Day Two - July 8, 2007

Today has been very interesting. This morning we were all awake by 6:30 a.m. I think part of that is because most of the people went to bed early -- even before the other group (from Iowa) arrived. Chris, Heather and I stayed up and were goofing off on the front porch when they came back from the airport.

I made some scrambled eggs for everyone this morning. They were pretty good. Here, the eggs are a light brown and sit out on the counter. They don't keep the "butter" in the fridge, either.

Then, Heather and I spent the morning playing with Lillian (6) and Pahola (3). I braided their hair and we went photo crazy. I think the girls took at least 50 or 60 pix with my digital camera. They are so adorable. I also braided some other people's hair who asked me to when they saw what I did with the girls' hair.

The team from Davenport, Iowa came upstairs for awhile before church. We all introduced ourselves and mingled for a bit.

Then Lillian and Pahola took us up to their pace upstairs. We saw their parrot (Giovanni) and met their brothers, Manuel and Julio. It saddened me a bit to see their home. All 6 people share one bedroom. It's so tiny and makes me thankful for the things I have. There is no reason for me to complain.

Around 10:30 a.m. we left for church at Cristo Rey (Christ the King). The service was almost two hours long and in Spanish. I didn't understand very much, but was able to follow along with the liturgy pretty well. We also took communion there which was a cool experience (to take it in Spanish!)

After taking some group photos at Cristo Rey, we returned to the mission house.

Hales Corners Lutheran Team
(back) Tom, David, Joanne, Evonne, Marilyn, Maria
(front) Me, Chris, Heather, Melissa

Trinity Lutheran (Iowa) Team
(back) Justin, Collin, Jason, Jon, Kristen
(front) Levi, Matt, Sherri, Dawn, Rachel, Teresa

After a quick lunch, Heather and I asked Eduardo to take us to the Tienda. I got 8 Coke lights to share and they were gone within seconds. Then the boys (Coca, Eduardo, Hugo and Manuel) took us on a cultural activity excursion. We went to a place where they have a relief map of the entire country of Guatemala. It was interesting to see the variations of elevation in this country.



There were lots of beautiful flowers and other vegetation. We also saw the small museum there. It had a little gift shop where I got some cool postales (postcards).

When we came back from the cultural activity, Tom went with some of the guys and found out they were all out of Diet Coke. I must have cleaned them out earlier!

While the Iowan team went to unpack their supplies at the other mission house, we played with Lillian and relaxed.

Then, it was time to get supper ready and I volunteered to make it since there wasn't any sauce and I had found some tomatoes earlier in the day. Before I could attempt making a sauce from scratch, we had to use a special cleaner on the tomatoes and green pepper before boiling them. I made the sauce using 10 roma tomatoes, 1 green pepper, some butter, generic italian seasoning, salt and pepper. I was very happy with how it turned out, especially since I'd never made sauce from scratch before. Everyone seemed to really like it, so that made me feel good. After dinner, we had a devotion and practiced our VBS lesson.