Building/Translating/Cute Kids/Good times

What a great time we’ve had! On Saturday afternoon we caught a bus to a town an hour and a half outside the capital to Comayagua. Unfortunately our bus broke down just outside the city and we had to sit and wait for another bus to come for a over an hour. We were asked on Wednesday to join a missions team of 65 that were coming from Florida. In total, including support staff –there were 80 of us. Although I made it very clear that I was NOT able to translate, I ended up translating a lot this week. J The goal of the team was three fold – to build a medical clinic at El Ayudante ( a missions base which is in the process of starting), to run a free medical clinic for the people of the village, and go to three different schools to do a program for the children. Every morning we were at breakfast by 5am!

Sunday we went to our first Catholic Mass – in a beautiful old church that was so echoy with the PA system that we couldn’t understand a word that was being said. There was a dog wandering around during communion looking for people to pet him. After that we went out to El Ayudante – to check out the site and start working. We started laying block which is quite a task! What hard work – and we had 8,500 to lay within a weeks time! So the men stayed and worked all day while the School team practiced the puppet/drama that we were doing. I was given a part in the puppet team as a voice (in Spanish of course) of a character. It was tough read with emotion in Spanish and pronounce is correctly!

Monday the school team went up to a mountain village about 2 hours up a mountain to do this program at their school. The children were so excited and happy for us to be there. We first split into 3 class rooms because there were three of us “translators” - 2 real ones and me J. So I had a classroom of children asking me how to make this necklace – I survived and the necklaces turned out great. Then we played outside for a while and then did our program. The villages are so different than what we’ve been seeing in the city – in the village they don’t have drinking water, don’t have doctors, don’t have transportation so they rarely leave their village – and if they do it’s a LONG walk for them. I would love to go back up there to work with the families on health education etc.

While I was up on the mountain Tristan spent the whole day running errands for the team and picking up a team member from the airport. Not too exciting, but they really appreciated him.

Tuesday was the same thing only we went to a school closer to our work site. I felt much more comfortable with Spanish by then and so it was more fun. I had so much fun interacting with the kids and giving hugs etc. We then joined the construction team to help with the walls. Tristan and I built a few layers of a wall in the afternoon.

Wednesday I went to a special needs school of about a hundred students. Half the group was deaf and the other half could hear but had other special needs. This was a private school and the teachers there were amazing, they had so much patience. We did the same with them – craft, sports, and then a program. It was really neat to see how the program was translated from English, to Spanish, to Sign Language. The kids were really sweet and really wanted our love. We then joined the work site again – Tristan was working hard finishing the wall we started the day before. They pulled me into to the medical clinic to translate for them because they were short. I was quite nervous to translate for a doctor but I ended up only having to translate from the doctor to the pharmacy and than back to the patient – so it was ok.

This has been such a great week of communication – with the kids and the patients at the clinic. We also got to know the team really well and that was fun – they are a great group of people – very big hearts and love to help others. Amazing. They are paying for the walls of the whole clinic and also brought down a pharmacy for the clinic. Tristan led worship for the group every night and was able to help out a lot with translating at the work site and running errands for the pastor. We have been really blessed to be a part of this group. It was also fun because we did all of this with our friends John and Adrianna so that was great as well.

Thursday – we left this morning at 6am to drive back to the city because the Ministry of Education is coming to our school to audit our final paperwork for the year. I’m actually in line right now to have my grades approved – I’ve been in line for 3 hours already!