Monday - Wednesday

Sorry about the long silence the internet is not reliable :-)

July 7^th – 9^th Monday – Wednesday

                I have gotten a little behind so I’m going to combine a bit here. We have been having some great time of ministry and I am enjoying devotional time. It is always a awe inspiring thing to watch God at work in people’s lives. Arielle did a fabulous job yesterday sharing the devotion.

                On Monday we had our first really monsoon of the season and within minutes everything was soaked. We all played football in our barefeet on the soaked cement it was a slippery but fun time. Artura came out and threw soap down and we all used the cement as a slip and slide, yes this is painful and I’m not recommending it. We also splashed each other and made water angels. There was so much water we couldn’t have been wetter if we had jumped in the lake.

                We had noticed that they were digging a ditch beside the chapel and Arielle when asked was told it was to help keep the chapel from flooding in the monsoon season. Well the 2+ foot ditch was full before long and we all grabbed brooms and kept sweeping the water into the ditch and away from the chapel. Eventually we all went inside for lunch. We were all still wearing our wet clothes, I happened to get a chair this day instead of the bench and when I got up there was a large puddle on the chair.

                Later that day we went down to the river to see how much it had risen. Earlier in the week we had driven by and it was a trickle, now it was a moving stream. Well anyone who has gone to the water with me probably knows what happened ;-) We were all wading across and having a good time eventually the girls wanted to walk upstream, in the water, and we set out. We came to a place where the sides were rather marshy looking and Arielle and I were concerned about snakes so we got out. The girls informed us that there weren’t any snakes in the water that they would all be on the land, we are getting good at communicating without words, so we got back in. As we were nearing the middle of that part the girls yelled snake, in Spanish, we gave them the desired reaction and then kept going. Well pretty soon they are start screaming “Parana!” they were trying so hard to freak us out. Eventually they freaked each other out and everyone bolted for the shore. After it was settled that their wasn’t any danger back in everyone went. It was a lot of fun and we still randomly yell “Parana!”.  

                Jamin took off for Texas on Tuesday and their was great sadness when the children woke up and he was gone.

                We are still teaching English, Arielle and I divided the children into two groups and she is taking the younger group, under 14, and I have the older group. We have covered animals, body parts and food. When we were doing body parts every time we came to the word legs the boys in my group would catcall. Pretty soon the girls were doing it too, it was rather humorous, I think they all remember the legs the best. We have also been going over the alphabet and greetings. My group has been doing the sounds of the alphabet and working on basic sentences such as “I have brown eyes, I like/ don’t like limes.” As my group is becoming comfortable it is becoming harder to keep them on task :-/ We also do a craft after English that is suppose to help them remember the lesson. They all really love their crafts and would probably do crafts for hours if we didn’t stop them. Wednesday we did rice art we also had beans, popcorn and glitter. We were doing the craft indoors because we had a storm threatening all morning with rain off and on. We had glitter everywhere! I was not a happy camper and I have to admit that it was probably goo I didn’t speak Spanish at this point.

                Lilia and I started to teach the children how to sew. This was a rather exciting endeavor, they have a lot of machines but as Arielle and I were getting them out it became apparent that half of them were extremely old. There was one that still had a belt on the outside of the machine, surprisingly that machine did the best. I’m not sure of that is user or machine though. Lilia and I spent three hours jumping from machine to machine fixing problems. I most have rethreaded at least 100 needles, fixed over 50 bobbins, replaced 5 needles, fixed many feet, and adjusted the tension and stitch quality I don’t know how many times. It was enjoyable and some of them were really starting to get good at it. Most of them called it a day after three hours but some of the younger girls came and worked on it for another hour. The lighting is rather poor in the room and my eyes were not happy by the time we were done.

                Arielle, Artura, some of the children and I caught the end of the Argentina and Netherland game. That was fun to watch and I wanted Argentina to win, as did everyone else, so we were a happy group. When it comes down to the Germany vs Argentina game however I want Germany to win.

                Oh I almost forgot Arielle and I washed our laundry yesterday! Have you ever washed laundry in a tub with a cement scrub board and a brush? Well if you haven’t you are really missing out! We had many a laughs while working through this process and decided that whoever invented the washing machine was a genius. The rooster, that we really wouldn’t mind eating, is kept beside the chapel and next to the clothes line. It kept crowing at Arielle so she splashed it and the thing was rather indignant but shut up for a bit. So when it started up again she splashed it with more water and it kept quite the rest of the time. We might try this again in the middle of the night ;-). But I am happy to announce that we have clean clothes!

                Eventually when went next door to the girls house and helped them all with their hair. It was fun to get to see where they all live. We had only seen the chapel, Eating area, craft room, and sewing room there is still a good third of the place that we have not seen. We all had a great time. Eventually we started discussing ages and then all thought area was 24ish and I was 20 ish… You should have seen their faces when they finally believed us, they thought are Spanish numbers were wrong so then we switched to English and then back to Spanish and eventually to fingers, that Arielle is 17 and I’m 27. Arielle showed me how to Dutch zig zag braid and she did one half and I did the other half. So we kept trying to get the girls to say our half was better. She also showed me how to do the Dutch heart braid, Talena I am going to have a whole new set of braids I can do when I get back. Later that night I wanted to try upside down circle braid on Arielle and was just messing around but pretty soon I had an audience and it was rather intimidating. It actually turned out better than I thought it was going to.

                We had service Wednesday night. There is an older gentleman that stays and helps around the orphanage and I love it when he sings! He has such a heart of worship and a very good voice to match it. He sang two songs last night then Arielle and I took the children out. We needed to stay inside because of the dark and the rain so we colored and then taught them Duck Duck Goose.only we used the Spanish word for dog and cat. I would almost swear some of the boys were exaggerating the rolled “r” just to show off! It was rather chaotic and we are going to need to learn some Spanish behavior correction phrases.

                We are both having a great time and are so glad we are here. We know that God wanted us to be here and are enjoying seeing God at work. All that being said there are some things that we really miss about home, People  of course, then we are really missing our independence being stuck on the small compound can be rather grating when you are used to being able to go wherever you want. Then it can also be really frustrating trying to teach things when the children wont listen and your not able to communicate and they know it. Oh and a hot shower ;-) All that being said we are excited for the next 5 weeks to see what God is going to do.