Have I ever mentioned how much I love the little kids' class I get to help Mom with on Sunday mornings?
... Oh, I have? Well, it's true. I love it.
I especially love when we get to do an activity at the beginning that they don't know has to do with a story, and then telling them the story and watching their eyes light up when they understand.
Last week was the story of Jacob's dream. One of the little boys, Douglas, was Jacob.



He laid down on a rock to go to sleep, and had a dream about the angel (Nathan) climbing up and down the ladder.



Douglas was a pretty good actor, too! When he had to act scared, he was pretty convincing ;)



This morning, we got to do a bunch of new songs with the kids, which I also love. I still have several stuck in my head, as a matter of fact. We taught them "Peace Like a River" in Spanish. That was a lot of fun because they loved learning the motions, especially pretending to surf for "love like the ocean", or "amor como el mar."

The lesson today was also about Jacob. This time about working for Laban for 7 years to get Rachel, and then being tricked and given Leah and having to work another 7 for Rachel. But, the kids didn't know what the lesson was yet.
We've been learning how to say the books of the New Testament, so it seemed normal to them when we offered them a package of cookies if they could say all the books up to Colossians. It wasn't too much of a challenge, because they were all written on the board, and their friends could help them. In fact, it was adorable to watch the older kids help the younger ones. They would say each individual word, even if it meant saying the "first and second"... wait for the younger one... "Corinthians..." Only in Spanish of course :)
But, when all of them had said their books up to Colossians like they were told to, they weren't given what they were promised. Mom "changed her mind." She said something about how even though she'd said they could have a whole package, she was only going to give them one out of the pack. If they wanted the whole thing, they'd have to say all of the books, all the way to Revelation. So they did. And then they got the cookies. But they didn't know there was actually a point to it.
When we started in on the story, the kids realized how unfair it was that Jacob didn't get what he was promised. That's not fair! And they realized that it was exactly like them this morning with their cookie deal. Faces like this are just priceless:



I. Love. It.

More to be posted soon!
Su amiga,
Erin <3

Happy (late) Thanksgiving! And happy Black Friday!
Being here makes me a little more aware of all the things we really do have to be thankful for.
For real. Electricity? Hot water? Or even running water, period, however sporadic it may seem to be on and off. And that's just the material stuff. But, regardless of how cliche it sounds, family and friends are the most important. Seriously, what would we do without them?? :)

I don't have a whole lot to post about, hence the fact that it's been a really long time since my last post. Well, that and the fact that I've been pretty crammed with school work lately... But, I have been having a lot of people ask how we celebrate Thanksgiving here, so here you go!

El Salvador doesn't celebrate it. At all. It's just a normal November Thursday to people here. That answers that, right? Okay, now to what most people actually asked me about.

Food.

No, we don't have turkey here. We had chicken. There are no pumpkins to be found in the entire country. Which was really disappointing to Nathan, who loves his pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. We did, though, have broccoli casserole, green bean casserole, hand-mashed potatoes, and rolls. All of which was completely homemade, and tasted delicious. I also helped Mom make cinnamon rolls Wednesday night, which was a ton of fun. Plus, they were amazing. Like, super amazing.

If you don't follow me on Facebook, then you also probably don't know that we took a mini-vacation to celebrate Dad's birthday in San Salvador last weekend! After the really long week and stress I posted about last time, it was an amazing time to get away and relax. We sat out by the pool, had great food, saw the new Harry Potter movie (which was great, bee-tee-dub.), and Mom and I even got to listen to live jazz music Thursday night. We sat out under the palm trees with hot tea and just chilled for a while, and then we all watched a movie in the room, and just had a great time all together.

More to be posted soon!

Su amiga,

Erin

PS: Blogspot has made some changes, so my followers have been changed! :O Now you can follow through Google Friend Connect, over on the side, though! :)

Really, it's only Saturday? It kinda felt like a couple weeks have gone by in just the past 3 days. Sigh. This has been one very crazy week. Where do I even start?
I guess it's only been quite this level of crazy since Wednesday, so then I guess.
A shipment arrived in San Salvador a couple weeks ago full of stuff for the church, the school, the orphanage, and whatever. Dad and 12 other guys loaded up into a couple big trucks Wednesday morning and headed to the military base in S.S. to put all the crates onto their trucks and bring them back up the mountain to La Palma. Meanwhile, we lose internet in La Palma. A little while after they leave, we get a phone call, and there's been some mix ups and they have to go somewhere else in that area. The internet comes back sometime that afternoon, and then we run out of water. The filters got clogged with dirt within two weeks, and no water had gotten to our tank. Look at the before and after of these:


So, snaps for Teresa who was willing to hop over the bars on the walk way onto the tank and take the lid off so we could run a hose into it! And thankfully, Anda water came back on Friday morning.

We got a couple calls from the guys like the first one, and they didn't end up getting back until 8 that night. By this time, it was too late to follow through with the original plan of unloading and organizing everything that day, so we just took all the crates off the truck and piled them into the compound and church building to unload Thursday.




Once Thursday morning came around, we all gathered in the compound and started working hard. The sun was pretty intense, too. Just look at the pictures.







A lot of the process wasn't just unloading and putting the stuff away, but the disassemblement of the crates. We had to take them apart and get the nails out. Once that was done, half the crates were given to San Ignacio members and the other half to La Palma. The wood is a great resource for them.

Here is one little table of toys. On the other side of the room were bags and bags full to give away to the sponsor kids here.


And here are some pics of the medical supplies. The little pharmacy room was jammed full of walkers, canes, crutches, and, of course, medicine. And the one of the wheelchairs is really only half of all the ones we were given. So. Many. Wheelchairs.



But, that was only part of the reason the week was so long. After all the unloading was done, Teresa, Mom, Dad, Nathan, and I went out to lunch to sit down and cool off. On our way home we stopped by the little ice cream place for a treat. While we were there, Dad's phone rang. He couldn't understand it and gave it to Mom. It was Andrea's grandmother, frantic, telling us that little Andrea passed away that morning.
Andrea was born with heart problems, and doctors said she wasn't a candidate for surgery. They said she wouldn't make it long, but she outlived their expectations. Two years ago, a team took her to the beach near San Sal as a "make a wish" kind of trip. Andrea was 7, and she was going to be graduating pre-k this upcoming Tuesday. She was excited about it, and already had her dress and little shoes and head band picked out.
When we got home, Teresa and Mom and I left to go to the vela with Jose at their house. Culture is so different here... The day before the funeral, they have a vela, where the body is basically displayed in the home with candles and flowers. She was wearing the graduation dress and holding her Barbie doll. People here take pictures of the funerals and the bodies, and people were snapping all sorts of pictures with their cell phones. At one point, they even brought out a hanging lamp to put over her to make the pictures come out better for everyone. Mom's blog has a better description of the whole experience Here.
Yesterday was the funeral. People gather at her house, and the casket is displayed in the back of a pickup and everyone walks behind it following it to the church building. At the church was the actual funeral. They sang all of Andrea's favorite children's Sunday school songs. Her Sunday school teachers talked about her, and even her grandmother talked about her. She said that the Bible tells us to always be thankful, and that even though it's really hard to be thankful in the death of a little girl, they were happy that God had loaned Andrea to them for these 7 years.
After everything at the church was over with, another procession to the cemetary starts. Again, the casket was in the pickup and people walked and followed it all the way there. A few words and songs were said and sung there, too, although we couldn't really see or hear from where we were. Please please keep Andrea's family in your prayers. It's a really tough time for everyone.
More to be posted soon!
Su amiga,
Erin <3

Just look at that face:


Pretty cute, right? Yes, he's a trouble maker. But here's the project he made:

Both of these pictures were taken this morning during the students' presentations of their "maquetas". Maquetas are just big projects that each student do at the end of the yaer. Mom judged the pre-k through 3rd graders, and Marlon judged the 4th through 6th graders. There was one winner from each grade. They got extra points if it was made from recycled material that they didn't have to spend money on. It can basically be over whatever subject they're interested in, or had learned about this year, or whatever. There were all sorts. Selena had one over different foods from animals and vegetables, she was the pre-k winner.


Emmanuel was the first grade winner, his was totally recycled stuff.


Kevin's was a computer model. It was made from old computer parts, obviously. But what you can't really see in this picture is how detailed it really is. It was completely recycled; the screen was a picture of a computer screen cut out from an old computer box. He won for second grade.


Cristina's, also completely recycled, was an abacus. It was made of plastic bottle lids. Pretty neat, right? Third grade winner right there.


All of them did a great job. There were so many others that didn't win that were really good. Adonis had a neat pyramid, Jocelyn had a health project because she wants to be a nurse, and lots like that. It was a neat thing to go to :)





After all the kids had gone home, Teresa and I got the chance to take Jocelyn (Victoria's older sister and Vanessa's aunt, not the younger one.) out for lunch. That was fun, I'm looking forward to more time with the girls here now that school it out for them. Even thought I'm still working hard on school...
We got a basketball goal put up for the school! The backboard isn't put up just yet, but the pole with a net is. We went out this afternoon and shot hoops for quite a while with Teresa, Victor, and Marlon. Nathan played for 3 hours, no joke.
And that's part of the reason we're so exaughsted and are ready to head to bed now, after our always refreshing English song service and a movie.
Thanks for the prayers, keep it up as the shipments from the States are going to be coming here tomorrow! More to be posted soon!
Su amiga,
Erin <3