en el Bajo

Ya pasaron dos días de este trabajo de misión y lo estoy disfrutiendo. I would describe this place as a giant safe haven for the kids of the bajo. When they aren't at school, they are free to spend their days at Faithful Servants Mission. I have been helping in the reading classroom, and I am in heaven. Helping little children read in Spanish...perfect task for me! Every day at 10 am the teacher goes outside and gathers all the children from the playground and reads a story aloud to them and on Monday she let me do this. She has a wonderful library of children's literature, all in Spanish of course and I chose to read Si le haces una fiesta a una cerdita por Laura Numeroff. (If you give a pig a party) I don't know why, but I get a sense of joy when I am reading to kids, and reading in Spanish just multiplies this joy for me!

Yesterday, the men started their project: mixing and pouring concrete to make a basketball court for the little ones. This is quite an arduos task, and a messy one too, but they seem to be enjoying themselves.




and this is where my translation skills come in...





I have also been practing my painting skills...on nails that is. The little girls AND boys love having their nails painted! I'll start with one child and within 5 minutes, I will have a group of nearly 10 children around me picking out their color.



estoy pintando  las uñas



Two special moments occured for me today. The first one was in the morning when I was helping a Kindergartener with basic reading skills. She was kind of struggling, and I could tell she would prefer not to be reading. I thought she was going to flit right on out of the room as soon as her 10 minute timer went off; however, she put her materials away and returned to me, took me by the hand and led me to the playground. Although she showed little interest in reading with me, she obviously felt comfortable enough with me to hold my hand and want to play tag with me. I played tag for a little while and eventually returned to the classroom to continue helping the niños read. At a certain point, the little ones stop trickling through the door, and the older kids read novels to themselves.

At this point, I returned to the playground to find a little girl sitting on the stairs all by herself. I couldn't just walk past her so I sat next to her and asked her name. Celini. Que bella. I quickly realized that her hands were deformed and in total, she only had 3 fingers. This just broke my heart, but at the same time, her gentle spirit lifted me up. I pushed her on the swingset for a while until she got tired of swinging. I asked her if she wanted me to paint her toenails and she was very excited by this. I wasn't even going to approach her about painting her 3 fingernails, because I myself didn't even know how to handle that, but after I finished her toes, she asked me to paint her nails too, so I did.



Celini y yo

 This mission trip is a lot different from my trip to Mexico last year because in Mexico not only was I playing with kids, but I was also doing a lot of manual labor. Since the men in the group are handling the manual labor, I'm not even getting my hands dirty. This is difficult for me, because I feel like I'm not doing enough. But I have to remind myself that by giving children my full attention in the reading classroom, and by simply playing with them, I am sharing God's love.

1 Peter 4:11
If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.