Dias Tres! A Lot of Progress and a Little Bit of Rain..

  

      We began today with a wonderful devotional from Bill, who spoke about our best motivation for being here in Matagalpa. He reminded us that others may praise us for coming on a trip like this, but the recognition is far from the reason we chose to be here. 

     We got lucky again today and avoided rain for almost the entire day of work. Donna and Amy set up the medical clinic for the morning check-ups and Sally Jo and I helped with the kids and medical charts again. Megan began cooking the fish tacos for lunch with Eric's assistance, and Doug managed to finish painting the inside of the kitchen at the same time. Todd, Wayne, and Bill worked on more shutters for the kitchen as Chuck and Rich worked on building the cabinets and shelves. 

                      

       After lunch, we had a lot of fun as we rehearsed the four songs we planned on singing at the evening service. Wayne played his guitar, Bill joined in with the drums, and we worked on our lyrics, melodies, and harmonies. It took us some time but eventually we got the hang of it and sounded pretty good

      In the afternoon, several of us stayed inside the church and did crafts with the kids. We set up a rock painting session in which they each picked out their own rock to paint. They really enjoyed it and most of them ended up painting two or three rocks each. We thought we did a good job at keeping the paint on the plastic until we looked under the tables and realized half of the kids decided to use them as napkins. But it was all in good fun and definitely worth it. I also think we felt a little bit more confident today with our Spanish and had somewhat of an easier time communicating with the kids. 

    The rest of the group continued their hard work outside and were able to make quite a bit of progress before the rain started up and we had to call it a day. Unfortunately, the pastor had to cancel service again because of the weather conditions, so we are crossing our fingers that on Thursday it will work out.

     We had dinner at 5:30pm and then went into our debrief for the night. Our three lucky winners of the Bueno Bars tonight were Eric, Todd, and Bill. Although Eric spent much of the morning in the kitchen helping Megan cook, he still managed to get the electricity in the kitchen up and running. Todd and Bill worked tirelessly to build two more shutters and put them up before the day was over. All three of them remained focused and determined to get their jobs done and it was amazing to see the finished products. 

    It was another great day filled with fun, hard work, and learning experiences. Through our faith, we have been blessed with the ability to spread love and joy to the people here. Wayne and Megan have reminded us that most of these kids just need to feel valued in some way and that we can play a major role in doing so. We are going to get a good night's rest and be ready for another successful day tomorrow!