I forgot to show you the funniest and most popular activity th
at some people from Florida brought out to Cercadillo last week on Saturday. This is how you make your own slip-n-slide:
you take a tarp, a floatie mattress, a little laundry soap, a ton of water, and a bunch of kids who have never seen anything like it! The first picture shows the success of the operation...the second picture shows what it turned into when you say, "Okay, everyone at once!" Just for the record, being a teacher, I didn't say that :)
Most of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday blur together in a
sea of "ugh!", but I have one moment of seeming clarity that I want to share with you because was in all of the timing and people He used! On Saturday evening when we got home from Cercadillo we smelled a horrible smell in the laundry room. After blaming Ina's neighbors for a while (sorry about that!) we realized that the awful smell was coming from the batteries attached to her inverter (the awesome invention that charges when we have city power and provides power when the city power goes off). Ina had Abbey turn the inverter off, but we began to see that this was not going to be fixed by simply letting the batteries cool off. Ina called our Domincan friend Russell who helped her install the inverter and batteries a couple of years ago. When he came over he said the batteries were pretty much shot and would need to be replaced very soon, plus they would continue to cause the smell. When the Sunday team returned to Ina's late Sunday evening, they had an addition. Stuart, Ina's fix-it-all American friend who was here a couple of weeks ago had surprisingly met them in Cercadillo for church. He helped Ina go buy eight new batteries and carried them in from the house. This was no small feat given that I don't think Abbey and I could have carried one in from the car together. I had no idea they could be so heavy! After realizing that removing all of the old batteries was going to be a two-person job (and none of us could really help Stuart) Ina once again called Russell who was able to come over right away and brought his brother Althusser. The two-person team was able to remove all of the old batteries and install the new ones and we are good as new! We told them they should start a business :)
On Wednesday Ina and Abbey went to Cercadillo to begin our mini-summer classes for reading and English. I stayed home one more day to recuperate. On Thursday I was finally able to get back out to the village. It was an awesome day of working with the children. We kept the kids grouped in their color teams from VBS and had each group attend for one hour. It wasn't long with each group, but we got to see all of them in a "controlled" environment of only about 20 kids at a time. We began each group with alphabet bingo which the kids love because they earn
prizes like stickers, candy, and pencils. The next activity was learning colors and some shapes in English. I taught this lesson most of the sessions since I was feeling better. Each kid received a notebook, and one of the pages was a sheet where they could write in the color words
as I wrote them on the board and then paint the shapes to match the color words. They did a really good job with the painting and enjoyed it a lot! After that we gave them juice, sent them on their way, and set up for the next group. It was a very full day, but it went very smoothly. Fridays are our days devoted to the women of Cercadillo. Ina began with Bible study and talked with the women about the section in Mark
where Jesus teaches "if your hand causes you to sin, cut if off". I couldn't understand all of the conversation about the passage, but Ina said they had good discussion about how much easier it is to say what is right than to do what is right. Later in the day, Ina said she heard at least one woman say, "Remember what we read today?" How awesome that the Word of God is not falling on deaf ears!!! In the afternoon, we had all of the women come back to learn how to make a new bag that they can hopefully sell in the future. For those of you who know Sara,
these are the bags she showed me and helped me get all the materials for. We weren't able to begin them until this week because Ina's generator quit working and her new one arrived on the Agape Flights plane on Wednesday! Ina recommended that we do a trial bag with old
fabric she already had before we handed over the really fun, bright fabric that I mailed down here. That was a great idea, because as in everything, there were some women who did better (okay, a lot better) than others :) Some have quite a ways to go with their sewing skills to get to a level where their things could be sold. Overall, the day was very long, but when we got home we all had that I'm-so-tired-I-can-hardly-get-out-of-the-car-but-that-was-really-important kind of feeling. We will begin the sellable bags next week!
Happy 4th of July! We are celebrating at Ina's house this evening by having over as many American missionaries as we can get! I've heard rumors of hot dogs, macaroni salad, and mango cake!
No comments:
Post a Comment