Guatemala: Day 6

Wednesday in Guatemala followed pretty much the same schedule as Tuesday, but instead of visiting Operación Rescate, we went to a local school where Timothy Martiny serves. He runs a program called Small Beginnings Greater Ends that provides English, computer, and woodworking classes to various schools and orphanages in Guatemala. He and his wife have a heart for God's people and live entirely off of donations as they work tirelessly to reach the Guatemalan people for the Lord. Check out their website when you have a few minutes!

After touring the school, Carlos and Jon were asked to fill in for a teacher who couldn't come that day. So after about 5 minutes of planning, these two guys jumped right into an elementary math lesson!

We ended our time there by teaching some of the older students how to play an animal-only version of Signs. It was hilarious to watch! :) Once we'd eaten lunch back at Fundaniños, the teachers headed off to day 2 of teacher training. And, of course, we finished out the night by playing with the Fundaniños kids and having team time.

I miss this routine! :(

 

Guatemala: Day 5

Oh, Tuesday! This was a mad dash of a day that would only be rivaled on this trip by Thursday later in the week. For time's sake, here's a chronological list of events:

6:00ish: Wake up, quiet time, shower, and get ready.
7:30-8:00: Breakfast with the kids.
Sometime after that: Head to Operación Rescate, meet Guiseppe, tour the school, feed the kiddos their snack, and teach them a Bible verse.

1:00ish?: Head back to Fundaniños, load the van with teaching supplies, play with kids. Also, I'm sure we had lunch at some point. I was sick for most of this day, so please forgive my memory loss.
3:00-5:00: Teach local teachers at a school in downtown San Jose Pinula, Guatemala. They came from all over - AFTER a full day of teaching their own students. We taught classroom management-type stuff for the first half and split into subject area groups for the second half.

Waiting to start...we had to wait for the rain to stop so they could hear us!

5:00: Dinner at a taco stand. The rest of the group met us there. It was FANTASTIC!

6:30ish?: We headed back home to Fundaniños just in time to tuck in the kids if I remember correctly.
8:00: Team debrief and game time. :)
Late: Bedtime.

Guatemala: Day 4

On Monday, we had hoped to check out Operación Rescate (Operation Rescue). Operación Rescate was founded to help the children living in the city dump. The founder, Guiseppe, felt led by God to create a school and bus kids to it each day from the dump to give them hope for something better. Unfortunately, scheduling issues kept us from going on Monday, so we went back to Fundaniños and made ourselves useful. 


The guys did some maintenance work.

Some of us girls helped Rebekah sort donated clothes in the bodega.

And the rest of the team either occupied the Fundaniños kiddos or helped organize the supply closet at Casa de Libertad.

Overall, I'd say we were pretty productive. :)

Guatemala: Day 3

We started Sunday off by worshiping at Casa de Libertad. (It's a partner church of The Village, where I attend in Texas.) It's located above a computer store in a strip mall. This was perfect for us since the Flower Mound campus of our church is located in an old Albertson's building. :)

Apparently, the church has lots of English-speaking visitors throughout the year, so they provided us a headset when we arrived. We worshiped in Spanish (which was AMAZING), but when the preaching began, so did our translator. :)

Our team agreed that this church service was like a small taste of heaven since Revelation 7:9 talks about how a multitude from every tribe and nation will worship God together. What a blessing! When church was over, we went to a really nice Italian (Yes, we ate Italian food in Guatemala!) restaurant called Vesuvio. Carlos, one of my team members, has family in Guatemala, and they wanted to see him and meet the rest of us, so they thought this restaurant would be a good place to meet up. The pizza was delicious! You pick your toppings by meter, I believe, and then they cook it in a brick oven. It comes to the table in a pan about a yard long. We had so much left over that we took it back to the orphanage to share later. We spent the rest of the day hanging out with the kids at Fundaniños and having fun with our team once the kiddos went to bed.

Guatemala: Day 2

Our 2nd full day in Guatemala was a Saturday, so that meant we actually got to spend the entire day at Fundaniños. Hooray! This guy and his friends woke us up:

No bueno! They were ridiculously loud each morning, and we woke up plotting ways to kill them. (Side note: they were cooked for lunch about a week ago. Trust me, they had it coming.)

Clockwise: Fundaniños "mountain", baby/pre-K house, the cabaña + the volunteer house, the comedor, and the playground.

I spent most of this day in the baby/peke (pre-K) house, and I loved it! Alejandro spent the most time with me, and he's quite the cutie! See for yourself:

While we were there, Fundaniños had 5 pekes, 3 toddlers, and one baby, so they definitely have their hands full!

Please keep these sweet kiddos in your prayers. Due to various laws and family issues, many of them remain unadoptable. :(

"Father to the fatherless, defender of widows ̶ this is God, whose dwelling is holy." -Psalm 68:5

Guatemala: Day 1

The first half of our first full day in Guatemala was spent at an awesome children's museum with several kids from Compassion International. A few people in our group actually sponsor children in Guatemala themselves, and a few more had friends who do, so they were able to meet up with those kids. The rest of us just played with all of them. This opportunity was such a blessing for me and a huge reminder of the role I play in the lives of my 3 Compassion kids.

After the museum and a fun lunch at Pollo Campero, we said goodbye to our sweet new friends and set off for a local Compassion International site. We had hoped to visit the site of one of our sponsored kids, but none of them lived close enough. We visited on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders' after school day. They come to the site after school for a snack, some supervision, and activities that center around Christ and the Bible. We rolled in to this awesome welcome banner:

Sadly, we only got to stay for about an hour or so. It was definitely too quick! We had fun getting to meet the kids, producing an impromptu skit, and singing a silly song with them about the fruits of the Spirit. They were so funny when we left, crowding around us like we were celebrities and asking us to write our names for them!

Once we left, it was time to head to Walmart to buy fruit for the Fundaniños kids and supplies and snacks for us.

We FINALLY made it back to Fundaniños around dinner time. Some of us played with the kids and others cut fruit, then we all sat down to dinner with the kids around 6:00 or 6:30. I was on dish-drying duty that night after dinner and made my first new friend, Mischel. We got along so well that she even took off her bracelet and gave it to me to wear. Precious!

Guatemala Bound! - Part 2

Because of some internet issues at Fundaniños, I wasn't able to blog regularly like I had hoped. Since I'm home, have nothing better to do, and am constantly thinking about Guatemala anyway, I'm going to go back and blog each day of the trip. Here we go!

Deanna and Daniella took me to Chick-Fil-A for my farewell lunch:

Then they dropped me off to my team at the DFW Airport:

Once we made it through security, we had about a two hour wait at our gate. We sat faithfully at gate 40-something for most of the time, and I went to the restroom about 20 minutes before we were supposed to takeoff. While washing my hands, I hear the FINAL CALL for boarding for our flight at a totally different gate. I flew out of the restroom to find my group sitting undisturbed right where I'd left them. I thought maybe I misheard the announcement, so I went to check the arrival/departure board to be sure. I ran over to my team and told them it was time to move! We ran all the way to gate 20-something and made it just before they closed the door. Thank the Lord! :)

We had a good flight to Guatemala City, picked up our luggage, and made it through customs with no problems. Unfortunately, our first meal "in country" had to be Wendy's! We made the best of it, though. :) We arrived at Fundaniños after the kids had gone to bed, so we settled in and read our chapter in Proverbs for the day. As a team we decided to read the chapter that corresponded with the date while we were there (for example: on the 16th, we read Proverbs 16). Some of the team played Signs before bed, and that was our first day!

Guatemala Bound!

I managed to fit everything I need for my ten day trip in the regular size suitcase and my backpack. The carry-on suitcase is full of team supplies. :) I will have lunch with Deanna and Daniella and then head to the airport. I have to be there by 1:30 to get checked in and through security.

We are scheduled to spend tomorrow at the children's museum with several Compassion kids, so please pray that we don't have any delays today! Hopefully I'll be able to post tomorrow or Saturday.

Love y'all!

Compassion International

Did you know that I sponsor three children through Compassion International?

Well, now you do. :) Their names are Miriam, Stifani, and Gabriel. And I don't write them nearly as often as I should.

To be honest, I just don't think about it. Or I'm really busy. Or I'm lazy. And then I receive one of their letters in the mail and remember why I signed up to sponsor them in the first place.

Last week, one of the bloggers I follow traveled to the Philippines with Compassion International. She and others on the trip committed to blog about what they saw and heard and felt while they were there. I've been reading their posts for the last thirty minutes or so and just finished this one. It's about the kids without sponsors.

Please read it. You have time.

So...I suck at blogging.

What else is new? :)

Too much has happened since my last post to record it all here. I may be sneaky in the next few weeks and past-date some posts, so they will appear on the blog in the order they happened instead of a month or two later.

Anyway, I'm currently busy trying to survive the last few weeks of school. I am SO DONE with this year! It seems like everything has been made to be more difficult than necessary. The students have been checked out since, I don't know, March or April?! I found out last week that my BFF here at school has been transferred to another campus. :( AND to top it all off, we've basically been told to expect a more difficult year next year because of budget cuts. Please pray for me and every teacher you know. Yes, we get summers "off," but you really have no idea what's expected of us during the school year. Just FYI, it's not only teaching! :)

Heart Attack

I missed updating last week because I made an unexpected trip home to Mississippi. My dad had a heart attack Wednesday night but didn't decide to go to the hospital until 3:00 the next morning. I don't know what he was thinking! Anyway, the doctor put a stent into the offending artery immediately; however, he also found three more blockages to be dealt with later. When I decided to fly home, we didn't know yet if Dad we need bypass surgery ASAP or not. It turned out that his heart was not strong enough for more surgery right away, so they will monitor him for about six months and then check again. In the mean time, he is supposed to eat healthier, exercise more, and stop smoking 3 packs a day! So far he seems to be making better food choices, can walk a little over a mile, and is down to 5 or 6 cigarettes a day (instead of 50). Yay for progress! :)

Thanks again to all of you who prayed for him and my family. Please continue! :)

15 Before 28

Since I just had another birthday, that means it's time for my annual to-do list. :) If I were to continue the format from years past, I would be creating "27 Things To Do Before 28." Let me go ahead and tell you - there is NO WAY I can/want/will come up with a list of 27 things. However, I do have "a couple, two, three things" I want to do this year, so without further ado, here's my list:

1. Take a snowboarding lesson. (Yes, it's still on my list! Don't judge me. LOL.)
2. Create a scrapbook for my first five years as a teacher. (See parentheses above.)
3. Blog weekly, even if it is just a "week-in-review" type post.
4. Lose 15 pounds by July 1st, 2011.
5. Serve on the Guatemala 2 short-term mission trip.
6. Install new countertops in my kitchen.
7. Replace my laptop.
8. Visit Eileen.
9. Visit Amy B.
10. Visit Bess & Nick.
11. Save $10,000. (Not sure how I will do this because of #6-10!)
12. Finish the guest bathroom makeover.
13. Downsize by donating/recycling/throwing away at least 5 bags/boxes of "stuff."
14. Go roller skating again. :)
15. Become a Little Village volunteer.

Wow! This list might actually be doable. Wish me luck. ;)

Happy Birthday to Me!

Before the month of March is over, I figured I needed to write a post about my birthday which was on the 1st. It was AWESOME. :)

Well, having to proctor the English TAKS test (our standardized state test, for you non-Texans) wasn't exactly awesome, but the rest of the day sure was! Megan started the day off right by giving me a McDonald's gift card to buy my birthday breakfast. How fun is that?! Then I went to school and stared at the walls, out the window, over my students' heads, etc. until about 2:15. Boo. (One of my sweet PACE kids did bring me brownies, though. Thanks, Sergio!)

After school I went home and took a nap because some of my fun friends were coming over at 5:00. Daniella was on pizza patrol, and I just mingled with people and ate my Totino's pizza. I am still totally on a Totino's kick, by the way. For dessert, the roomies presented me with a super fun cookie cake with - wait for it - a big roller skate on the top! That's right, people. My 27th birthday had a roller skating theme. Don't be jealous.

Once we had a sufficient sugar high from the chocolate chip and M&M cookie cake, most of the party crowd headed to the local skating rink. I was fairly concerned that we would be the only people over the age of 12, but thankfully, I was wrong. Oh, I skated my heart out! It was such a fun party. I am so thankful I have great friends who will put on skates and act like a bunch of ten-year-old hoodlums for me!

When the roomies, Melissa, and I got home from the skating rink, I was finally allowed to open my gifts. EVERYTHING was great, and I loved it all! I received way more than I deserve, but I am truly thankful. This was one of my best birthdays ever!

Snowcation 2011

This is what our house looked like the morning of Tuesday, February 2nd - after I received a call from my principal at 5 AM telling me school was cancelled.

Then school was also cancelled on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. :) Don't worry, though; we found plenty to do around the house! On Tuesday, I steam-cleaned the carpet, caught up on TV-viewing, and took a nap. On Wednesday, we ventured out to Target, Panda Express, and Hobby Lobby. While at Target, I found this:

Oh, we spent many hours playing Nancy Drew! It was glorious, and we still haven't beaten it yet. That's on the schedule for this weekend. :) One day I made I made some chili. It was quite yummy, and I froze what we didn't eat for later.

On Saturday, we had our home group over for Bible study. This meant we spent all of Saturday morning cleaning, and Deanna made Rotel (cheese dip to Megan). Most of us went to the 5:00 service, and a few of us continued on to dinner at McAlister's. It was nice to be out of the house.

For Super Bowl Sunday, Deanna made homemade salsa and Daniella made soft tacos for us. Megan couldn't be there because she was dogsitting at her parents. :(

This was probably my favorite meal of Snowcation 2011, even though Deanna's salsa burned off my taste buds! ;)

So...about that blogging thing...

Why is it so hard to blog after a blogging hiatus?! I swear any time I go a few days without posting on here it turns into a few months. Then I feel like my "comeback" post has to be GREAT, and then I'm totally overwhelmed, so I continue to, you know, not post. Boo on that!

The only interesting thing that has happened in the last few weeks is that I had the flu, a sinus infection, and an upper respiratory infection AT THE SAME TIME and missed two days of school. The most interesting thing (well, at least the most FUN interesting thing) in the month of December was going to Disney World with Deanna, Megan, and my cousin Jessica. That was pretty sweet. Way sweeter than the flu! :)

I need to be better at documenting my life, so I am going to make a serious attempt to post more often. Wish me luck, leave some comments, and say a prayer or two (or three...or four). ;)