Go Royals

We were fortunate last night to watch most of the five-hour Royal's game.  Since we're an hour behind Kansas City, it was just after midnight when the game ended.  Sure was exciting!

Tonight's game was amazing, as well.  Great to see the boys in blue storming the castle!  Now, it's on to New York!

Broken Washer

Beside the fact that the Royals had a chance to win the ALCS and didn't, my day also included a washer that broke.  I washed a full load about noon and everything was fine.  Got that load in the dryer and started a half load of white clothes.  I went down to the gym and walked 40 minutes on the treadmill.  When I came back the washer had finished washing, but hadn't drained or started the spin cycle.  

I thought maybe the power went off so I backed up the dial so it would wash a few minutes more; however, when it finished it stopped again.  Then came the trial and error--unplug it, plug it back in, move the dial to the spin setting, move to the rinse setting.  Man, did those clothes get a lot of washing time.  

Finally, wrote an email to our landlord and Stephen dipped out as much of the water as he could.  I rinsed the items in the sink, wrung them out as best I could and put them in the dryer.  

Hopefully, we will hear back from our landlord by tomorrow . . . I can't imagine trying to go to a laundry here.  In the meantime, we're going to try to stay very clean!

Hayden's Visit--Day 4

Being from North Carolna, Hayden had never seen the Pacific Ocean so that was our first stop on Tuesday morning.  We took him to El Tunco; he was impressed with the beach and the waves.

 We walked through the fish market on the wharf at the Port of La Libertad. It's quite an experience of sites and smells that's not easily forgotten!  The waves were the biggest I've ever seen.

Our next stop was to visit El Boqueron--the dormant volcano which is visible from our apartment.  It is also beautiful, although quite a contrast from the ocean.  

One the way back home we stopped for a late lunch at La Pampa.  The food and the view were both amazing!  

Rain, Flooding, Mudslides

It started raining last Thursday and, although it isn't raining hard all the time, it has been more or less continuous.  As a result, the ground is saturated, the rivers are very high and there have been some mudslides and flooding.  

Here are some pictures from the last two days

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The Department of Education called off school today so that parents/kids don't have to be out on the roads.  As usual, this is causing the most trouble in the rural areas.  Here in the city we are waterlogged, but not seriously affected.

Unfortunately, here is today's weather radar for Central America.

Please pray for the rain to stop--it is continuing today and the longer it rains the more serious the situation will become.  You may remember that four years ago we had a similar situation, with rain for more than a week.  At that time over 50,000 people were displaced due to flooding, bridges and roads were washed away.  I distinctly remember it because we were out of school for 6 days in a row due to the fact that, nationally, many school buildings were converted into shelters.

  

Hayden's Visit--Day 3

The primary reason Hayden came to visit was so he could talk to the administration at Escuela Panamericana about a teaching position for the 2016-17 school year.  He will graduate from the University of Charlotte in May and is considering whether God is calling to teach here in El Salvador.  

Koky is the Chaplain at the school and provides counseling for staff and students.  He talked with the school owners and administrator on Monday morning and they set up an interview at 2:30.  Unfortunately, when Koky called me to tell what time the interview was, I thought he said it was at 12:30 p.m.  So, after printing off the resume and ironing the "interview" clothes, we arrived at the school at 12:20.  I called Koky to let him know we had arrived.  Oops--the interview wasn't until 2:30 p.m.  Luckily, the school is less than 10 minutes from our apartment.

We returned home, had gourmet chili dogs (not) and waited until it was time to leave again.  Hayden met up with Koky who took him inside and introduced him to the principal.  I waited patiently outside in the truck.  At the end of the interview, both Hayden and Koky were pleased.  Hayden said he really liked principal and the school.  The excellent news was that they will have a history opening for the next school year and the school has an apartment on site where he could live.  They can't move forward, however, until after graduation, so his next trip down will probably be in May.

After the interview, we celebrated by walking to Red Mango for frozen yogurt.  Later in the afternoon we went to Gran Via to watch The Martian, which we all enjoyed.  We finished the night off with pizza at Vitto's.  

Hayden is Here--Day 2

We walked to the hotel for the  9:00 a.m. service and Hayden ran into more friends from his last two mission trips--that boy is popular.  After the service, Hayden and I walked back to the apartment; we planned to go to the grocery store.  Unfortunately, we didn't realize that Stephen had the keys to the truck.  So, instead, we walked back to the hotel and waited for Stephen to finish playing for the 11:30 service and then ate lunch at Olive Garden.

We probably watched a baseball game in the afternoon; I don't really remember!  Then David and Maritza game by and we drove to Los Planes de Rendero to introduce Hayden to all th ings "corn."  He was a good sport and tried everything we put in front of him, although the crazy corn with mayo, mustard, black sauce and cheese was a little too much.

Later, Koky and Ena joined the five of us for pupusas at El Atico.  He definitely like the pupusas and the great view!  Of course, the company was outstanding, as well.  

Hayden Comes to Visit

We were blessed to have Hayden Bridges come to see us on Saturday.  We met him on our last trip to Nicaragua (in March.)  He was the youngest of the three "dog-bite" guys.

We saw him again at the campaign in Costa Rica in August.  He really has a heart for Central America.  It was while in Costa Rica that he talked to us about the possibility of visiting El Salvador and, perhaps, seeing if he could find a teaching job here.  We encourage him to come for a visit so he used his fall break to fly down.

Stephen picked him up at the airport just after lunch on Saturday, which was a very busy day for us.  I was gone all day to a women's ministry event and Stephen had to take the inflatable to an event in Lourdes in the afternoon.  

When we were in Costa Rica, he got to know all our translators from El Salvador.  So, we made arrangements with Wilbert and Rodrigo to pick him up and take him to the youth service on Saturday night.  They even took him out for dinner afterwards.  Stephen and I were both home by the time they dropped him off.

More about the rest of his visit tomorrow!

Finishing the Campaign

Every now and then I get behind on my blog posts.  I'm never sure if it's worth it to do catch-up posts or just let them go.  Today, my thoughts are to post a final post about the El Salvador campaign. 

Like every other morning of the week, we had devotions at the hotel, picked up the Salvadorans at the church and drove to a school.  Friday's school was just a bit north of Apopa.  

Over the last five years, we've become accustomed to expecting things to change; sometimes the school is closed, sometimes there are fewer classrooms than we planned, sometimes the school is being fumigated and on and on.  What happened on Friday was different--it was unexpected blessing.

Once inside the school, school was full of adults--not a common occurrence.  When we made it down to the basketball court, we noticed that the bleachers were full of parents!

It seems that it was the day for parents to come pick up their children's grade cards and the administrators were talking with them.  We expected to hear that we wouldn't be able to share, but God had other plans.  The principal sent the parents to the classrooms (with their kids) and we were able to share the lesson, testimony and gospel with them.  What a blessing to be able to have the parents and kids together.  

There were professions of faith by parents and children!  A follow-up team from the church in Apopa will contact all of them, and we're excited to see the church grow as a result of this unexpected blessing.

Rain Again in Apopa

Last Thursday and Friday night we were in two different neighborhoods in Apopa.  We had been at both places before, but weren't able to set up because of the rain.  We were hoping that this time would be different.

Thursday night we got the inflatable up, Guillermo started the kids games and the gringos went out for the door to door.  The rain started just as they came back.  We waited it out for about 15 minutes, but had to pack up and head home.

Friday night we went to the Saint Teresa neighborhood for the third time.  We were able to put up the inflatable--something that we had promised the kids the last two times.  The gringos went out door to door, but we weren't able to set up the sound equipment because it began to rain and there was lightning in the area.  I think the kids got to play for about 45 minutes before we had to pack up a very wet inflatable.

In spite of the rain, we had 54 professions of faith on Thursday and 35 on Friday.  This just proves that, as Pastor Steve always says, the door to door sharing is the most important thing.

The Apopa church posted a picture from the follow-up reception on Sunday afternoon--seventeen adults and three children came.  Praise the Lord--He is faithful to bring the harvest when the workers do their jobs.  

School in Nejapa

This morning we visited a very poor school in Nejapa, which is on the outskirts of Nejapa.  You know the area is a poor one when there is only one paved road in the community.  Six of our seven teams were able to share the lesson, testimony and gospel in classrooms.  The seventh team wasn't used because one of the classroom teachers was sick and so they sent the students home--not quite the way I remember it happening when I was teaching.  There was one class per grade; there were 48 first graders in the room!

The most exciting part of the day took place after the lessons.  The team from First Baptist, Gulf Shores, Alabama, brought three suitcases of clothing and Guillermo had contacted the administration at the school to identify students who could benefit from receiving the clothing.  We had everything sorted by gender and size, so that each recipient received 2-3 outfits.  The principal called their names and they lined up, by size, to get their bag of clothes.  You can imagine the smiles on their faces as they received the packages!  A couple of our team members "loved" on the kids after they received their clothes.  We wanted to be sure they understood that the clothes were our way of sharing God's love.

 

Long, but good day

Today started with devotions at 8:30--I translated for Guillermo which is a little more stressful than just attending devotions.  To make me more self-conscious, Pam Kern came in while I was translating.  Pam is Pastor Steve Kern's wife; she has been in El Salvador for 30 years and her Spanish is perfect.  She was gracious enough to tell me that I did a good job.

Next stop--a small school in Santa Tecla.  There were only 7 classrooms in the school, and only 5 of them were open for one of our teams to share the lesson on using time wisely.  

After the school, we stopped for lunch at State's Diner, a local restaurant run by a Christian foundation.  We always try to have lunch there when we have a team in town.  It was a special blessing to have Marshall and Betty treated us to lunch, or to breakfast in Stephen's case.

For the first time ever, we had a family festival in the town of Armenia, about 15 minutes outside of Lourdes.  We knew there would be many kids so we took both inflatables.  The crowd was enormous!  There were more than 100 professions of faith tonight!