Team Season

In junior high I took that career assessment test – that was supposed to tell me what jobs I’d enjoy and be good at. My top score was to be a wedding planner. Sounded fun but unrealistic; and I wanted something deeper (no offense to all the wedding planners out there).  I’m not a wedding planner, but I am an events coordinator (props for the definition goes to Mark) every week we have teams – one event after another.

When we get a team, we plan everything for them from the time they get through customs to the time they go back through security at the end of the week. What they eat (and who has allergies or food issues) , what their days look like (and what to do if one gets sick), what they need for being successful in their week here in Honduras. Before they get here we arrange the schedule, find the translators (and then what to do when the translator calls us at 5am saying they can’t translate that day), do the grocery shopping, and making sure the mission house is clean, has supplies, and is ready.

Then the fun stuff – we arrange where they do ministry – finding out what each community that we’re working in needs – what solutions can we provide to show them they are loved by our Father?  We get to be the middleman – connecting talents of teams to needs of communities.

El Ayudante had 7 teams within the last 8 weeks!

A week looks like this:

Day 1: Tristan drives to the airport (8 hours round trip) and picks up the team, takes them to lunch, and gets them to El Ayudante safely. I meet our cook (Zaida) at the grocery store, shop for the team and take her and all the food back to EA (one week I couldn’t fit it all in my car so Mark came and saved the day – picking up the last 2 boxes of food).  We prep the mission house (sheets, towels, etc). team arrives!

Day 2 – 6:  7am breakfast (some days this happened with the girls, some days we skipped breakfast), 8-12am – ministry! Usually a VBS, construction project, or water filters. Lunch. Girls nap time! J , evening – dinner, prep for tomorrow, clean up mission house (apparently its not just my kids that leave cups all over the house J ), 8pm – go home to bathe and put the girls to bed, do emails that were neglected during the day. Bed!

Day 7: good byes L. This is hard for all of us. Mostly Maddy – she is so sweet and sad when her newly found friends are leaving yet again. Tristan goes again to the airport (yes it’s still 8 hours) while we (me and the girls) clean up the mission house, wash 10 loads of laundry, do the receipts and payments from the week, and enjoy the quiet.

Day 1: - starts all over again.

The big difference this summer was we had Mark and Tracy, Vivian, Grace, and Laurel (and Mike and Cindy for a month of it)! Mark and Tracy lea half the teams, did half the airport runs, did half the laundry, prepped half the house, etc. I don’t know how we did it without them last summer. and Vivian was our lead translator every week!

What’s not in the schedule is the runs to the grocery store, finding an extra translator at 5am, nursing the sick team member back to health, helping Blanca (dentist!) when the power went out again, … etc etc. We are ALL at our max all summer…. And we love it! It’s a good thing all 4 of us are competitive and determined to make success!

How does this affect our family? Sigel takes the early bus to school (means he has to wake up at 5:30), and if we can’t pick him up, he takes the public bus and taxi’s home.  If I’m going along with the team, usually they are with me – (for sure the hardest part of the summer was the fight in my head about how to be a mom and lead a team…knowing I can’t do both at the same time great. But that’s for a different blog…or my journal). Tristan is usually with the team the entire time. We like eating at the mission house with the teams so we can get to know them (and I don’t have time to cook anyways), but I am happy to get back to family meals and more veggies. We missed our Sunday afternoon downtimes. I LOVED the week that Sigel translated and all 5 of us were doing a VBS every morning. Maddy floats from one VBS station to another – doubling up on the crafts and the snacks. Ali clings to me like there are 100 kids trying to touch her blonde head…oh wait, they are!  

2 days ago our last team left. It’s weird. It’s quiet. We’re all trying to process it. Maddy doesn’t understand why there aren’t 15 people here to play with her, I forgot about how many dishes my family creates now that Zaida isn’t cooking for us. It’s back to ‘life’ for us. It’s Sunday afternoon and Tristan is pacing (literally) – there is nothing urgent to do.

 maddy singing a song with motions with the kids / and then doing the art project of decopauging a coke bottle

                                         Ali - binky in the mouth and holding on to mommy.

                                             Grace (our intern)! our kids loved Grace!

                                   an evening church service - the floor was dirt - so at the front of the church, while the other kids were singing a song Maddy started to play in the sand box. lol and yes - i took a picture and then dragged her out of there :)

                                Sigel doing a skit   / Tristan building a house - there are many rumors throughout the team and in the community of Tristan working hard - like lifting a wheel barrel full of cement over his head ... i don't know what's true, but I do know that he hasn't been outworked yet.

                               Sigel trying his hand (his good one) at taping sheetrock

                                     Ali with Grandpa Jack  / Sigel translated for a big national missions week and during that week translated for the pastor on live TV! Go Sigel!

                                                           Sigel doing wheel barrel wars