Farewell to Caroline

This morning I decided to wake up an hour later, so didn't get up until 5:30am.  Normally I have to be out the door by 6am to head to the little girls house, but church doesn't begin until around 8:30, so I had plenty of time to get up and get ready.  I actually had to be at the clinic to watch Joche from 7:30am until 9am, so I read my devotion for the morning, showered, got dressed, ate a little bit and made sure I was completely ready to head straight to church from the clinic (without stopping back at the volunteer house).

When I got to the clinic, Joche was already up, showered, dressed, and fed.  That meant it was my job to sweep & mop the clinic, and to change the bedding and get it in the washer and the washer started.  When I was caught up with the morning clinic chores, I sat down and read the Bible to Joche.  My Bible is in Spanish, so he sat very quietly and listened intently.  After about a 1/2 hour of reading, we colored pictures together before Kelsey came to relieve me.

Like I mentioned above, I was all ready to head to church, so hurried there and they were just finishing up singing praises.  The power had gone out before I had went to the clinic, and was still out...so all instruments were being played "naturally".  They were using the piano rather than the keyboards, the guitars were all acoustic rather than electric.  The did not have the projection system to help those of us who might not know all of the words to the Spanish songs (or help the children who can read, but may not know the words to the English songs).  But it was all good and sounded well nonetheless!  Andres gave me a hard time for arriving late, but I let him know that I KNEW I'd be late because I wasn't scheduled to get relieved from the clinic until 9am (when church starts between 8:30 and 8:45).  So I had a valid reason for "sneaking in" after the start of church.

After church, I returned to the house and we discussed the needs for groceries for throwing a farewell dinner for Caroline this evening.  It's been pretty common over the years I've been here for the girls to get together and have a big dinner when a volunteer who has been here a while leaves, especially if they've had a big impact on the other girls in the house.  I don't know exactly how long Caroline's been here (most of the summer?), but she's just an AWESOME girl with a heart completely for Jesus!  I am glad that I had the chance to meet her & get to know her.  I'll get back to the dinner in a bit.

When my "grocery list" for this evening was written down, I headed out to watch the Maryland volunteers play soccer with the big girls in the yard just beneath us.  Andres was the goalie (he's been playing a lot of soccer this weekend, and I've been praying for the strength of his knee because he left his brace back at home).  I don't know how the score ended, but the teams were fairly evenly distributed.  One of the big milestones of today was that Nicole remembered my name!  Nicole is a special needs child who tends to only say her name to others with not much other conversation.  I was excited that she said my name out loud without prompting.  :-)

I headed to the yard on the other side of the volunteer house where the little girls were playing and asked Danny if I could treat Rosalinda, Yensi and Coco to a soda at the store because it was their birthday.  She agreed, so I took them on a walk to the store.  For the most part they behaved pretty well.  Rosalinda turned 12 on Friday and Yensi & Coco will be 11 on Monday.

After the store, I headed home and worked on Saturday's blog.  The electricity was STILL out, so I checked the power on the laptop to see if it was sufficient to use the laptop without the cord.  It said there was about 27% power to the battery.  I quickly typed up the blog and posted the link to Facebook.  Within 30 seconds of posting to Facebook, the computer died.  WHEW!  About 10 minutes after that point, the power came back on.  This electricity problem is pretty common here, but is the first time it's happened since I've been here this year, so we've been pretty lucky.  I can still remember back to one of the first years I was here when it was out the morning I had to pack & leave.  It's not fun packing in complete darkness & HOPING you've got everything!

I noticed that the Christian fiction book series that I started last year was on the shelf...not the books that I had actually read last year (they were gone), but what was on the shelf were the books where I had left off.  When I went back home last year, I continued reading through the series (by Karen Kingsbury) and then life got pretty busy with working as a full-time teacher, a part-time adjunct instructor and all of the other events that popped up along the way (Andres tearing his ACL, etc).  But like I said, the books that I still haven't read...IN ORDER are sitting on the shelf right now!...and just at a time when my the last book I bought is finishing up.

After reading a chapter or two, I began making the guacamole for supper.  When that was ready to go, I set it aside and began the huevos rancheros.  Kimberly made the tortillas that she worked so hard to learn to make last week.  Zue made an awesome rice.  About 7pm, Brandy came over with little Lydia and we sat down to eat.  I got so many comments on the guacamole (Caroline LOVED it!) and on the huevos rancheros (it was probably the crema that Kimberly had bought to put over it).  We all had a great time and we all overate tremendously.  We ended up staying up until around 10pm or slightly later chatting and saying our goodbyes to Caroline.  We'll miss her!