Una Culebra

This morning Bob & I began our day by doing devotions together again.  I like this time with him, because it helps us put our focus first on God and then on each other and what needs we have for the day or what tasks we have to accomplish.  I uploaded my blog before heading to the little girls house to serve breakfast, do dishes & walk the girls to school. 

After getting the girls to school, I walked Loren (the new volunteer that arrived last Saturday that is now assigned to the little girls house since I'll be leaving soon) to the craft house.  She'll be taking over that job as well.  Basically, each day (whether in the morning or afternoon), we get to take a few of the younger children or the special needs children that are in the yards to the craft house to make a craft.  I wanted Loren to see the place and to turn the keys over to her.  A volunteer from the California group came into the house while we were looking around and we agreed meet together at the house tomorrow to pull some kids to do a from 9:00-10:30am.

After turning the keys over to Loren, I walked to the yard and sat with Danny, Kathy & Abel and chatted while we watched the kids play.  I was there for about an hour before Abel noticed Bob & Andres coming up the road and heading towards home.  They had been working on cement...extending the road to the power toddlers house, but said that David ran out of cement so that meant that work was done for the day.  Bob was soaked with sweat!  At home, Andres & Bob explained that they were now out of Mexican suckers.  The medium boys were demanding suckers every time they saw Andres and then proceeded to tell Andres that that's the only reason they "talk to him"...is because he has suckers.  They wanted to look for a Bible verse on greed, so after searching...we found James 4:3 which says, "or if you ask, you do not receive because your reasons for asking are wrong.  You want these things only to please yourselves."  They agreed that was a good verse, but after a while decided it best not to use it & just simply tell the boys that they were out of suckers - since that was the truth.

When Bob & Andres went in search of Wade to see what other work there was to do for the day, I swept the apartment (these ceramic tile floors need to be swept daily and sometimes multiple times per day), made 2 eggs with the leftover tomato soup & guacamole and spread it over 2 slices of bread ends, and did my daily devotion (Proverbs31.org).  By then it was time to head to the little girls house to serve lunch and do dishes.  Then I headed back to the apartment to write Doris a letter.

Letter writing is pretty popular here.  I can't even really count how many I've received from girls from the little girls house, since many from the first two weeks are already packed away...but just from when Bob got her last Friday, I've gotten 6 letters.  The little girls draw pictures if they don't yet know how to write and the older girls write letters.  Then there's the letters of encouragement and thank-yous from the volunteers when they leave Emmanuel.  It's a lot.  I feel like I need to respond to all, but time works its way against me since I seem to be busy from morning until I fall into bed at night.  I do think writing Doris is important though, because she's been having a lot of troubles fall onto her lap lately.

While at the little girls house for supper, Juliet & Veronica called me to come back to my apartment.  We live in a quadraplex, one apartment is empty now...but Juliet & Veronica live in the other two.  When I got back to the apartment, they told me that they saw a culebra (venomous snake) go into our apartment by slithering under the door.  They already called David to send some boys to kill it, but they couldn't stop talking about it.  I hung around for the boys to get there.  When the boys arrived the snake was already on its way out.  Its head and about and inch or two were sticking out from underneath the door.  The girls jumped and got back.  The boys kicked it out & stomped on it with their boots a number of times until you couldn't even see a body anymore!  They agreed it was poisonous but said at just about 2 feet long, it wouldn't done much more damage than give us a bad bite and make us a little sick.  Veronica & Juliet told them this is the 3rd snake they've seen recently around these apartments, all around the same spot, so then the boys said that the "mommy snake" is probably living in the roof!  The girls wanted to the boys to check and take care of it, but they laughed and said there was no way they were going to onto the roof.  So I guess that means we have to shove a towel under the door from now on to close the gap and hope that there are no gaps big enough in our ceiling for a snake to come through from the roof. 

Side note:  Bob & Andres got home late tonight...if they'd have been on time, they could've gotten in on the action!

So after the snake was taken care of, I headed back to do baths and comb for lice.  This will be my last evening of lice combing since tomorrow there will be a church service.  When I got home, Bob was working on the meal for the female volunteers.  It started raining/downpouring at about 6:30 and didn't let up until 7:10pm, but as soon as it let up I took it over to their house and got the feedback.  After just one bite, they all said it was extremely delicious!!!  When I got back home, Bob was already in bed, so I turned in as well.  Tomorrow will be my last full-day here at Emmanuel.