First Workday in Limon

Okay, I'm gonna do the best I can to catch you up, so bear with me here...

I now have a better idea of what the two different sites do – it's definitely not like non-profits in the US where they focus on like one thing and that's it. Limon community center and Casa Hogar Vida have a ton of different things – I feel like I did a poor job last time explaining.

Casa Hogar is a community that's about 15-20 minutes away from our apartments. They have an orphanage which can house 8, but they only have 6 kids right now – a 3 year old twins, both boys, two boys, 6 and 11, and two girls, like 8 and 14? not sure. There's a hotel/complex for short term missionaries that they're hoping to finish by the end of June. There's a block factory that provides some jobs and makes it really cheap to build homes. They have a handicraft house where they make earrings and bags and whatever else Sarah thinks up for them to make :-) They have a coffee bean roaster that they're gonna roast coffee beans and sell – Criz (the one Honduran LT participant) was really excited about that – he's even more of a coffee fanatic than Sarah!! There's 38 homes in the Casa Hogar neighborhood – it consists of 4 parallel lanes with 10 houses each. The last row has the handicraft station and an empty house. The purpose of the houses are so that people can own their own homes – sometimes they are given and sometimes the people pay in a 10 year plan that afterwards they own the house. The church also tries to fill the community with a mix of people with HIV and people without so that they can hopefully break stereotypes and stigmas that surround people with HIV There's also the office and the store there. The office is the only place with air conditioning... hehe... Oh, and there's an AIDS/HIV support group that makes house visits (I think beyond Casa Hogar) – I want to do that sometimes!

Limon is a community center that helps with child malnutrition. They bring kids from the community into the clinic and feed them breakfast and lunch and keep track of how they're growing and stuff. They also teach the kids hygiene and the importance of healthy living. There are some really sad stories though... Once the kids get back to 100%, they graduate to the daycare right next to the clinic. There are bible classes in the morning along with playtime and English and computer classes in the afternoon for the older kids. Since unemployment is 40% here, the english and computer classes will hopefully help the kids get a job later. There's also a microloan program that helps Hondurans start their own businesses since there aren't huge businesses that can hired lots of people.

I hope that gives you a better idea of the two places we work are all about :-)

So Wednesday I helped at Limon – Katie and I played with two bebes – Isis (2 yo girl) and Yesser (1yo boy). They were super cute!! We helped them have breakfast and lunch and played with them in between. On the playground, Isis loved the slide, and would always yell “adios!!!!” as she went down. Yesser wanted to go down the slide, but never got the courage, even when we tried to go with him. The playground was full of kids of all ages, and they are a bunch of monkeys!! If it can be climbed, they would climb it. There were a few times that I was like, it that allowed? But Katie and Elsa said that the women in charge saw it and didn't do anything, so apparently the kids are really good about not getting hurt :-)

After lunch, the moms came to get the kids until only the kids for the computer and english classes were left. I helped with the computer class because after being in Honduras for a day, I realized that the reason I loved being here was speaking Spanish, so I crossed TESL off my list.

Julio was the teacher in computer class – they were working on EXCEL stuff. I'm not too proficient in excel, so I felt a little useless, but it was still fun. Julio is a character! He is easily distracted, hard to understand (both in English and in Spanish I hear. Frank says he only understands about half of what Julio says!), and was excited to show people all the cool shortcuts and stuff you could do with excel. Near the end though, he basically let the kids fend for themselves and he talked to me and Sarah Liz (aka Slizzard). Apparently he's learning French with Rosetta Stone. His pronunciation is as terrible as ever though, and I don't think it's grasped the concept that you don't pronounce all the letters. Which could be a problem in French :-P

At 4, we headed back to the apartment. It was threatening rain, but Elsa and I opted to ride in the back of the truck. We got kinda wet on the way back, and since it was so beautifully hot and rainy when we got back, we just danced in the rain until we were fully satisfied :-) But then we had to wait for Sarah (who was a Casa Hogar) to come back with the key so we could get in. That wasn't so much fun.

We ate dinner at the church outside (spaghetti) and caught everyone else up with what we had done that day. I've decided Limon is too much like babysitting for me to enjoy working there the whole summer. I told Ed I wanted to work at Casa Hogar the next day (which was no big deal :-)

Ed said the church was having a monthly prayer meeting that night and we were welcome to join. I definitely wanted to!! Caleb, Jack, Michelle, Katie and I stayed behind. It was so fun!!! We sang 2 songs at the beginning (unfortunately, no words were on the screen, but I recognized a lot of the songs. Sing Sing Sing [chris tomlin] was one of them). Then someone got up to talk about the 3 things we'd be praying for. Frank sat next to us and translated like a boss! I don't know how he could keep it all straight, talking in English while still listening in Spanish. One day, my friends, one day...

We prayed for people to be reached with the gospel, for discipleship, and for safety. It's not too bad if you're cautious (and Ed is making sure we're super cautious, parents) but there are stories on the news... the gringo group was joined by Frank and his lifegroup leader David. We all prayed in English – David did a really good job, considering it had been a while since he had prayed in English :-)

Then we went back in and sang 3 more songs – Hosanna was one of them, which was super easy to sing the chorus of hehhehehe....

And that was basically Wednesday... Man that's long. Maybe I'll post this one now and do more later. Bah.