This morning began with church at 8:15am (after breakfast, of course). As we were singing, Kaylyn let me know she needed to go back to the room because she wasn't feeling well. She has been on and off sick all weekend. So I gave her the keys and she headed back to our room. I sent Jaden out to the parked vehicles in front of the church to watch her as she went back to make sure she made it back to the room okay since she looked pale as if about to faint. Rollie, a long term volunteer, spoke in church about honesty and integrity.
After church, Jaden and I did laundry and swept our room really well. We typically mop on Sundays as well, however since we just arrived on Wednesday, we figured we'd let it go until next Sunday. Sundays are our days off, so as we relaxed in the room and Kaylyn sat up, I noticed movement behind her. In particular, I was pretty sure it was a nice sized black spider. Typically one of these size lends itself to be what we call a "jumping spider". It has white stripes down its back and tends to jump when you get close. We have these same spiders at home, but of course everything is bigger down here...and these spiders are no different, probably at least 5 times bigger. Kaylyn's back was to the spider, so I started by saying, "Don't freak out, but is that a cockroach, beetle or spider behind you?" Of course she looked extremely concerned and slowly moved away from the window behind her. Jaden went to kill it, but as with his lack of experience when trying to kill these types of spiders, it jumped behind Kaylyn's bed. The next hour or so was spent getting the mattresses off the bed and taking a flashlight all underneath the bed and around it trying to find the spider. We were not successful. Kaylyn even told me she was going to be sleeping with me for the night which I was NOT okay with.
After lunch, Jaden and I went to the farm because the big boys were playing baseball. I found Gibran (Noah's sponsored child) and Cristofer at the farm just resting in the gazebo as their roommates were playing baseball. I sat with them and Alexander and we spent the next couple of hours chatting. At one point, I offered to call Noah so that Gibran could chat with him. He was very excited at the opportunity to talk to Noah and for him, the call went well. Alexander had asked how long I have been coming down and I let him know that my first trip had been in 2008 and I had not missed a year until the 2 years of COVID (2020 and 2021), due to the orphanage not being able to allow people in.
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| Approaching the farm area where big boys were playing baseball |
At 6pm, the team from Ohio had invited all staff (this includes volunteers) to a dinner up at the Team House. They served chicken, rice, beans, pico de gallo, toast, watermelon, cantaloupe, and cake. We sat with Oscar and 2 of the team members (Faith and Heidi) came over to eat with us. They introduced themselves and asked many questions of the 4 of us. Heidi even told us that when the team had went on a tour of the orphanage earlier in the day, Alexander had pointed up to the hotel and mentioned "Gloria lives up there". So I guess Alexander made me part of the tour!
Andi Longest is with this team. She was a long term volunteer for 5-6 years quite a while back. She came up to me during dinner to thank me for the tennis shoes I had brought down. She let me know that she had worn them for 3 years at Emmanuel and then she took them to Israel with her and wore them for her work there, and still has them in Ohio. She told me that she didn't realize how much of a difference there was between the "average" tennis shoe and higher quality shoes until she received this pair. That was when I had to be honest with her and let her know that they weren't MY shoes, but that twice in my time coming to Emmanuel I had noticed a need for shoes at the orphanage and reached out to friends and family and they provided numerous pairs of shoes for me to box up and send on the semi trailer down here. There was also once where my godson Maximus also asked his friends to give him shoes to send to the orphanage as a birthday gift rather than getting him an actual gift, and I boxed those and sent them to the container as well. So the shoes that Andi had were most likely from one of them. I was just the messenger. But I am very glad she got really good use out of them!
As I left the Team House for the evening, David and Mike were spraying the walls and ground of the team house with various cans of Raid and the like. Due to the heavy rains, the fire ants were all over the place and lines of them were going up the Team House. It was crazy to look at when I looked at the mulch surrounding the bushes...it was like the mulch was MOVING, of course those were just all the ants. As they emptied the cans of Raid, along with all of the others watching the big cloud of chemicals, we decided to call it a night and walked back to the hotel. Kaylyn and I typically shower at night before bed, so we took care of that before we called it a night.
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