Amaranthine Forever

We're getting to the end of the trip now. After the incident with the dogs, we found an old playground on the side of the dining hall to hang out until dinner. It had a creaky broken down swing set, playground set, jungle gym, and one of those stand-on-spinny wheels that was so broken it tilted drastically to one side when spun.(of course, all the boys loved riding on it. While we were running and climbing and shoving each other down the slide, Shawn was poking around in the bushes. See what he caught! Of course, all the kids crowded over and it wasn't long before the toad had the sense to let go of the stick and run for the nearest burrow. The boys tried to make it come out, by sticking things into the hole, digging into it, and pouring water into the hole.  But it wasn't long before something more interesting came up( Dinner, everybody!). Me, Liz, Shawn, and Jeremy hung behind, laughing about it, when all of a sudden we spotted something coming...

I know I've been neglecting you, but hang in there! When we got back from soccer ministry, we got to chill for the rest of the evening. Rancho Agua Viva is pretty cool, there's a creek, tall bushes, burrs, and frogs.  Since we were bored, Liz and I began to walk to the dining hall. Suddenly, there were two medium sized dogs in front of it, growling at us, and pacing and snapping. We tried to go around them, and they growled louder.  We backed away slowly. "Hey guys! There's two angry dogs in front of the hall and they won't let us in!" "Are you talking about Mr. Peaches?" (Mr. Peaches is a chihuahua that welcomed us when we got to RAV. The girls went crazy over him. "OOh, he's so adorable!" The little furball.) "They were snapping at us! They were trying to bite us!" "Mr. Peaches would never do that!" So we marched, in a group to the dining hall. Wouldn't you know it, the dogs were tame and ba...

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I just haven't gotten around to it. Let's see......The rest of the ministry went the same as when I first described it(in detail) so I won't go too into that today. This is Roberta's house with a wall up.   Ain't it purty? (even though I couldn't help much-what with my sprained ankle and all.)   Who are they? I dunno. I think they're her daughters, but I'm not sure. All I know is they're friendly, they were obsessed with Sawyer's red hair,(they said he was pretty) and their English is way better than my Spanish. They were really happy for the extra room and shade, cause it was really hot. All of these houses are built on car tires and perilous cliffs. We didn't get to finish-(more work for Village 2) but it was really awesome. It was touching when Roberta said(in a translated conversation) that she was thankful we made her house bigger, because then, we could stay at her house the next time we came t...

After church, we played ninja in the church yard. The Mexicans play ninja differently, as we soon found out. They play it in a sorta "lets just slap each other" way. Soon, the whole yard turned into a huge slapfight.Cool!      WOO! The very hands and feet of Jesus, forever immortalized in Mexican ninja. Yeah, baby! Spreading His word to the far reaches of the globe, gotcha. This next part is probably the highlight of the entire village 1 Mexican trip.   Here is the story. Daniel and Barbara are hanging out with everyone else in front of the church. Down the street comes two kids, a boy and his brother. The boy is holding a slingshot. Daniel decides he wants to buy the slingshot. He starts bargaining, translated by Barbara, in an epic exchange that will make him forever remembered by our team as the Expert Negotiator. Daniel has a dollar and seventy five cents. He offers it for the slingshot. The boy accepts. But the boy's brother, wants more. "5 dollars...

This here building, in the middle of the slum area,   is the La Vina Church. When we talked the day before, the pastor said: "The people around this neighborhood, they hear the music, and the music brings them to church!" Now, what you have to know about foreign churches is, worship is a HUGE part of their service. The worship can easily last an hour. And what wonderful music it was. It was so beautiful and joyful! I wish you could hear it, it was wonderful! One of the most touching points was when they sang a song in Spanish and then in English, it was so nice of them to try and relate to us in our language. After the worship, we left to go help teach the little ones. We were going to tell the story of Feeding The Five Thousand with the help of Alison, but before, we let them color.    We talked to them too.  There was a little boy who said that his mom had taken him to America before. He said he didn't like it. However...