June 16, 2014: Monday - The Last Ministry Day

Monday was our last ministry day. As such, we had something of a lighter day.

It started a little earlier than our other days because we had to be at our first location by 8:00 a.m. So we all woke up early and had breakfast by 7:00ish.

Our first location of the day was a school where we were going to put the drama on for a second time. I don’t know the name of the school we went to. It actually was three schools that used the same building, but met at different times. Nancy explained it to us after we left. She said that the boys’ school meets there in the mornings, an early childhood school meets during the middle of the day, and a girls’ school meets there in the afternoons. Because of this, the school had three different names and I don’t know what any of them were. I do know that it was much closer than the last school, only about 15 minutes away in Chiquimula proper.

We got to the school right on time, but we had to wait to get in for some reason. Daniel knocked on the door several times before someone finally came to open it for us.

This school was very different from the last one. The other one was small and pretty open. This one was much larger and the classrooms were pretty contained. Also, in the center was a large recreation area where the kids could play soccer, basketball, and lots of other games. The recreation area also had rows of concrete bleachers around it for people to sit on. At one end was the stage we would be performing on.

We got there and looked around for a few minutes, then got busy setting up for the drama. At some point during this time, it was realized that something had been forgotten back at the house. So Daniel went to get it while the rest of us finished setting up and then stalled.

We got the props set up and organized and I painted Will’s face again (he insisted, despite the fact that last time, the paint had dripped into his eyes because of sweat). After that, Alex stalled by playing a game with the kids.

I’m not really sure what type of game he was playing with them. It was a bit like Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, but you only had to touch your head, stomach, and knees. Also, it was played in pairs and the pairs had to tap each other’s respective body parts. John and Will wound up paired up against the other pairs of boys. I watched the whole game, but I’m not sure who won, or even how they would have won.

After we finished the game, everyone was asking if anyone knew more games to play because Daniel wasn't back yet. Just then though, he walked in and it was time to start the drama.

This time around, I think the drama went a little smoother. Probably cause we kind of knew what we were doing.

Right as we got to the end of the drama, I noticed that the suitcase needed to be repacked, so I worked on that. In fact, I stayed back there organizing the bag and getting everything packed while everyone else was up front handing out candy to the kids. Someone needed to pack the bag and organizing is something I do well, so I took care of it.

I don't totally know why, but Alex didn't give a message to these kids like he did at the last school. I think Stacy explained it to someone, but I didn't hear the explanation. Because Alex didn't present a message, right after the drama ended, everyone else handed out candy and then we packed up the sound system and it was time to go.

We headed back out to the van (we had a van today instead of the rental truck and Rav4), but we couldn't leave right away because Daniel had to go to the paint store around the corner and pick up some paint for some reason.

Once they'd gotten the paint, we packed into the van and headed back to the house. It was a little after 9:00 a.m.

When we got back to the house we took a few minutes to put our stuff away and then it was time for our next project and find out what that paint was for. We were going to paint Brandi and Daniel's living room. It's something they had really wanted to do for a while but had no way of doing on their own. The way the room is set up, it's a hexagon at the center of the house off of which all the other rooms branch. In the center is a small hexagonal atrium thingy where Precious (one of their two dogs, a little white mop of a thing) slept. They had painted the wall of the interior part of the hexagon but couldn't get the exterior hexagonal wall painted on their own. That's where we came in.

We started by moving all the furniture away from the wall. We also had to take down four wooden valances. Will and I handled taking down the valances while everyone else moved furniture and cleaned the walls (dusting them and getting rid of cobwebs). Hugh was in charge of mixing the paint.

Once everything had been moved, taken down, cleaned, and mixed, we got to work painting. Most everyone took rollers, but Alex and Nancy took brushes and cut in around frames and near the ceiling. Jillian wound up getting an extender and she took care of painting the top portion of the wall where no one else could reach. Hugh was in charge of refilling the paint pans and he did a little rolling too.

We wound up putting three coats on the wall. After two coats, most of the group had sort of stopped working for various reasons. John, Alex, and Stacy had to leave cause they were going to visit someone elsewhere in Chiquimula and most everyone else had been painting for a couple hours straight at that point, so they needed a break. Ben took over and he and Jillian basically put on the last coat by themselves.

We ate lunch and by the time we finished our sandwiches the paint had pretty much dried. Since the paint was dry, Will, Hugh, and I put the wooden valances back up on the wall. By the time we finished, it was time to get ready to go to the hospital again.

At first, Brandi said we didn't have to go, but everyone really wanted to go back. So we went and cleaned up, then Hugh drove us to the Hospital. This time Ben and Will joined us while Hugh headed back to the house to finish putting it back together after our painting.

Just like the last time, we started in the NICU. Unlike last time though, Brandi wanted to just take in one or two people at a time to pray for children. She thought it would be a little less chaotic and the rest of us who'd been there before all agreed.

Ben and I were the first two to go in with her. The first baby we saw was Santa Lucila, one of the babies I'd prayed for the last time we were there. She had been moved and seemed to be doing a little better. I offered to pray for her again, since I remembered her. Just as we finished praying her mom appeared again and Brandi spoke with her for a few moments to explain what we were doing before we moved on to the next baby.

Next we prayed for another baby that we didn't know the name of and the parents weren't around. Ben prayed for her this time.

After that, Ben and I headed back outside to sit with Will and Nancy. Right away Ben went over and sat with some of the families that were sitting out in the hallway. He wound up striking up a conversation with one of the women there. He eventually had to call Nancy and Will over to help translate, but at first he talked to her all on his own. They told me later that the woman's husband was in the ICU because he had 20 tumors in his stomach. Apparently he needed to go to a different hospital but he couldn’t leave yet because the doctors in Chiquimula had to wait for test results on the tumors to come back before he could go. Ben offered to go in a pray for the woman's husband and she said okay, so he did.

When he went back into the ICU, Nancy and Will came back over and we got to talking. Eventually Jillian and Heather came back and it was Will and Nancy's turn to go in and pray.

After Will and Brandi came back from praying for the last of the kids in the NICU, it was time to go to the Children's Ward. When we got there, there were a lot fewer children than there had been on Friday. I hope that that was because most of the ones we'd prayed for had gotten better and gone home, but I never got a concrete answer about that.

Instead of splitting up like we had on the previous visit, we all stayed in a big group. We headed to the very back of the ward to start praying there. In that section, we found two children who both had diarrhea and a fever so we prayed for them. Unfortunately, I don't remember their names.

When we had finished praying for them, we turned around to find one of the people Hugh and Heather's group had prayed for on the last visit standing behind us. It was a 17 year-old-girl with physical handicaps who had been raped. She was at the hospital because the rape had resulted in a pregnancy. She'd just had the baby a few weeks before and was now living at the hospital because he family had kicked her out. She had come to see us carrying her baby, a little girl named Dulce. Nancy and Heather took turns holding Dulce and we prayed for her and her mother.

After praying for Dulce, we moved back to the front of the ward. By this time we only had a little bit of time left before visiting hours were over. We wound up praying for four little boys, all with different needs. After praying, we quickly gave them some clothes and toys. Will also wound up praying in Spanish by himself for another mother and child who were there.

By that time, visiting hours were over and we needed to leave. We gathered up all our stuff and headed out into the hall. When we got there, we were stopped by one of the nurses who asked if we could pray for her mother who was in a hospital in another town because of a brain aneurism. We prayed for her, as well as giving out a few things to some other kids that came over to us.

Finally we were forced to leave.

After finishing at the hospital, we went back to the house for a bit. The plan was to leave a little later and go watch the soccer game with some of the church elders from Daniel and Brandi's church at Charlie's (the pizza place we'd eaten breakfast at the previous day). All the guys were pretty excited about it (it was during the World Cup and the US was playing Ghana).

We wound up leaving late though because Daniel was on the phone with someone for a while for some reason that I never got the chance to ask about. Because of this, we missed seeing the first score of the game. Apparently the US scored on Ghana within the first 45 seconds of the game. Still, everyone was happy we would get to see the game at all.

We loaded into the van and headed over to Charlie's to meet John, Stacy, and Alex. We spent the next couple of hours watching the game, relaxing, and talking.

After the game was over, it was time to head back to the house for a bit, then go to dinner. We were having dinner at a Chiquimula firehouse. The firefighters (bomberos in Spanish) were cooking for us.

We go to the firehouse and looked around for a bit before dinner. The first thing everyone wanted people to see was the roof. We headed up there and got a great view of the surrounding area. You could see all the way to the mountains. I took a few pictures of the streets and Alex and Stacy wanted a picture too, so I took that for them. At that point, most everyone else headed back downstairs, but Will, Heather, Ben, and I headed over to the edge of the roof to see what we could see there. After that we decided to head back downstairs with everyone else.

Downstairs, everyone sat around for a while talking and watching the kids watch TV. After a while, Will, Hugh, and Daniel wandered over to the fire pole. Of course Will wanted to try it, but he wasn't totally sure. So Daniel did a little convincing and eventually he got Will to go down it. Will loved it of course. Naturally, this meant everyone else wanted to try. Next came Hugh, then Will went again. After that John tried it out and even Jillian wound up trying it out once as well.

Around then, dinner was pretty much finished cooking, so we all sat down and got ready to eat. The bomberos had cooked us steak, potatoes, rice, and beans. All the food was really good. I wish I could have eaten more of it.

After dinner, the guys got up and talked with some of the bomberos. John spent time talking with the station chief and Ben talked with a few of the other bomberos. I don't really know what they talked about, but I did get pictures of them during their conversations.

Finally it was time to leave, but there was one last thing to take care of before we did. Everyone wanted to go down the fire pole one last time. All the guys went first. Then Jillian did. At that point, they started trying to convince Heather and I to try it. It took a bit, but eventually I agreed. I was pretty nervous since I'm a klutz and I wasn't completely convinced I wouldn't fall to my death, but I still did it. And Will has the video to prove it. He took video of all of the girls going down the fire pole, much to Jillian's consternation and my delight. I wanted the proof that I'd done it. Jillian, not so much.

Once everyone got back downstairs, we started to head out. We waited a few more minutes though because a few people stopped to pray with one of the firefighters. I don't know what about, but I saw them stopped with their heads bowed right before we left.

When we got back to the house, all of us girls decided to finish packing since we had to be up at 4:30 the next morning. Then it was time for bed in preparation for the early morning the next day.