Oops... I went a week without posting again... These past few days have been crazy hectic, though! I haven't had much spare time to 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

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.

I'm sorry my post took waaaaay too long get up this week. And last week. And possibly the week before that. But I'm going to start this post with last Wednesday.
As every Wedensday, we had services in someone's home. This time at the house of Marina, and tomorrow night is going to be at our place! We took a family picture before we left... And another on our walk down the long hill to their house through the rainy jungle...
We had singing and a lesson, as usual. And we had the coffee that they fix over an open fire... It's so good!
This Saturday was amazing. We had a work day at the compound in the morning. Volunteers from the church came with their machetes and stuff. They started cutting the grass with them, which is pretty impressive. Mowing with machetes, you would think that it wouldn't be a very good job, but it was actually very well done. We've had a big problem with these little ants that we call zombie ants, and Sonya traced them back to where they were coming from. She grabbed some ant poison and set to work. Here is my attempt at playing with the macro setting on my camera to show the ants taking some of the poison. There is another good picture of them that Mom took of them stealing food in my "Creepy Crawlies Of La Palma" album on facebook. I also had some fun sweeping and mopping with the twins... Maybe a little too much fun... Speaking of the twins, I'd like for you all to pray for their mom, Deyci. She stepped on a nail Sunday and it got infected, we don't know how bad. And after we had all finished working, we served everyone breakfast. It was a pretty fun day :) We had an English service tonight with Teresa, Jose, Norma, Marlon, Lilian, and Victor. It's really nice to be able to completely understand when you're singing praises. And a few minutes ago we had an... adventure. We were sure that everyone left after the services tonight. But when Teresa was about to go home, someone noticed a door open in the school. Thinking that something might be up, she stayed here for a little longer. They called Jose to see if it was worth being worried about. He called the police so they would just go check it out and make sure everything was okay. When they got here, Nathan and I stayed in the other room, but Mom, Dad, and Teresa said that watching them was like something out of a movie. They peeked around the corners and spun around with their guns text-book perfect... But nothing was actually up. We think the new teacher may have left the door open when she went home tonight. Other than that, it has been an uneventful, good day.