Day Seven

I know this is a little late but I feel it is important to document our final day at the mission. It was our last day on the construction site so we were raring to go and yet we ended up sitting around until almost 9:00am before we got going. We were waiting on the paint and Carlos. I have to say that I was very impressed with how on-the-ball everyone was this week. We very rarely had to wait at all this week. It's been great! So we got to the site and we had the biggest crowd of kids yet. Apparently news has spread that the Americanos were in town! :-) We gave away lots of candy and then got to the painting of the houses. We FLEW through the painting with the help of quite a few of the kids.

After we finished painting, we all pitched in and cleaned up the yard area and got down to the dedication. We gathered the first family together and Steve prayed an awesome prayer over the house and the family. The mom started crying and saying thank you, that she has never dreamed of being able to have her own house, and to be able to have her whole family in beds (we also gave them beds for their new houses) and not have to sleep on the floor. It was pretty emotional! Then we moved over to the second house, the house of the mudslide victims. Again, Steve led us through an awesome prayer and the mom had tears just streaming down her cheeks the whole time. Then it was time to say good-bye. Sometimes it is difficult to comprehend how fast you can fall in love with a family. Mayli, the oldest daughter in house 2, was crying which just made it harder to say goodbye. It was like a big mass of hugs for about 5 minutes. I'm tearing up just remembering it.

After lunch we got back on the bus and traveled about 40 minutes in the opposite direction to the town of Gualan and the village of Limones. This is where the 4th house is going to be built (3 houses will be in El Modelo). The village looks very much like El Modelo with the difference being that there are hills and trees. But the level of poverty is very much the same. Many of the families in this village are victims of the massive mudslides this past summer. While we were waiting for the family, more and more kids started gathering around us at the school. There are about 100 families in the village and each family has 5-7 kids so we had a few hundred kids gathered around us. Zulema (our translator who was amazing all week!!) took charge and started singing and playing games with the kids. She saved us! We had so much fun playing with these guys and we ended up having enough candy to be able to give every single person at least 1 piece. In fact, we left with candy! We couldn't give it away!! The family is a grandmother, a mother and her 7 kids. SEVEN KIDS!! We gave them presents and candy and took pictures. We had Zulema explain who we were to the family so they weren't totally freaked out :-)

Angie was very concerned about the amount people in the size of house. More about this in a bit. We were taken out to dinner to El Meson as the second half of our cultural experience. It is a wonderful restaurant. We were served family style and let me tell you - we ate well! We had a chicken broth soup, nachos, baked potato, corn on the cob, more meat than you could eat and ice cream. It was SOOOO yummy! Over dinner, Carlos came by to see us and Joanne brought up the idea of expanding the size of the house for the family in Gualan. And he said, if we sent the money, absolutely we can increase the size. YAY! Good idea, Angie!

We had an amazing week. It was truly God blessed. Thank you for all of your support and prayers. We appreciated everyone's thoughts and prayers more than you will ever know. Please continue to check the blog and team members will be posting their own thoughts and feelings as they process through everything we experienced and saw. We'll be posting pictures and video as well.

Dios bendiga