This morning when we went to church, Dunia was giving the message. She has such a passion for the Lord and this showed as soon as she began her message in prayer. Noah sat next to me, as did Nora. I tend to sit in the very last row since I am so tall and I don't want anyone who might be behind me to not be able to see due to my height.
After church, Nora and I went back to the Girls Volunteer House to do just a little bit of cleaning, sweeping and taking the garbage out. Sundays are our "free days" and typically volunteers use it to do a full cleaning of their house, however since Anna and Olivia are leaving tomorrow morning and would be packing quite a bit today, I wasn't sure that cleaning today would be a good idea because with all the movement and packing, it may get easily dirty throughout the day...so I will take care of cleaning little by little throughout the week.
I filled my water bottle with water and added and acai/blueberry as well as a strawberry/kiwi water packet to the water bottle and made my way down to the Comedor. Some of the little boys asked what I had in the water bottle today, since I bring down an array of different flavors to help me stay a bit more hydrated (I am not a fan of room temperature plain water), and I let them know what this afternoon's flavor was. A few asked if they could try it, so when they were done with the water that was already in their cups, I poured each of them a little bit to try. They all loved it. I went home with none left, but that's alright because I brought down enough packets to last me for the trip and then some.
Nora and I made out way back to the Volunteer House and we chatted for a bit. She wanted to take Jonathan to the store. Jonathan is a special boy of Sarah's, who was a long term volunteer here with Morgan until just before COVID hit. We decided to wait an hour or two, to let Anna and Olivia celebrate a birthday at the store with some of the small girls and Noah. Since Norah and I will be here a few more weeks (and she stays even longer than I do), we were okay with using Sunday mainly for rest. When we finally did walk down to the store, I accidentally passed by the Grandecitas House and forgot to check in on Genesis to see if I could take her to the store. She had been asking all week and I said perhaps on Sunday. By the time I got to the store, Nora reminded me about Genesis and thankfully Karen (the one who is in charge of the Grandecitas) was at the store. So I asked her and it just seemed like perhaps next Sunday might be better, due to behaviors. Karen was celebrating her little brother, Jeremias, birthday. They had a huge chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and Karen's daughter were dressed up really nice...most likely still from church. They were all really happy to be spending time together. Nora went to get Jonathan and bought him a water and pack of cookies, which they call bread. He was enjoying himself the entire time he was in the store.
I headed to the Comedor and helped Oscar set up plates and put the table cloths over the plates to cover the food from flies and keep it warm for longer. Tonight's menu consisted of beans, rice, a cream to mix in and a tortilla. After supper, I walked up to the Volunteer House to change because Noah had a special night planned for the small girls.
Since Noah couldn't do s'mores with the small girls last night due to rain, he was waiting for me on the other side of the gymnasium to get the events started. The small girls were up in their house taking baths, and he had a table set out and went to get the supplies that he had purchased over the weekend. Raleigh was going to start the fire, and was in the gym with his medium boys, but came out to tell Noah that Noah could do it. So I told the girls to gather the dry leaves, dry pine needles, and small pine sticks and little by little we got that fire going. Noah had bought 3 super long metal rods a while back and cut them down in the wood shop and attached wooden handles to them. Maestro and Pandi helped him round the edges of the handles and whatnot, and together they made 21 very long roasting sticks to be used for quite a while after tonight! Noah gave a hat to the birthday girl and then they started roasting their marshmallows with Anna, Olivia and Noah helping them to build the s'mores when they took their "burnt" marshmallows back to the table of supplies. I just kept the fire going. It was a good night for all.
 |
| Noah giving the birthday girl her hat, said her eyes had to be closed |
It was going to be a long night for Anna and Olivia since they hadn't yet started packing and they will leave early tomorrow morning. They came back to the house from the Small Girls House well after Nora and I went to sleep, and I woke once to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and they were still up packing, with suitcase zippers opening and closing quite a bit.
Posts
