Wednesday

Hola! It{s Mrs. Portillo. Today is officially our last day of ministry, and for some reason, it{s gone by super fast and it seems as though we{ve been here forever. The kids are doing great...I{m honestly just impressed with their good attitudes and desire to do ministry here. I sit in the crowd while they do their dramas and watch how people react to them...usually with rapt attention and tears in their eyes. Some of the natives here just cannot believe that these kids would leave their homes to come here to witness to others. Yesterday, Tuesday, we had an opportunity to go to some hot springs for showers. The downside was that we had to get up early to drive there. We had to hike to the pools about a half mile, but it was worth the wait. Everyone found a little pool and started washing their hair. It{s amazing how great it feels to be even a little clean.

For the Green Team, we went to the local high school and spent some time talking to the students there in English. The students there seemed pretty shy at first, but then they started to open up. It was quite a sight to see our students shouting out words in English, pointing to things and trying to get the Spanish students to pronounce things in English. For me, it was great fun to see them in the role of teacher. Maybe we will have a few future teachers in this group, who knows..

We spent the afternoon in the town square of Progresso, the same town where we went to church on Sunday. We put on a full program and even had several people come forward at the end, despite the rain that suddenly poured down on us. These kids are growing in boldness..I looked out at one point and saw them all huddled around people, praying or showing them verses in the Spanish Bibles we brought. We then loaded the van and headed to a little town in the mountains. THe audience was mostly children, maybe 100 or so. We pulled out frisbees, which apparently is a foreign object to most of them, and soccer balls. These children were obviously from poorer homes as most had holes in their clothes and had dirty clothes. But our kids played with them non stop without any reservations. We put on our program again, but geared it more towards the kids this time. We put together salvation bracelets with the children and Mr. Sauer gave an invitation message to the adults. It{s amazing how these people are so uninhibited and will come forward for prayer without any hesitation. They have such soft hearts. The church there, which is composed of about 3 families, served us a meal in their tiny building. Most meals come with some sort of drink, and this time it was very sweet coffee with cinnamon. This, unfortunately, left several of our boys bouncing off the walls. It was a long day, so we all headed to bed.

As far as prayer requests, continue praying for energy and endurance. We have had packed days so far, and even though these guys are tired, they have had great attitudes and will do anything we ask of them. We{ve been so fortunate to have little to no sickness, which is amazing considering we haven{t really had the facilities to stay clean. Danielle Whitmore wasn{t feeling great the second day, but is doing much better. We{ve encouraged the kids to drink a lot of water to avoid dehydration. Hannah Sparlin has had a constant headache and seems to have had a stomach ache as well, so we{ve kept her in the shade a lot and tried to let her rest more. Zach Wilkins had a headache yesterday, but seems to feeling great today. We appreciate all your prayers and will try to keep you updated on how we do. Tomorrow is our day of rest...we{ll probably go to a water park, maybe do some hiking and some shopping.

You all would really be so proud of these guys...I know that Mr. Sauer, Mrs. Miller and I keep saying that over and over again. The lessons you parents have taught them are shining through in amazing ways.

Gloria a Dios!!!!

monday/green team/david calandro

sunday night i ate a slice of pig tounge which was pretty awesome. monday morning we woke up at seven and david rice was on the ground. last night sam brehm and calandro which is the person writing this and rice slept in hammocks in the front yard. the rebar sticking out of the roof bent and rice{s hammock fell because the rope fell off. after i ate seven tamales and some awesome donut bread things we walked to the kindergarten. we played with the kids and laura taught them a lesson in spanish. then we did follow the leader and duck duck goose which the kids had never heard of before but they loved it.

Showers? Who needs those?

Hola! Sorry about taking so long to blog. We are in the tiniest little town ever, and I think Im on the only computer here. After two flights, a two hour wait for vans, 10 rounds of catchphrase and a 3 hour van ride later, we made it to our home base. We call it Chill, mostly because none of us can actually pronounce it correctly. The houses are primative, but large and open. Each team has their own house. The white team has a bigger house, but it has no shower, and a toliet that doesnt flush. The green teams house has a toliet that flushes, which is really awesome. Most of the guys hung up their hammocks outside, and sleep there each night. The girls are holding down camp from the inside, and donating any towels or extra blankets we have to keep them warm. Everyone is plenty safe, warm, and well fed.
Yesterday was a very long, but fun day as well. We started with breakfast that a church made for us of beans, meat, and peppers. Yum! Everyone is being a great sport with the food. We headed over to a church, and put on 3 Sunday school lessons and a VBS. We also got the front row seats in the main service of their worship service. It was like a massive party! Culture shock officially set in now as we watched dancers with flags, ribbons, and tamborines dance for an hour straight, the praise band played defeaning music, and every now and then a tube of confetti was shot off and rained down on us. It was rather humbling to see them worship God with such enthusiam. I wanted to wrap up those dancers and take them back to the CHCS chapel, and show everyone how to really enjoy themselves.
After this the two teams split up. The white team headed out to a tiny concrete church and put on a short service. Then we headed up to another village, and ended up getting about 250 people to come and watch an open air street service that we put on. We pulled out all the stops with puppets, all the dramas we knew, and a great message by Patton. Our first run through of El Mundo went great, complete with a drunk mimicking every scence, shattering a beer bottle, and me accidently kicking Nick pretty hard in the gut.
After all of this, Mrs. Harryman gave an altar call, and we spent a good hour praying for whoever came. These people would come up to us, ramble on in Spanish, ask rayer. The best thing was, after we prayed for them, they would turn around and lay their hands on us and pray for us! What a humbling experience. After here, we all dragged our sore, dusty, and tired bodies back to the houses and crashed for the night.
Today is going to be about the same thing. We travel around putting on services and VBS programs. I know that the Green Team is at a kindergarden right now. As for us...WE GET TO TAKE SHOWERS!! We invaded the Green Teams house (well, the girls did), and one by one we are washing our hair in a bucket out back, then rinsing off in frigid water. Its rather glorious! This is the house with the computer, so Im going to leave the blog here for the other team to write as well. We left the guys heating up water in a massive pot out in the courtyard to take bucket showers. Im sure they are having a little man fest with that.
Please keep praying for us! Everyone has great attitudes and is still feeling pretty good. However, we are lacking on energy. The food is great, and the teams have never been closer...literally. They pack us pretty tightly in the vans.
We miss you all, and will write as often as we can. However, I dont see another chance to write or take showers in the near future...most likely until Friday night when we get home. But hey! We are just building tons and tons of character! Keep us in your prayers. And sorry about all the typos. Over wright got turned on, and because everything is in Spanish, we have no idea how to turn it off. Hopefully that will explain the random words missing. Oh! And I cant find the apostrophe either. :)

Love you Mom and Dad!
Bethany

Round Two!

Hey everyone! It's that time of the year again! In just three days from now we will be in Mexico. We are just going to use the same blog this year, mostly because it's so much easier than setting up another one. As for the blogging this year, we are uncertain as to how often we can blog. I think I have a few people convinced that it's not so scary to write home about the going ons of the trip, so maybe this year we can have both teams write a bit. I don't blame them, however, because the keyboards and the entire computer system is in Spanish. So when a warning pops up with the options of "Si" or "No", and you have no idea what it says...well, needless to say it's rather intimidating. Please understand and forgive any small misspellings or typos.

Start your prayers now! I know we all have been preparing for months for this trip. Pray especially for safety and energy for the teams and sponsers. See you Friday night!