A Birthday, Some Prayers, and a Little Road Trip

A few hours ago (hey, that's an improvement from my usual "many days ago!) I posted about the independence day celebrations. The day afterwards was Nathan's birthday. We celebrated with Grandma and Teresa and had some cookie cake. He got to open presents that were brought down with the group that was here (in Honduras at the time), from people at home. And because Dad was feeling sick, he and Nathan spent the whole day putting his presents to use together. Nathan later claimed it was "the best day of his life" :)



Something else happened that morning, though, that I would really appreciate your prayers for. There was an accident involving a semi and a motorcycle. I'd rather not go into details or anything, but it left our friend Janixa a single mother of their adorable four year old son, Vladi. Please, please pray for this family during this difficult time. This is a picture of Vladi and his mother less than 24 hours before the accident:

Grandma, Mom, and I left after Nathan's celebration with Angelino and drove to Honduras. We started at Jorge and Gloria's house. They are always so hospitable and welcoming of people in their home. She fed the team a lunch of some sort of sea food soup. It was actually pretty good! Amy was sitting at our table and she got "the prize" as we joked with her ;)It's difficult to see here, but it was part of a fish.

Pretty soon, all the suitcases from the team were loaded into the van and we headed off for an afternoon in Guatemala! Just a little road trip. I'm still not over the fact that going to GUATEMALA is just a little road trip. Not that I mind ;) We took them to the big Catholic church and Black Christ statue that I posted about about a month ago. But this time, we got to go shopping afterwards! The vendors' booths went on forever and then some. We literally could not see where they stopped. Some were under a huge tarp kind of covering, and divided almost like cubicles. I bought a pretty neat (even if it's tourist-y) bag! I think I have a picture with it on facebook. It was funny to realize that even though the man selling me the bag acted like he spoke English, he really only spoke enough to try to get me to buy his purses. When he first told me the original price, I started to walk away. "How much to pay?!" I turned around at his way of asking how much I was willing to give him. Still unsure, he assured me that "Is nice! Is very nice!" I also got a chance to check out these neat little hats :D

I didn't get one, but they were fun. I absoluetly loved having the American team here. We were really upset when they left. After a teary goodbye, we are all already looking forward to the next visit! Thank you to every single one of you on the team for the gifts you brought, helping us out, and just making this week great. We will miss all of you! When the bus left, we all went home to enjoy some cake and a happy, "feel good" movie. Though none of us can remember right now exactly what. Thanks again to this wonderful team, love you all!

More to be posted soon!
su amiga,
Erin

Independence Day

I know, I know. It's been over a week this time. Sorry. This blog is going to be all about last Wednesday, September 15th. Here, this is like the equivalent of July 4th. Except, they make a much bigger deal out of it. For the past few weeks, it has been kind of annoying to hear the school band practicing their drums right outside our windows all afternoon. But Wednesday, they got to play for everyone in the parade! There is a big parade, and every school walks in it. Most schools let every student march in it, too, whether they're playing instruments:



Or maybe dancing in the traditional style dresses:

Or maybe just walking along with your school, whether in "traditional" clothing, or uniforms:


Our school was one of the very first that we saw come by. Here are several pics of them coming by:


After the parade was over, nearly the whole town and then some gathers at the park. There is a big basketball court in the middle (which we often see being used not for basketball but for soccer...) which they kept cleared out as a stage. Otherwise, the whole place was packed. Here's an idea of how many people there were:

There was a speech and prayer and stuff at the beginning. After that, though, the music started back up and dancing began! There were dances in the long, flowy, traditional dresses where the girls twirl their skirts out so far, and it's really cool to watch. I got a picture with one of the girls in her amazing dress :)

I also got a picture of me having food from a street vendor! There are almost always some kind of vendors in the park. But often, we can't trust the food from them, not knowing how it's cooked and washed and stuff. This time, though, we watched the woman pull these fries out of the hot oil and pour the normal stuff on them. The normal stuff here? Ketchup, mayonnaise, and parmesan. I was adventurous and had all three toppings. Nathan passed on the mayonnaise, and I'm pretty sure Teresa just had ketchup. But they turned out to be pretty good! Even if I couldn't finish all of mine and ended up passing the rest to a little boy from the school ;)

We had a great time at the park with all the festivities. It's one independence day I won't forget, anyway!
More to be posted later!
su amiga,
Erin

WLH ;)

Oops... I went a week without posting again... These past few days have been crazy hectic, though! I haven't had much spare time Italicto post in. Before I go on about that, though, can I just point out that WE. LIVE. HERE. Somewhere where it isn't outrageously uncommon for a monkey to fall from the power lines and get hurt, causing the police to come and wrap him in a blanket and take him away. Somewhere where the view out my living room window is something off of a postcard. Where you can walk out the front gate, and down one side of the street you see a horse with a pack looking like a Bible movie, and on the other you see a highway with huge buses, and maybe in front of you a couple kids playing tag, or a cow, or dog or two. That's where we live. WLH. Isn't it gorgeous?? :)
We took a trip to San Salvador on Friday to pick up the American team. Because there had been some messed up stuff going on with the buses in San Sal the week before, we got to take one of the mayor's buses and had three armed police on board with us to guard us. We got to go shopping and eat before we went to the airport. The place we went to was called MetroCentro or something... It was awesome! We're not just talking about some mall. This was, like, Crown Center in Kansas City kind of mall. And they had a food court with American food. We had a safe, fun trip back.
Saturday was another great day, even if it was very long. Everyone was at the coumpound by 8:30, and started working. Dea was running a clinic down in the preacher school with Mindy. The guys did work, like fixing stuff on the house and in the church building, etc. Mary and Amy were doing sewing classes for the women. Dad gave the boys hair cuts later in the day. Mom and Amy and Mary visited Selena's house, there was a ton going on. I just did whatever I was told to help ;) The whole team was invited to Reina's for pupusas, and we had a great time.
Yesterday morning we had a great class. Mom and I are teaching the children's class, and we started, where else? In Genesis. Last week was the days of creation, and there's a whole post about it on her blog. Yesterday we taugh about Adam and Eve. Mom had brought in a box of cookies and we set up a whole example. She made sure that the kids understood they were not in any way allowed to touch or eat those cookies. Then, she faked like she had to go back to the house for something and stepped outside. My job was to tempt them with the cookies. Want a cookie? Come on, she's got tons. Just take one. You want one? And every kid in class except two took one. When Mom came back in, she acted terribly upset at it. And they all blamed, who else? Me. So she moved on, and when we got to the end of the story and Adam blaming Eve and her blaming the serpent, it clicked. A little girl in the front gasped and her eyes grew so big, and the only little girl who didn't take one smiled and pointed at me and shook her head. It was so great to see how much they really got it :)
Last night, everyone in the group, except Grandma, who's staying with us, was going to the hotel in Honduras since the majority of their work is going to take place there this week. Our family was planning on going with them at least for worship services in Ocotopeque. But when we got to the border with Jorge, he realized that his I.D. card was missing, and citizens here need it to get across. We searched the vans and called the few places he had visited in La Palma to check for it, and it was just not being found. The guy finally let him off paying ten dollars, but that meant that he couldn't drive us back, so we'd have to go right back with Angelino, the other van driver. We didn't get to stay for services, but we did stay for dinner at this neat little comedor in Ocotepeque. We had a blast at our table with Mindy, Kirk, and our family singing along to the country music playing! :D And there will definitely be pictures of that on facebook soon. It was a great weekend, and the rest of the week with them here promises to be good, also. Thank you to everyone for the prayers so far, love y'all!
More to be posted later!
Su amiga,
Erin

*thinking of a good name*

Yes, I'm sorry Selina, I stole the name from one of your photo albums... But it's a good name. And plus, I can't think of anything that could capture all the stuff that's happened in the past weekend!
Saturday was a big day. There was a children's program meeting in the morning that Mom and Dad went to. While I was home with Nathan, Gloria called. She and Jorge and their three girls were in El Salvador for the day from Honduras, so we invited them to come over for some food and futball :D

We had a pretty great time with them. You know how I found out that tag here is "meeka"? Well we learned that in Honduras it's "landa".

Sidenote: After they left I watched "One Night With the King" on a laptop, and it was good :) I would probably recommend it.

Anyway, Sunday was a packed day. We had a surprise yesterday morning! Around 8:00 we were getting ready for church, when there was a knock at the main gate to the compound. When Mom went out and got it, Selena was standing there! She said, in Spanish of course, that she was all ready for church, and she had her offering and everything, and her mom had left to go sell some meat, so she just thought she'd visit us for a little while. She came in and had breakfast with us. Her coffee, she was sure to tell us, could have a little sugar, but her mom says not to put too much because it's not good for her. She was so proud to show us her money for the offering... Her mom had given her $0.20, and she kept saying 10 was for her and 10 was for God.


Ack! It's sideways... Oh well, you can just look silly and tilt your head. Otherwise, sorry. :)

After church we went to Gladys's house so her kids could play with Nathan, and she could visit with us. She took us to this amazing, beautiful, undescribable hill for the boys to run and play on. It was so great. You could see the whole city form the top. We took a lot of pictures on top... Too many to post here. You can check my facebook September album for them.

We came back and went to the normal teen classes at 4, and at 5 Jorge came and picked us up to go to Honduras. The worship services there are at night instead of in the morning. They are in the process of building a new church building, and the group from America that is coming down on Friday will be working on it. Until that is finished, services are held in Jorge's garage. They also had to knock out the wall from their master bedroom to the garage to extend it because they grew so much. After church I got a picture of me holding this precious little girl, Alessandra.

She is blind. She was born with fluid on her brain, and had to have surgery to drain it. They also installed something into it. Now she has around a couple seizures every day... And all the doctors know is to tell her mom to take care of her. She is so, so sweet. There is a doctor's appintment for her in San Salvador sometime in October.

Also, in regards to late doctor's appointments... We're asking for everyone to pray for Estela's little boy, Douglas. He is about 8 years old. They think he might have epilepsy. The sad thing is, when they scheduled an appointment for him, the closest they could schedule it was for next June. So prayers would definitely be appreciated for both of these kids.

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This place? This is my blog! I'm Erin, or you may know me as Ruth. I'm spending this year living in La Palma, El Salvador with my family working with the church, and I'm pretty pumped about seeing some awesome stuff happen through our amazing God. Here, you can read about some of that awesome stuff, catch up with my family news (There's a link to the rest of the fam's blogs above!), or just see what I've been up to lately. Thanks for checking it out! :)



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