Happy Halloween! Well, they don't really celebrate Halloween here. But, yes, we did have our own celebration including a couple ballerina princesses(with tutus we made ourselves!), Harry Potter, chili, chocolate, and s'mores made over the propane stove.

The day before Halloween, though, was a blast. It was Vanessa's birthday! My aunt Lisa is her sponsor, so she sent some presents down for her and Victoria, and we got to give them to them. They are so sweet. When we got there, they got out chairs for us and brought out soda and stuff; everyone is so welcoming. She got to open her card from Lisa, and then there were presents for her and Victoria.

They have the most expressive eyes (with the longest, most gorgeous eyelashes, I might add...), so watching them open everything was so much fun.
In addition to the presents, we brought a few balloons. We each blew up one or two, and then everyone just went crazy playing with them, keeping them in the air, and all sorts of fun stuff. They were laughing and jumping and spinning and just being little girls, and it was so cute. Plus, Raquel really got into it as well!

Vanessa wanted us to stay forever, I think. She was laughing and all happy, and then we mentioned we had to leave and her face was like a cartoon. It went from grinning to almost tears right away. How can you resist? We stayed for another 5 minutes or so. Every time someone would stand up, she'd look at us and yell, "Sientense!" Meaning 'sit back down!' We had to sing happy birthday, too. First we did it in Spanish. Then in English. And Vanessa is a really smart little girl. So she asked us to sing again. Because she knew we would leave if we didn't. So, we gave in and sang one more time before we had to leave, which was sad.

But overall it was a really great day, and we're glad she made it so special for us. :)

More to be posted soon!
su amiga,

Erin

In our living room are a bunch of sewing machines used for teaching sewing classes. The sewing machines were mostly donated by people in the States. One of them is an old one that isn't electric. The kind that uses a treadle base. At first, we wondered what we would do with it because we don't have the treadle base or anything. Today, we found out what God had planned long ago. There's a family with four children; Ana is 12, Jonathan is 9, Ezekiel is 7, and Sarai is 3. Ezekiel has leukemia. They live in a house with no electricity, maybe one window, you get the idea. His mother has to take him to San Salvador every other day for treatment. Last year, her house was broken into. She had a treadle base sewing machine. The sewing machine was stolen, but they left the base. Today, she came over, and we were able to provide her with a sewing machine that works with it. She was so excited!


You know, God really knows what He's doing. Why don't we remember that more often?

While Mom and Jose and her were working on it, Nathan and I were going to hang out with her kids. They are soooo sweet.

Jonathan at one point asked me what my name was, in slightly broken English, and he liked showing me what English he knew. So, we got out an English/Spanish matching card game, and he loved it. His favorite new word to learn was "chicken". :) It was a lot of fun.



They were all so sweet, and their mother kept saying how she had been blessed by God. Anyone else think there's a lesson there? This woman, who has no electricity in her home, and whose child has leukemia, lives her life content with what God has blessed her with. It kinda makes me cry. We were blessed by their visit today. Please, please, keep them in your prayers. More to be posted later!
su amiga,
Erin <3

This post is going to be really difficult to write I think. There is no way to put into words the experience we had this morning and get the point across. You would have to be there to even half-way comprehend what it's like. Hopefully with a lot of pictures I can try to explain, though.

Jesus (the preacher from San Ignacio) came this morning and picked us up in his truck along with Josue and Carlitos, also known as Charlie ;). Dad and Nathan and I were in the back with Josue and Carlos. He drove us from La Palma to San Ignacio, and we stopped at a corner there and waited for a sister who was also headed to Chuntrun. Here's the house we stopped in front of while we waited:

Were we were headed did not have running water, did not have electricity, no stores or little tiendas, basically there was the school and then some houses scattered across the mountainside. It was surreal. Once the lady we were waiting for and her son got there, we started down the mountain. Yes, down. It was pretty rough, too. In the picture above, the road is obviously man-paved to an extent. The road down was steep and bumpy, and we had to go extremely slow. The woman's little boy we'd picked up fell asleep sitting on Dad's foot on the way, which was pretty cute, even if his foot was asleep for a while. The view was pretty amazing , though. Actually, that doesn't cover it. If only pictures could really capture it...


It was so awesome. Reality check: These mountains are actually this beautiful, and we're actually HERE? We really do serve an awesome God :) And really. This is just land. If He put so much amazing, gorgeous detail into this, think about what He does with His people!

When we got to a certain spot, the truck couldn't go any further. That's when the real hiking started. At first, it was just really steep downhill but it was smooth-ish. Then we got to the bridge. There was a rope bridge thing we had to cross the river over. Some people in the group were a little scared of bridges. Others, like Josue and me, enjoyed jumping on them and messing with those who were scared! :D
It was fun. After the bridge was some of the toughest hiking. Some of the people who live there walk all the way to and from San Ignacio every Sunday for church, even in the "torrential downpourage". Plus, one of the ladies said she comes every Thursday as well for services because she needs the spiritual food for her soul or something similar. Kinda makes us think about our lame excuses for not going to church sometimes, huh?

Eventually, we reached the school. Josue and Jesus a little before the rest of us... But it was like something from "Little House on the Prarie". A one room school house, with only grades kingergaten through 6th. No one goes higher who lives in this town. The teacher only lives there during the week and lives in Chaletenango or some other city on the weekends. Here's the entire school. The only part not shown in this picture is the little outhouse bathroom.

Crazy, right? But the people are so sweet and happy. They've never known anything else. Jesus did a Bible lesson for the kids and parents on John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. He made a craft to illustrat it. Just a simple piece of paper and a few shapes and some glue, but they were thrilled. Most of these kids have never been exposed to making art projects and using glue! The ones whose mothers were there, wanted to do a lot of it for them, because they had never done it either. We also sang a bunch of songs. The kids were so cute... We gave out bedrolls to some people, and a couple baby carriers to some families with young babies who have to carry them all over those mountains. And at the end, we passed out the goody bags. I think that in the bags were vitamins, parasite treatments, a little individual pack of cookies, a piece of bubble gum, a little plastic toy, a box of juice, and maybe some other stuff that I unfortunately can't remember. They were so excited just with the little stuff. At the end Nathan and I played some soccer with the kids and kicked a ball around.

It has been a wonderful day. This morning was beyond incredible or any other words I could put down here. And tonight was pretty great, too :) Thank you always for the prayers. Continued prayers for Alfredo's family, please! More to be posted soon!
su amiga,
Erin <3

Alfredo is the brother of the mayor of La Palma, his sisters are members of the church, and he is Flor and Edith's uncle. This very short post is basically just a request for prayers for his family. The same night we went for the oranges, we saw an ambulance go by, which is fairly unusual here. The next morning we were informed that Alfredo had attempted, and failed, suicide, and was immediately taken to San Salvador to the hospital. We received information today that he did pass away this morning. Please keep his family in your prayers through this time, it's extremely appreciated. More to be posted soon!
Su amiga,
Erin <3

So, I've spent part of the past couple days learning a little about HTML codes. Needless to say, I felt the urge to give my blog a makeover :)
Tonight was our weekly English singing service. I love when we get to praise God in our own language. I mean, it's pretty cool singing in Spanish with the people here, and it's really powerful. Even when we can't totally understand each other, we're both worshipping. But, for me, Tuesday nights are amazing.
After it was over, we were about to play a game with Teresa, but we got a phone call from Jose. Apparently some time yesterday a big truck broke down in the middle of the city. It was a semi-ish truck, and it was completely full of oranges. I have never in my life seen as much fruit at one time as I saw tonight. It still hadn't been fixed, and since the oranges wouldn't last long enough to get wherever they were taking them, they were selling huge bags of 25 oranges for a dollar. So, we walked up the street and bought a bunch of oranges! How neat is that? It's a real truck load sale. Only here, right? It was a pretty fun adventure anyway. Not much else worth mentioning tonight, More to be posted later!
Su amiga,
Erin <3

Another day of celebrations in La Palma! Today was the celebration of the signing of the peace papers during their civil war. It started in La Palma, hence the name and nicknames calling it the city of peace and such.

Anyway, a parade went through town this morning. The two older schools from La Palma marched. And then a whole bunch from all over, too. As a band geek myself, not even gonna try to deny that one, I like watching these kinds of parades and seeing the differences. There isn't the same kind of budget to have these bands sounding or looking like any similar to where I'm from. As a matter of fact, most of the younger schools and some of the older ones don't even use any instruments besides percussion. Another difference is their equivalent to color guard. There tend to be a group of girls with baton in each group. Then the actual band playing, and sometimes some people carrying country flags. Also, there are groups of students dressed in the "typical" clothing. Girls wear the dresses with the super long flowy skirts, and guys dress like farmers. That's about what the average school does. Some schools, on the other hand, go a little out of the ordinary and make it fun. For instance, having a dancing lion mascot.

The whole parade was a bunch of fun. Teresa, Mom, and I stood outside Lilian's for most of it. The street was supposed to be blocked off for the parade, but somehow a bus got through! It was stuck with no where to go. Eventually, after the driver had gotten out and talked to several officials and people, he started to drive on forward. The girls at the front of the parade were looking around and trying to figure out what to do if he kept going. Luckily, they didn't have to and the bus did procede to put it in reverse and go back down the hill eventually. A couple times we noticed some official looking people and cameras videoing parts, and we're kinda excited to see if we show up on one of the new El Salvador tourism videos! ;)

The parade route led all the bands to the soccer field, where they then competed. We went to the field for a while, but couldn't stay the whole time. It seemed like it might go on forever, and it was getting really hot and sunny out. Even though we didn't stay long, I have a sunburn. My neck, face, and forearms are bright pink. I've got one of those hard outlined farmers' tans from the t-shirt I was wearing. And the little lines on the top of my feet from my flip flops XD. But hey, the bright side? Maybe now I'll finally get the golden tan everyone expects you to have from living in Central America. Right, Megan? ;)

Despite the sunburn, it's been a great day. As always, thank you to everyone for the prayers. Please continue! Here's the SPECIAL REQUEST mentioned in the title. There is a medical mission trip happening here next March. We really need more medical personnel; doctors, nurses, etc. If anyone is interested, or knows of anyone who might be, let me know! More to be posted soon!
Su amiga,
Erin <3

Wow! It has been so long since I've posted, and so much has happened! Over 3 weeks is way too much time. I apologize to all the people who complained to me about not posting.

I have had a crazy awesome past week! We had to go to San Salvador to renew our visas at the immigration office. That's where we started out Tuesday when we took the express bus down the mountain. That was a mistake we do not plan on making again. Can you say, car sick? Blech. But we got to the immigration office with Carmen, the woman we stayed with, and Pedro, our driver. They kept our passports there and said to come back on Thursday. So from there, we decided we needed lunch. And since we were in San Sal, we wanted American lunch. Burger King was amazing. :D Afterwards we walked around through the mall, Metro Centro, and did some shopping. That night when we got back to Carmen's house, she made us some pretty great chicken and potatoes. Nathan also had a fun time playing futbol with the little boy across the street, Jonathan.


Wednesday was a super fun day of all touristy stuff we wouldn't normally get to do. We got up that morning and headed to the zoo!




We had a blast. It was a pretty nice zoo, actually. When we finished there, we ate lunch at Pizza Hut! Salad bar and all.

We went to a museum afterwards. It was the national museum, even though we had been planning on going to the museum of arts or something. But it was kind of interesting. Nathan liked the stuff about jaguars:



Thursday turned out to be amazing as well! I've decided that Pizza Huts in America should take a lesson from the ones here. Salvadoreno Pizza Huts serve breakfast! And it is pretty yummy, let me tell you. That's where we ate that morning and met up with Joel. They surprised us by taking us to the beach afterwards! It was so beautiful. Some of the group that came this past March got to go and ride horses there. Unfortunately for us, the storms caused too much debree and junk to wash up and now the beach isn't flat enough for them, so they weren't there anymore. But we still had a great time going up and down the pier, seeing all the nasty dead fish, the gorgeous ocean, the boats and fisherman, everything. It was a ton of fun. There was a cute little popsicle stand, and we just had to stop there. They had all sorts of flavors; spicy ones, fruity ones, chocolatey ones, etc. I was feeling super adventurous, and had officially the weirdest thing I have ever tasted in my entire life. An avocado ice cream bar.

I only had a little, and then Joel took it. But I was glad I'd tried something new. He took us to a different part of the beach, then, where we could actually go up to the water.

And then we went to one more and had some delicious sea food with a great view. It had a little pool down on the beach with a geyser thing that blew when a wave it. Nathan wanted to swim so bad, but we didn't have time. He did, however, get to walk down around it with Joel.

When we drove back to the city, we had to go to the immigration offices again, praying they were done with our passports and that we could take them and go home. They were! :) Joel came back and stayed the night here in La Palma. The guys played a ton of Halo last night.

Today, we had a great time again! I went with Teresa, Joel, and Nathan, and we met up with Cristian at the park. There was a big festival going on with dancing and stuff to celebrate the anniversary of the start of the signing of the peace papers that ended the civil war here. We got some lunch, and then basically went exploring. There's one store that we were wanting to go to, but it didn't open till later, so we walked around town. We went out on this edge and checked out a gorgeous view of the mountains. (WLH!) There was another pretty hill we walked up, and it had an amazing view as well. It was crazy, unreasonably windy. Apparently it always is in October. It made for some really cool pictures! They're on Teresa's camera and not mine. She's going to be putting them on facebook, though. Well it has (obviously) been a pretty long week, and I'm ready to go chill and watch some Hulu. Thanks always for the prayers!
More to be posted soon!
su amiga,
Erin

Yikes... I went almost three weeks without posting. I'm sorry to everyone who mentioned it to me and asked me to post waaaaayyyyy before this. I guess it's because last time I posted twice in one day! There is so much more to write about! I really don't know where to start. In my past posts I talked about how much it has rained and the "torrential downpourage". Up until last week, it had rained literally every day since we moved here. But, we have now been over a week rain-free! It's moved into October, which is apparently windy season. It's so windy, you can hear the buildings practically shaking. Sometimes I wake up in the morning to the wind so loud it sounds similar to the crazy loud rain we were finally getting used to. The locals think that it is just freezing when the wind blows like that. We think it feels pretty great. Since there's been no rain, there have hardly been any clouds. Last night when we were walking home from Reina's, we looked up and just stopped in awe. There are no words to describe how breathtakingly beautiful the stars were. We had seen a few from here before, but it's almost always cloudy. Last night was perfectly clear. We saw the Milky Way, a planet, and a kajillion stars. As cliche as it sounds, it's pretty amazing to think that I can see the same stars here that you all are seeing back home. :)


When we first arrived here, the Sunday morning church services were set up so that there was one big class combined for adults and kids, then a break, and then worship services for everyone as well. This meant that the kids weren't receiving any children's Bible class or anything that we're used to having in America. So Mom and I have been doing a children's class every Sunday morning during the first class. And of course, where do we start but with Genesis? So, we started with the days of creation.


Mom drew a picture for each of the seven days on a paper plate, and told them the story. Then we picked these 7 volunteers to line up in the right order with them. We put them in order the first time. The second time, we mixed them up in crazy orders, and let the kids figure out where they went. When all that was over, we had an art project. We had little coloring pages with birds on them and a verse about it from Genesis. They could color them, and when they were done I would come around and put glue dots on them and give them the bird's "feathers". They were just some cut up pieces of streamers, but the projects ended up looking great, and the kid's were so excited. They aren't used to doing things like that. In the schools, kid's don't get their own text books to work from; the schools can't afford that. The teacher has one, and they copy it onto the board and the kids copy it into their notebooks. That's almost all they do! They don't learn how to color, or cut, or make art projects.


The next week's class was a lot of fun for me. We were going over Adam and Eve and eating the forbidden fruit and whatnot. At the beginning of the class, Mom brought in a bowl of little cookies. She made sure to make it clear that no one was allowed to eat them, or even touch them. The kids were very serious about it. They said the understood, nodded, and looked super serious. At that point, Mom faked like she had forgotten something at home and had to go back over to the house. So she left, and I was in charge of the class. I walked over and picked up the cookie bowl. I looked around, and (in Spanish) asked, "Want a cookie?" The kids looked shocked at first. I said we had tons. Come on, just take one.. And every kid in the class gave in and took a cookie except two; Nathan, and a little girl named Gabby. When Mom came back into the class, most of them were still eating theirs. Some gasped when they saw her, some tried to hide the cookies or shove them into their mouths quickly. She acted like she was so sad that they'd taken her cookies, and what else did they do but blame me? "But Erin said!" "She gave them to us!" Stuff like that. We just moved on to the story. When it got to the part about blaming the serpent and everything, you could literally see a light come on in some of those kids' eyes. One of them looked at me, smiled, and shook her finger at me. Watching them really get the lesson was great. We did another craft and made little serpents with a verse on them.