Day Four

What a day full of really awesome things.

We were back at the construction site and the kids were waiting for us. They were much more responsive and wanting to play today! The construction crew had gotten farther on the houses while we were gone as well. The house 1 team (Angie, Steve, Sarah, Danny and Jim K) finished putting up the top layers of block and later Danny was able to pour the concrete in the corner columns. Angie pulled of construction for a while to play with the kids - she painted finger nails, decorated with body stickers and covered the boys AND girls in big farm machine and animal stickers. They LOVED it!! :-)

The house 2 team spent the day leveling out the inside of the house with a dirt/rock mix. Zach, Cody, Rick, and Josh shoveled the mix into countless wheelbarrows and wheeled it into the house where Ken was waiting to spread it around. It was a very dirty job!! Zach and Ken took a break in the afternoon to play a little bit of "futbal" with some of the boys. Somehow during the day, we gained more kids to play with. We were surprised that we hadn't gained them earlier actually! I spent most of the day playing with the kids. I brought a new book today and the loved it. They asked me to sit in their house on their bed and read to them. I had to step out for a minute and when I came back, Elza (one of the boys in house 1) was reading to the other kids. It was so cute!!

We had enough sandwiches today at lunch that we were able to share with our house families and a few neighbor kids. One thing that impressed Joanne was that the woman in house 1 doesn't have much of anything and yet, she was cooking food to feed her family and a few neighbor children. She is willing to share what little she has. It was a pretty amazing site.

We then went to the school/church building that we constructed last year. There weren't any kids when we got there but they saw us coming and just started appearing out of the cracks of the village. A few remembered us from last year. (I'll save those stories for other team members to share later.) A few of us handed out candy, Ken had Soul Discovery balloons, which I'm sure pieces of them are all over the village by now :-) Angie and Joanne painted finger nails, some of the guys played soccer and everyone took LOTS of pictures. Even the moms wanted their picture taken with their kids. It was cool - they wanted to see a family portrait of sorts!

A few of us went off to see a finished example of the houses we are building and found a handicapped girl alone crawling in the mud without much clothing. Her mother was at work and nobody was around to take care of this child. Carlos V has tried for over a year to get this girl onto the mission to take care of her properly but the mom won't let her go because she gets money from the state for this girl. It was a rough situation and perhaps team members will share more later. But please be praying that Carlos can find a way to convince this mother to see the good that Carlos can do for her.

Today we will be spending the morning at the mission and then we are off to do a meal distribution at the dump. And then we're doing a cultural afternoon in Chicimula. It's going to be a great day for a change of pace and rejuvination for tomorrow's construction. Please pray for the processing and emotions following today. We have now seen many different situations and I know people are beginning to process things internally. This can be scary for some as it brings new emotions.

Much love from Guatemala!