Sitting at Burger King using some Wi Fi

So... here I am, on my time off.  It is really weird having time off because I sometimes forget that this is really a job.  This is the first time that I have had "time off" so, I don't really know what to do.  I decided to come to Burger King and get on the internet because it has been a while since I have been able to do that.

I am loving this new group.  It is so hard because the last group was so amazing, but this one is just splendid as well!  I am hoping that every group is just as awesome :D

The cool thing about this group is that they are all from the same church.  So, there are 29 people from the same church rather than 42 people from 2 churches.  It completely changes the dynamics and it is interesting.  I like it :)

This week I have been working at a place called Misión Betesda.  It has been awesome.  It is a rehab/jail alternative for adult males, the majority of who are in their late teens or early 20s.  I have been the main "translator" while I have been there.  That has been interesting.  It hasn't been going all that well :P but today, I explained how to play horse in Spanish and I think the guy understood haha.  That or he already knew how to play and was just humoring me while I was trying to explain it haha :D.

I haven't said anything quite as embarrassing as "quiere sentir" yet though so that is exciting!  The guys there are really great and I have enjoyed getting to know them the little bit that I have.  It is hard because of the language barrier, but they love playing basketball with the youth that come, so we have been able to get to know them through that.  They are SO GOOD!  Some of the things that they do are just incredible!  I wish that I was better at basketball, but it has been so much fun trying haha!  I am getting a little better, that or I am just playing and not caring quite as much haha :)

I am loving it here still and I can't wait to see what God has in store for the next 5 weeks!

This is just an example of the amazing skies that take place in Puerto Rico.

Breathtaking.  Especially at sunset.

Another example of the sky at sunset.

The clouds here are just ridiculously amazing.

This is our "fun picture" haha :)  I love my team (Me, Adrienne, Josh, Jenna)

We all went to a dam!

Becky (Area Director/Awesome Sauce), Julio/July (who is one of our friends from the community), Adrienne, Josh, Jenna, Me

I just had to add this one because I just now realized that Adrienne and I, and Josh and Jenna have the same exact faces... I'm not sure if this was planned...

The "good" team picture!

Day 32 of YouthWorks / Day 6 of Programming –

The groups left today.  It was so sad to watch them leave!  Such a great group of adult leader, students, and just everything in general!  So wonderful!  We did a quick clean up of the site and had a running breakfast!  Then off they went.  Afterwards we, as a group, finished what wasn’t cleaned and then we were able to read the notes that the students left for us, which was exciting :).  Each Friday we also get an hour to “rest,” or do what ever we find to be restful.  Today I found finishing some blog entries to be restful.  I also took a short nap and a shower, lol.

So, now we still have SO much to do today!  We need to do laundry, so shopping for the next group that is arriving on Sunday and get the site ready for them as well!  I hope that we get everything done today because if we do we get to have a whole day off on Saturday!! I could really use that.  I am thinking maybe a day at the beach or at the very least going somewhere with internet so that I can catch up on some facebook and e-mails.

Miss you all!

YouthWorks Day 32 / Programming Day 5 –

Today was AWESOME!! Not only was it my birthday, it was Josh (the other male leader)’s birthday as well!  So crazy!  We are exactly one year apart.  He is a year older than I am.  Today we drove around to three different ministry sites and just had an all around awesome day.  It was really nice because I was able to spend some time with some of the kids that I didn’t normally get to spend time with during the day.  I also got to see three ministry sites in action that I haven’t gotten to see yet.

Around 1:45 we ended up at Reto Juveniel, which is an awesome ministry that houses 10 guys under the age of 18.  They are at Reto instead of going to prison.  They work really hard maintaining their living area and learn about Jesus and how to fix their lives.  It also works as a rehab center.  This place is EXACTLY what I want to do with my life in the future!  It is so wonderful.  I would love to work at this ministry in the future.  The guys there are just awesome and the work that Gilbert (the leader) does is so amazing.  It is also right on the beach, which is nothing to complain about.  So for the afternoon we were playing with games with the guys and then we went swimming/wading in the ocean.  The waves were so intense so we basically just played in the waves, which was pretty awesome, I’m not gonna lie.  Then, the rest of the group came and we swam some more and then we had a cook out with them.  We grilled out with hot dogs and hamburgers and it was delicious!

Afterwards, we came back to the church and had a foot washing service with the kids.  I don’t normally get choked up about foot washing but this time it was just so amazing.  We all had such an awesome connection with the kids and the leaders as well that it was just so meaningful and such an amazing experience.

Afterwards, Josh and I got called into the staff area for “one more short meeting” because Adrienne “needed to talk to us.”  I was a little nervous because my guilty conscience went crazy and I was going over everything I had done in the day trying to think of what I could have possibly done!  Then we walk in and our Puerto Rican friends yelled, “SURPRISE!”  Oh my goodness was I surprised!  Julio, Angie, Lucy, Daniel and Luigi were all there and they brought us two (delicious) ice cream cakes.  WONDERFUL!  They are all just such awesome people!  I loved getting to see them and they were the cherry on top of my already beautiful day!

Over all I would say this is definitely in the top 3 of my birthdays!

YouthWorks Day 31 / Programming Day 4 –

Today I was moved to our Salvation Army site rather than our site at CIIPAP.  I was really nervous at first because they originally asked for a Spanish speaker so that they could translate everything.  I’m definitely not translator material yet.  So the day started off kind of rough.  But, then when I finally got my head out of my bum and just did it, it was awesome.  I had a great time there and made some great friends with the kids!  It even worked out that I didn’t need to do any translating, except for minor things when the kids would want to say something to one of the youth kids.

Today I had an interesting experience that I thought had a nice parallel in my life.  We were having pizza for supper and we buy them from Sam’s Club.  So, I offered to go pick up the 13 pizzas.  We called ahead a bunch and told them that we would be there at 4:30.  Well, I got there at 4:15 and waited in line for almost half an hour.  Then I got to the front and told them what I was there to pick up and then I waited for another 45 minutes before actually getting the pizzas.  I was watching them SLOWLY go through the pizza oven, it was one of those on a conveyor belt type thing.  So as they were ever so slowly coming through and taking so long I took the time to pray and reflect because as staff we don’t get quite as much time to do that as you would think.  So I was sitting there praying and I realized that sometimes I am like the pizzas in the over and God is sitting in the lobby waiting for me to get done.  I’m assuming that he is a little more patient than I am though, lol.  It seems like while I am taking my happy time getting ready, or following his plan or doing what he has asked me to do, he is sitting there waiting for me.  Sometimes I take a while to get done, like the pizza.

Tonight, we ate pizza and then went to the plaza.  We heard about the history of Arecibo and a bit about Puerto Rico as well!  Julio, one of our friends from the community (who also runs Sicomoro) was the person who spoke for us.  It was great.  They are selling shirts to help to raise money for their organization and the kids almost bought them completely out!!  It was so awesome!  They have such a good cause too J  I can’t wait to buy some things to support them :).

YouthWorks Day 30 / Programming Day 3 –

I have been officially working for YouthWorks for 30 whole days!  WOW!  It feels like I just flew to Minneapolis and met my team for the first time yesterday.  We got to know each other quickly and became close friends in what seemed like minutes!  I could not ask for a better team!  BUT!  Enough about that, I have babbled on enough about that in previous entries!

After 3 weeks of preparation the groups FINALLY arrived!  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED having three weeks of living in Puerto Rico with my team getting everything ready and getting to know the ins and outs of programming and the people in the community, but I was SO pumped when the groups finally got here!!!

Today was the second full day and I was back at C.I.I.P.A.P. and it was great.  The niños were super awesome and the youth were so helpful and excited and full of energy!  I loved every minute of it!  We got to hang out up at the cancha again and this time I ventured into the music room and got to watch the kids practice for an evening show they are giving for their parents.  They played the Chicken Dance, THE CHICKEN DANCE!  It was AWESOME!  They were playing on steel drums (which are bent metal garbage cans) and it sounded so cool!  These little kids playing an awesome song and they actually did really well!  They are all such fast learners!  They were super pumped about it too!

I loved playing with and attempting to communicate with them.  I am getting better at my conversational Spanish (a little) because I am forced to actually speak it.  It felt really good to translate for some of the kids there haha.  But then I was had a few hard times and I had to pull over one of the little kids that was bilingual and ask them to help me out haha.  Luckily there were a lot more bilingual kids there than we realized!  This one little boy named Edward (pronounced Ed-Ward with a hard A) is ridiculously awesome.  He had a Green Lantern ring and he was showing me some sweet moves.  I just love all of these little kids… they are all so awesome!  I am so pumped that I have been able to go there!  I really hope that I got back again soon!

Tonight after Ministry Time we went to church with Pastora Eva and she talked about Jonah and the big fish and she had a really cool outlook on the story.  I really liked how she interpreted it.  She also talked about the big fish that would be waiting for all of us when we didn’t follow through with the plans that God had for us.  She said a bunch of other really cool things that I can’t remember.  I need to remember to take a pen and paper with me next week.  After church Pastora Eva gave us all ice cream and we had some time to get to know some of the people in the church.  Wonderful people.  Today went so well!  I am so happy with life right now.  Sleep is minimal but that is to be expected, lol.  The first morning I was on breakfast crew and I was up by 6:00 so that I could shower before.  Then this morning I was on wake up duty so I woke up at 6:30, kids lights out is 10:45 and it is not almost 1:00AM… oops.  Time for bed!  Hopefully next week we get a little more sleep time because we will have more of a knack for everything.  Early morning tomorrow so I should hit the sack! 

PS.  I never thought an air mattress could be so comfortable… when I lay down every night I just melt into it and pass right out.  It is awesome, lol.

YouthWorks Day 29 / Programming Day 2 –

Today was pretty great.  It was our first full day of programming!  We got to take the kids to the ministry sites and have a full on YouthWorks day!  So wonderful!  I went to this place called CIIPAP.  I can’t remember what exactly it stands for but… it was awesome.

I spent pretty much all day sitting up on a cancha (basketball court) playing with little kids and trying to speak to them in Spanish.  There were so many kids there.  It was great.  It is a summer camp for little kids and it is set up like a school, each grade has gym time, music time, gymnastics, and a bunch of other things.

My day was really great!  So many awesome little kids and a great group of students were there as well!  I also really enjoyed the Adult Leader that was there with the students.  She and I have almost the exact same sense of humor and she is just the funniest lady ever!  We had a few great conversations and laughs.

THE GROUPS FINALLY ARRIVED!!!

YouthWorks Day 28 / Programming Day 1 –

This day was a Sunday and it was AWESOME!  Our wonderful Area Director (Becky) arrived a while ago to help us finalize everything before the groups got here.  Then Sunday we went to Teefrans (which, if I haven’t mentioned this before it is an AMAZING panaderia [bakery] that is just down the street from the church that we are staying at) and had breakfast.  We got some delicious quesitos which are pastries that are to DIE for!  I will never find anything as delicious when I leave here.  Then we went to church and had an awesome time.  Then we did some last minute stuff around the site and then it was time to wait. 

I got put on arrival duty, which I LOVED!  Basically, what I was doing was sitting in a chair in front of the church (under some palm trees J) waiting for the groups to get there.  We have a big orange banner on the fence and when they got there I ran back to tell everybody that the first group was there and then had to run back out and greet them and give them all name tags!  It was AWESOME!  I loved being the first person that they saw.  Giving out name tags was great because I got to know their names pretty quickly (I am still working on some of them though, lol).  Then we got them all situated and had free time to just hang out and play games and junk.

Then the second group got there and we did it all over again!!  Then we had tacos for supper and our first Club (which is our evening worship service that I am in charge of and give the “talk” at).  It was a little shaky but overall it went pretty well.  All of the kids are awesome!  One group is a group of 9 seniors that have been together for 6 years and have gone on lots of trips and the other group is a group of 27 incoming Freshmen.  Needless to say, the dynamics of each group has been a little different!  It has been so awesome seeing the differences and getting to know everyone that has come!  I can’t wait to see what else happens during this week!  Such good groups!

One last post

Sorry that it has been so long since I have been able to update my blog and say something!

We have very little access to the internet which is lame, but also pretty nice at the same time.  It has been really hard for me to adjust to not checking my e-mail and facebook two or three times an hour.  But at the same time, it has been nice because I have been able to do other things rather than checking my facebook all the time.

My team and I have been setting up everything at our site and we are ANXIOUSLY waiting for the kids to get here this Sunday!  I can’t wait until they get here!  I am a little nervous because I am not going to be able to translate quite as well as I would like to for the groups that are coming.  But, it will be fine because people here love it if you try to speak to them in Spanish.  Then they will whip out perfect English and laugh at you because you were trying so hard to speak to them in Spanish.  Only about 25 percent of people in Puerto Rico speak English and the majority of them are under the age of 25ish lol.  The majority of the people here know a little bit of English though, so that has been helpful.

The last night we went to an AMAZING church service!  We will be going there every Tuesday evening with the groups that have been coming here.  The services will be different when the kids get here, but last night it was nice because there were about 15 or 20 people and we just got in a circle and told everyone our prayer requests and what we wanted to say “Gloria a Dios” about.  It was SO interesting being able to hear these people be super excited about God and what He is doing in their lives and stuff like that.  It was interesting because it was all in Spanish.  I had to say what I wanted to say thanks to God to all in Spanish!  It has been scary because while I am here I am realizing how bad my Spanish really is haha :)

I have recently found out that the Spanish spoken in Barranquilla is slightly similar to the Spanish spoken in Puerto Rico, so God’s plan has really come shining through in the last few weeks.  I am so happy to be able to learn about this, I am going to have a funny accent though!  I love it!  They speak in such an interesting way.

Funny/Embarrassing Story...

On Fridays we do laundry.  It has been really interesting doing laundry here.  We are in this TINY little hole in the wall store front.  Not very big at all.  MAYBE 15 feet by 15 feet with 4 washing machines and 3 dryers, but only one of them really works.  So needless to say, we are there for a while.  There are a bunch of people that come in to do laundry while we are there and it is kind of awkward because we have taken over the whole store!  But it is fun!  There isn’t a window… there is just a HUGE hole in the wall.  But that is SO nice because if there wasn’t there would be no airflow what so ever!  If you know anything about Puerto Rico, it is hot and HUMID!  The humidity is ridiculous here!

At one point in our laundry adventure and older couple came in to do laundry.  The woman sat down and the man was standing in the door way joking around with the worker.  So I TRIED to offer him my seat so that he could sit down.  In my best Spanish (and confidence) that I could muster I said “quiere sentir?”  Um… if you want to say “would you like to sit” you would say “quiere sentar” with an ‘A’ if you say it with an ‘I’ you are asking if the person you are talking to if they would like to ‘feel.’  Needless the man gave me an awkward look and said “?Como?!”  Which basically means “what?”  I eventually just got frustrated with myself because I could not for anything remember what the word I was trying to say was and I just stood up and pointed at the chair with my hand outstretched and said, “would you like to sit down?”

Embarrasing.  Oh the joys of learning a new language.

Finally back on the internet!

We have been getting to know some pretty amazing people here!  They are so wonderful.  Two of the people that we are having the most contact with are two friends, who are our age – early 20’s – and their names are Julio and Angie.  Julio and Angie have been friends for a really long time and Julio is teaching Angie English.  It has been fun to try and work with Angie and convince her to speak to us in English.  One day, instead of her English lesson with Julio they came to the beach with us (PS it was so awesome being able to FINALLY go to the beach!  We had been here for 2 weeks and we only were able to go and look at beaches that were possibilities to taking the kids to.  We finally got to go and swim and spend some time there.  Wonderful).  While we were there Julio told us that we were only allowed to speak to Angie in English so we would have to stop her all the time and jokingly say “sorry, I don’t speak Spanish” then she would blush and say it in English.  So much fun!  It makes me feel more comfortable talking to her knowing that she is learning a new language too!  But she surprises me and I think that her English abilities are WAY better than my Spanish ones!  Haha

Julio and his mom created a wonderful non-profit organization called “Sicomoro” which is Sycamore in English.  They are trying to be like the sycamore tree in the story of Zacchaeus (LOOK UP THIS WORD!) helping people to see Jesus in their community.  They are mainly working with the kids in the community, they have Kid’s Clubs and a bunch of fun things for them to do.  They do a ton of other things too but I can’t think right now because I don’t have a lot of time lol.  But they are amazing!  They also make some sweet t-shirts to help raise support for their organization and I can’t wait to buy some.  Julio is wanting to open up a second hand store as a means of support which is SUCH a cool idea!  He has been taking small business classes for a while and has gotten a ton of ideas for that.  Second hand stores here have a really really bad reputation and they aren’t very good.  So he wants to make a good one!  I think that it will be wonderful.  God is working through them in some wonderful ways!  If you would like to pray for them I’m sure that they would love it!  Their names are Lucy and Julio.  Julio has been a great help for all of us because he has been working with us on our Spanish and has been showing us around the city a TON!

Being here has been so nice!  It is gorgeous, our host church has been very fun and helpful and it has been interesting getting used to going to church on a regular basis in a completely new culture!  I have loved getting to know Julio and Angie and all of the other people that we have gotten to know here!  It will only get better as the time goes on!