Orphanage Emmanuel in Guaimaca, Honduras: And the Water Gets Turned Off!

This morning at breakfast, Elvia announce that the water would be turned off this evening at about 8pm and would stay off until about 1:00 in the morning. Cristian had to replace some parts in the big tank at the top of the hill, and it would take a few hours. Since they didn't want to interfere with typical daytime water usage, this was their compromise. But it meant that everyone would need to do what they had to with their running water (faucets, showers, toilets) prior to 8pm.

On Tuesday's I teach both 9th and 10th grades beginning at 7am, so my morning until about 10am is pretty much spent in the school. We were working on solving systems of equations using the elimination method in the 9th grade and graphing greatest integer functions (piecewise or step functions) in the 10th grade. When the students went to recess, I headed up to our room to drop off my school backpack, pick up my "every day" backpack and then headed to the Chosa. About half way there, Kaylyn met me in the road and told me that she needed to use the bathroom. It took her a LONG time to come back to the Chosa, but when she did, she told me that she was sick once again, yep she vomited. So she was headed back to hydrate and rest up. I am amazed that girl can get as sick as often as she does, yet she still enjoys coming down here! I give her lots of credit for that.

There were a couple of members from the team in the Chosa, and Eva (who is in charge of the toddlers during the day) was sweeping the Chosa and had plans to mop it. So April (long term volunteer, mother of Zoey and Zaiden and Micah) asked Eva if we could take the kiddos to the park just outside the Chosa so that Eva could more easily clean up the floor in the Chosa. So that is where we headed for about an hour until lunchtime.

Carlitos in the Playset of Play System

Sara

Jaden spent the day caring for the horses and then helping the medium boys pick up the clumps of grass left behind by the lawn mowers. The kids generally take care of this by hand as they walk around while the older teens in charge of them typically have rakes. Because each person here at Emmanuel plays their part, the orphanage grounds always look immaculate. There are definitely lessons here to be learned by those of us back home as parents as and children.

This evening the team invited staff to dinner up at the Team House. This Clearwater, FL team is the home church to LaDonna, mother of Danielle (who is the volunteer coordinator here), so there were MANY Emmanuel staff members that showed up to dine with the team. April and my kids, as well as Oscar, sat together at a table to eat their boneless fried chicken, rice, spicy cold veggie salad, potato wedges, fruit salad mix of cantaloupe watermelon and pineapple, and a brownie. It was a great opportunity to get a picture of all of them!

We headed back to our room about 7pm so that I could shower before the water went out. Cristian had been up at the Team House and he let me know that it would actually be cut off between 8:15 and 8:30 since he had to gather up his team of 3 other guys and get the tools and get up there. After my shower, it was cool enough for me to cover up for the night with not only the standard sheet I use, but also the flannel blanket as well.