El Salvador Mission Trip 2013 (Day 3 of 7)

This is the third of a seven part series taken from my daily journal while in Ahuachapan, El Salvador participating in a mission trip with the LaGrange District of the North Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Day 3: 2/18/2013

Sleep was interrupted by the sound of dogs barking, roosters crowing, chickens clucking, and horns blowing. As my family well knows, I am NOT a morning person under the best of circumstances so with interrupted sleep, I was a bit grumpy. I complained for a moment, but then quickly remembered my "glad" devotional I gave yesterday taken from a previous blog entry. I must be intentionally optimistic like Pollyanna. I got dressed and headed out for a cup of coffee before breakfast at seven. As I approached the coffee urn, a young Salvadoran male, in broken English said to me with a smile, "This is good coffee." If he could be this bright and cheery this early and take time to converse with me in my language, I could at least improve my attitude and enjoy the simple pleasure of coffee. And it was good! [Side note: As we visited the coffee plantation yesterday, we learned that El Salvadorans appreciate good coffee and begin drinking it as early as two years old.]
Needles to say, after a wonderful cup of coffee and another amazing feast for breakfast, we headed to the church for our assignments. It was decided that we would hold bible school on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons. We sorted our supplies and put together our game plan for the Creation Story theme. Our crafts would be geared toward celebrating God's creation.
Next, we toured a local neighborhood village, El Carmen, to invite families to participate in bible school. What an eyeopener! We saw yards of gray dirt, animals roaming free in the yards and houses, and more smiling people! We had 3 representatives from the church to lead us and translate, Fernando, Emerson, and Joanna. It was a new world to me. We saw some homes made of bamboo sticks tied together, with corrugated metal roofs held down by tires. Others were open air cinder block while some were hand-formed adobe bricks dried by the sun.
We saw a brick making operation with a large kiln in the neighborhood. Very impressive.
The streets of rock and dirt made it difficult for me to travel gracefully yet these people do it every day for miles.
This afternoon, I took a shift in our makeshift prayer chapel (a back room in the church's preschool wing ) Time in the middle of our organized chaos to quiet down, pray, meditate, and just refocus.
I am so excited to spend time with the locals tomorrow.
And looking forward to more smiles!!