
The school
Sergio and Carlos with their peluchas (stuffed animals)

More pictures from Saturday

Cesia Maria. Note how tiny her fingers are.
Aaron Joshue and Danilo
Hanging out at Erikas

We´re BAAAAACK!

YAY! We are back at Erika´s after a mostly uneventful day of travel, aside from the game of dominoes the guys played on the escalator... more on that later. We all arrived at the airport at the appointed time and were whisked off to our own check in desk by one of Delta´s finest! It was wonderful. All luggage was quickly weighed and checked in. We checked in 30 HUGE suitcases filled with clothes, school supplies, beanie babies for the children, teacher supplies, and more. Sadly, we retrieved 29 suitcases. I am ever hopeful that number 30 will find its way to Erikas tomorrow.

We had a quick lunch and headed off to Suzy´s for our first event of the week. See the pictures of Cesia Maria! She is absolutely precious and tiny. For those who don´t know the story, Cesia Maria was born 4 mos ago, premature, weighing 2lbs, with hydrocephaly. Her birth mother had no interest in the baby. She received a shunt to handle the hydrocephaly and is expected tolive a normal life. Social services called Suzy and asked her to take Cesia Maria. Guess what Suzy said... What she always says - Yes. Now at 4 mos she weighs 8 lbs which is STILL less than my boys weighed when they were born! We stayed about an hour. I played with Sallie who has shot up like a weed! Mari, Kelsy, Lettie were there but Elsa and Lucy were out with Tomasa. Aaron Joshue is adorable. I don´t have any pictures of him because everytime he saw me he burst into tears! I am sure it had nothing to do with me, a coincidental gas bubble perhaps! OK, so Minta got a great picture of Aaron Joshue -- in my defense she bribed him with a cool toy. Suzy now has 9 children at her house!

We returned to our Honduran home for a brief rest and a delicious dinner of meatloaf, baked potatoes, vegetables and ice cream! After dinner we played an icebreaker game, sang some songs to Bill´s guitar playing and then Compline led by new team member, Marie from Macon!

Tomorrow is church at Cristo Redentor, lunch at Erika´s, and the afternoon at San Buena Ventura , aka SBV. We are all pretty tired tonight but we look forward to a big day tomorrow. The weather is beautiful so I can´t wait till we get out to SBV
tomorrow.

Bonnie and Jess, we all prayed for Jessamyn tonight and added her to everyoné´s prayer list.


Sallie
Suzy, Julio, Dorita
Karen and Cesia Maria
Al, Dorita, Minta,Suzy, Julio, Marie

Make a Smilebox greeting

Playground update!

The work continued after we left - thanks to Franklin, Wilmer, and William... Look at it now!

Parque de Mitzi

Well, this morning started at 6AM with a very unexpected turn of events which caused a schedule change. We ended up spending all morning at Erika's with the 17 Koreans who arrived yesterday to work at another ministry called Jericho. They got here in time to go to a healing celebratory for Betsy last night. Today they were scheduled to do a medical mission. They were finally able to leave at about 11:30. They haven't returned yet - I hope they accomplished alot.

We left for SBV soon after. The construction workers were gone (they only work half a day on Saturday) so the only "work" was to play with the kids on the not quite done playground. I feel comfortable leaving the rest of the work in the able hands of Franklin, Wilmer and the rest of the crew. As soon as we gave the word, the playground was crawling with happy, shouting children!

I think I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Suffice it to say, all the trials and tribulations getting to this afternoon were worth it! Finally, these precious children will have a place to play! Thanks be to God!

Hasta la luego and I can't wait till my return in March!

(Note to my family: I could feel Mom's presence so strongly this afternoon. I think this makes her very happy.)

Almost there

Our last full day of work and a long, hard, productive one it was. The sun was out all day (natch, the only day I forgot sunscreen...) so the ground dried out and we had no unscheduled delays. We got started on the first slide which was a bear. One of the screw casings was put in funny which made it very difficult. I got busy with David digging holes again - this time for the slide footings - smaller and shallower than for the beams. I managed to escape the concrete mixing this time although I did shovel and cart a wheelbarrow full of gravel to the playground. Here is an interesting insight in the event anyone ever builds a playground in the future. It makes it much harder when the construction experts have never actually seen one! Franklin had never seen monkey bars before and he has agonized about them all week! He kept wanting to put them about 3 ft off the ground or putting them higher with a bridge underneath. We kept trying to explain how they were used. Franklin was frantic about the children falling off. Hunter would then act out how they would only fall a couple of feet onto their feet. Anyway, I think he finally gave into the crazy American volunteers. I suspect he secretly planned to come back and take them down after we left! Happily, we managed to get them up and he could finally visualize how the children will play on them.

The children can really see the playground now and the buzz around the edges is getting more and more excited. The little boys can barely contain themselves. Little Daniel happened to be in the right place at the right time. No one was around so I lifted him up onto the monkey bars. He immediately took to them! I imagine he is boasting about it tonight in the boys bedroom! The next to try them out was Wilmer! I don't think he had ever seen them either! The other piece of equipment that is totally baffling to them is the climbing coil. Fortunately, just in the nick of time, Hunter explained how it should be placed, just as the concrete was hardening around the bottom. We were able to reorient it - phew. Again, I think there is alot of skepticism. The tube remains the biggest mystery. I imagine that will be quite a production tomorrow. The climbing wall is the other piece still unattached but that shouldn't be too tough to do.

All that is left one those pieces are taken care of are the ramp/steps to get onto one platform and the railings around each platform. That is simple carpentry so should go fast.

At 3PM Cazador and I were called into the main room of Cottage 1 for a joint "farewell party" and birthday party for Gina and Kathy. Each age group had a program for us, Daniel spoke for a long time (Paty gently had to give him the hook or he would still be going!) there were child led prayers (very sweet) and the teen girls brought down the house with their "beauty pagent." (see picture!) Most of the children wrote letters, cards,or drew pictures and they, to my surprise, gave me a gift of 3 decorative pitchers! After our program it was birthday time. The birthday cake was beautiful and huge (so many cake eaters there!) and the girls each got a gift. Gina got a new jumprope and Kathy a stuffed unicorn. Great fun was had by all!

Cazador and I returned to the work site to finish up the day. I filled deep puddles with dirt to even out the terrain a bit and removed rocks and construction detritus.

On the way home, Cazador and Wilmer had a high time in the back of David's jeep. They were talking a blue streak, all in Spanish! Hunter was explaining how to make a prosthesis and then they roared at Wilmer's attempt to say prosthetist, especially when Hunter pointed out how they sometime joke and say "prosthetute!" They sang La Bamba together, compared notes about girls and who knows what else!

Tomorrow is a half day of work and play time with the kids. It will be so hard to say goodbye...

Prayer request: David's 8 mo old baby has had diarrhea for 2 weeks and is quite ill. They are very worried about Jonathan and are taking him to a gastroenterologist tomorrow. There was a healing service for Betsy tonight... She has stopped cancer treatment in favor of deep faith and prayer.

Beginning of day 5:


The little girls getting Cazador during siesta!


The girls during the "beauty pagent" - look at Astrid's hair!!! They were hilarious.


Looking at the letters from the children:


Wilmer testing the monkey bars!


Daniel on the bars:


Gina - birthday girl!


End of day 5: