Well, I´m sorry that I haven´t written in a while. The last few days have been hectic and I haven´t been able to use a computer. Last week finished up swimmingly at the school. My relationships with the kids are building even more and I feel that we are doing a better job at teaching. On Thursday we went to the zoo after school. It was pretty fun. On Friday we left after school to do homestays with families from Betty´s (another woman who works for OC International) church. Tyler and I stayed with the youth pastor´s family. He has a 20 year old son named Pablo who is an awesome guy and showed us a great time. Shannon was at a different house and her weekend was not as fun as ours to say the least.
On Saturday night we went to the youth group at the new church which I will just say was one of the craziest experiences of my life. Everyone there was speaking in tongues which wasn´t that weird for me. It got weird when people started falling on the ground and convulsing, screaming at the top of their lungs, and casting out demons from people. It was really crazy and super unbiblical. Tyler and I felt very uncomfortable but were never really in fear for our saftey or anything. I don´t care what people say about the differences in culture, because what happened at that church was not biblical. The people there were really nice and after church Tyler and I talked with the people for a long time. On Sunday we ditched out on church really early as I had no desire to be there anymore.
Today was kind of a weird day for some reason. We went down to the soccer field again and while we were down there it started raining pretty hard and we had to hike back up the hill in the rain. Also, today when we were walking to the bus it started raining. But this wasn´t normal. You know how in movies it will all the sudden just start pouring out of nowhere with no build up to the storm. That is what happened. There was absolutely no rain and then all of the sudden it was pouring as if it had been for an hour. It was incredibly strange.
Tyler bought a soccer ball for Brandon (11 yrs old) and he seems very happy with it. He really likes soccer. I decided today that I want to get a guitar for Samuel (pronounced Sam-well, by the way) and a book to help him learn guitar. On the bus ride home I asked Jocelyn who her best friend was. She told me that her best friend is God. So I asked her who her second best friend was and she said ¨Usteded Tres," in reference to Tyler, Shannon, and myself. She´s a very sweet girl.
I will be home on Thursday. Although this has been a great experience and I love the relationships I´ve made here and the work we are doing, I am ready to come home. If I wasn´t going to be leaving for Jamaica right when I got back I might have a different mindset but I know that the next two weeks in Jamaica will be similar in difficulty so I am ready for a short break. We have been going very hard for quite some time and I am very emotionally tired from being with people 24/7 and constantly in motion. Please pray that I can finish up my work here strong despite being tired.
-Colter
Monday, July 14, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Escuela
First things first. I hate Brandon Jennings.
Now, things at the school have settled down significantly. I wanted to write yesterday about how things went but I was unable to use the computer. The past two days have been pretty action packed, however, less hectic. I will start with Tuesday.
Yesterday Shannon, Tyler, and I arrived to the school at about 9 AM. We taught English in as a team to three different ages. The middle kids (what we call the 9-12 year olds) are by far the best. They are eager to learn and retain the information well. Teaching to the younger kids is kind of a lost cause. Today Tyler and I read them Curious George in Spanish and they were entranced by the story. The older kids try but do not learn very easily but I think our presence there is important.
After school about 20 kids stayed which soon turned into our normal group of about 7 or 8 kids, Martita and the three gringos (white people, us). They told us that we were going to go for a walk/hike. It was pouring when we left with our umbrellas but let up pretty soon. We weren´t totally sure where we were going and soon ended up walking down this mountain. As we got further down the mountain we were wondering why the heck we were doing this. But Shannon pointed out if a 48 year old woman was doing this in a dress with the biggest smile ever, then we could laugh about it too. As we climbed down even farther we were able to see that below us was a soccer field with a few kids playing soccer and we figured out why they brough us here. We played some 5 on 5 soccer for about an hour and then hiked back up the mountain.
Tyler Shannon and I hung out with Samuel, Martita, Jocelyn, and Brandon for another hour or two and they gave us dinner. It was a great time. We had to walk home though because the busses stop running at 6 and it was about 6:30. When we were walking home we had to stop on the side of the road because there was a big puddle blocking our path. We decided to wait until all the cars had passed which would be a minute. We stodd on the side of the road and everyone was laughing as the cars went by. I was about 70% sure that we were about to be engulfed in a wave from an oncoming car but nobody else seemed to care. They were all laughing thinking about how fun this was. I think that experience really changed some things for me. I realized how for these kids and Martita, nothing had gone wrong in a couple days. If a car had driven by and splashed us (which didn´t happen) I am pretty sure that everyone would have just laughed.
Today was pretty similar in school to yesterday. After school was over today we went to the museum. The museum was really boring. If you want to know about it, you can read shannon´s blog, she probably liked it.
The one interesting thing that happened was before we went to the museum, it wasn´t raining at all. Wr got on the bus and during the 10 minute bus ride it started pouring. Once we got off the bus it was raining super hard and there was puddles everywhere. By the time we got inside I felt like I had just gone swimming, well maybe not quite that bad but we were pretty wet. Again, nobody cared, they all thought it was funny.
They are showing us such great care at the school. We can tell that they are doing everything they can to serve us the best food they can for lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, sometimes that is food that we have a little trouble keeping in. Since it is rude here to not finish your food, we always finish everything we get. The only thing that has been too rough to eat was this cheese thing they give us. It´s like a square of cottage cheese that is hard and super salty. Tonight I figured that if you put it in the bread and put eggs on top it, you can´t taste it that much.
Well, I suppose that´s all I have for now. I will write more about Samuel, Jocelyn, and Brandon later. They are amazing kids and I really like them all already, even though we don´t speak the same language. If anyone wants to adopt them, let me know. They´re all siblings.
-Colter
Now, things at the school have settled down significantly. I wanted to write yesterday about how things went but I was unable to use the computer. The past two days have been pretty action packed, however, less hectic. I will start with Tuesday.
Yesterday Shannon, Tyler, and I arrived to the school at about 9 AM. We taught English in as a team to three different ages. The middle kids (what we call the 9-12 year olds) are by far the best. They are eager to learn and retain the information well. Teaching to the younger kids is kind of a lost cause. Today Tyler and I read them Curious George in Spanish and they were entranced by the story. The older kids try but do not learn very easily but I think our presence there is important.
After school about 20 kids stayed which soon turned into our normal group of about 7 or 8 kids, Martita and the three gringos (white people, us). They told us that we were going to go for a walk/hike. It was pouring when we left with our umbrellas but let up pretty soon. We weren´t totally sure where we were going and soon ended up walking down this mountain. As we got further down the mountain we were wondering why the heck we were doing this. But Shannon pointed out if a 48 year old woman was doing this in a dress with the biggest smile ever, then we could laugh about it too. As we climbed down even farther we were able to see that below us was a soccer field with a few kids playing soccer and we figured out why they brough us here. We played some 5 on 5 soccer for about an hour and then hiked back up the mountain.
Tyler Shannon and I hung out with Samuel, Martita, Jocelyn, and Brandon for another hour or two and they gave us dinner. It was a great time. We had to walk home though because the busses stop running at 6 and it was about 6:30. When we were walking home we had to stop on the side of the road because there was a big puddle blocking our path. We decided to wait until all the cars had passed which would be a minute. We stodd on the side of the road and everyone was laughing as the cars went by. I was about 70% sure that we were about to be engulfed in a wave from an oncoming car but nobody else seemed to care. They were all laughing thinking about how fun this was. I think that experience really changed some things for me. I realized how for these kids and Martita, nothing had gone wrong in a couple days. If a car had driven by and splashed us (which didn´t happen) I am pretty sure that everyone would have just laughed.
Today was pretty similar in school to yesterday. After school was over today we went to the museum. The museum was really boring. If you want to know about it, you can read shannon´s blog, she probably liked it.
The one interesting thing that happened was before we went to the museum, it wasn´t raining at all. Wr got on the bus and during the 10 minute bus ride it started pouring. Once we got off the bus it was raining super hard and there was puddles everywhere. By the time we got inside I felt like I had just gone swimming, well maybe not quite that bad but we were pretty wet. Again, nobody cared, they all thought it was funny.
They are showing us such great care at the school. We can tell that they are doing everything they can to serve us the best food they can for lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, sometimes that is food that we have a little trouble keeping in. Since it is rude here to not finish your food, we always finish everything we get. The only thing that has been too rough to eat was this cheese thing they give us. It´s like a square of cottage cheese that is hard and super salty. Tonight I figured that if you put it in the bread and put eggs on top it, you can´t taste it that much.
Well, I suppose that´s all I have for now. I will write more about Samuel, Jocelyn, and Brandon later. They are amazing kids and I really like them all already, even though we don´t speak the same language. If anyone wants to adopt them, let me know. They´re all siblings.
-Colter
Monday, July 7, 2008
Precious Moments
So today was our first day at precious moments. We arrived at around 9 am. It was a pretty hectic day and kind of made me realize that the next two weeks are going to be a little bit tougher then I had previously anticipated. There was about 100 kids there in the morning and Tyler, Shannon, and I will be in charge of teaching English for the next 2 weeks. I will be teaching the older kids (probably like 11-15) because the little kids are too much for me to handle.
We had a really great lunch at 1 which is when most of the kids left the school. After that around 40 kids stayed and we just played with them. Kids sort of filtered out for the next couple of hours until there was a group of about 12 of us. Martita is the woman who runs the school and she is kind of the mother of 3 other kids who live there. It may seem like nothing interesting happened before 4 PM that´s really just because I was trying to figure out what was going on and where I was with so many new faces and new surroundings around me that my brain was kind of unable to take it all in.
So around 4 PM, Martita, Shannon, Tyler, and myself went to the park along with about 7 other kids ranging from 2-15. The park was right down the street and I was a little shocked when I saw four guys in full army attire with assault rifles. This didn´t seem to bother the kids though as they ran straight to the tire swing and the slide as if that is how things always were. I figured out pretty fast by the fact that nobody else in the area seemed to care about the four army men that this is the way things are here. This moment alone made me realize that I am going to have some difficulty relating to the way these kids are being raised vs how I was raised.
After some time at the park playing a version of hide and go seek that I´m still not super clear on the rules for, we went back to the school. We played some more hide and go seek before Martita made us dinner and the rest of the kids went home (except for the ones who live there). I can´t remember the name of the younger boy who lives there but of the three, there is Samuel who is 15 and his sister jocelyn who is 13. I am really hoping to get close to some of the older boys in the next couple weeks, as I´m sure they need some older kids to relate to, being around younger kids all the time.
Well, please pray for us. The last two days have been especially tough. My health has been a bit subpar and this morning I noticed that I popped a blood vessel in my eye. It doesn´t hurt, I just had to wear my glasses today.
-Colter
P.S. Mom/other family. You´re not allowed to say stuff like, oh I´m super worried about people with guns and people die from blood vessel pops all the time. If you want to say that stuff, you can email me and the management will address your concerns in the order in which they were received. Thank you.
We had a really great lunch at 1 which is when most of the kids left the school. After that around 40 kids stayed and we just played with them. Kids sort of filtered out for the next couple of hours until there was a group of about 12 of us. Martita is the woman who runs the school and she is kind of the mother of 3 other kids who live there. It may seem like nothing interesting happened before 4 PM that´s really just because I was trying to figure out what was going on and where I was with so many new faces and new surroundings around me that my brain was kind of unable to take it all in.
So around 4 PM, Martita, Shannon, Tyler, and myself went to the park along with about 7 other kids ranging from 2-15. The park was right down the street and I was a little shocked when I saw four guys in full army attire with assault rifles. This didn´t seem to bother the kids though as they ran straight to the tire swing and the slide as if that is how things always were. I figured out pretty fast by the fact that nobody else in the area seemed to care about the four army men that this is the way things are here. This moment alone made me realize that I am going to have some difficulty relating to the way these kids are being raised vs how I was raised.
After some time at the park playing a version of hide and go seek that I´m still not super clear on the rules for, we went back to the school. We played some more hide and go seek before Martita made us dinner and the rest of the kids went home (except for the ones who live there). I can´t remember the name of the younger boy who lives there but of the three, there is Samuel who is 15 and his sister jocelyn who is 13. I am really hoping to get close to some of the older boys in the next couple weeks, as I´m sure they need some older kids to relate to, being around younger kids all the time.
Well, please pray for us. The last two days have been especially tough. My health has been a bit subpar and this morning I noticed that I popped a blood vessel in my eye. It doesn´t hurt, I just had to wear my glasses today.
-Colter
P.S. Mom/other family. You´re not allowed to say stuff like, oh I´m super worried about people with guns and people die from blood vessel pops all the time. If you want to say that stuff, you can email me and the management will address your concerns in the order in which they were received. Thank you.
Friday, July 4, 2008
¡Exclamation Points!
Today is my last day of school. I am on my break so I´ve only got an hour left and then I am done. It´s a little annoying to think that I just did 40 hours of Spanish in 2 weeks and I will not receive any college credit for this. Instead of being 4 credits closer to graduating, I just know a bit more spanish. I suppose that should be rewarding in itself though.
Tyler and I are doing a lot of pushups now. We did 250 on Wednesday and are trying to do 300 today. So far we´ve done 170 today. I´m excited to do a ton of more push ups and then get back to the states and fall back into a state of stagnation where I don´t do anything to get stronger.
So since people have been telling me I don´t write about anything interesting, I am going to write about a certain character we met named mario. Last weekend we spent a majority of the weekend with a friend of Emil´s named Mario. Mario is 48, from Guatemala, and very rich. He is the one who made us wake up at 4:30 to go on that hike. On the hike, Mario basically ran the entire time. Since he never had a daughter he loved having Shannon around and made her keep up with him the whole time. Also he would speak insanely fast which was very difficult for Tyler and me to understand, which made us feel kind of stupid.
Mario took very good care of us and fed us very well, which we are very grateful for. He actually fed us a little too well. You had to finish whatever you put on your plate or whatever Mario put on your plate, which was usually a lot more then you could handle. I´ve never eaten as much as I did that weekend.
One night for dinner we had rabbit. Mario told Tyler to cook the rabbit and Tyler asked me to help him. He didn´t tell us where the rabbit was, what the rabbit looked like, or how to prepare it. Luckily some Guatemalan women came into the kitchen and took over.
Staying at Mario´s was quite an experience. Emil told us that the point of spending so much time with Mario was to see that Guatemala is not just a country in total poverty. There are people who are very well off. This kinf of put the country in a different light for me. I can see how it is very difficult to get out of poverty, but I also saw opportunity this weekend. This makes it a little more difficult to define my mission for a country like this. I mean the mission is to help the people here. The question is how do we help them. Maybe just pray for clarity for Tyler, Shannon, and me on that topic.
This is our last night in Antigua so we will be starting to live in a much more difficult situation soon. I want to be used and I want to keep my spirits high while also having a soft heart for what God does. I don´t know if I´ll get to a computer soon, but I will try.
-Colter
Tyler and I are doing a lot of pushups now. We did 250 on Wednesday and are trying to do 300 today. So far we´ve done 170 today. I´m excited to do a ton of more push ups and then get back to the states and fall back into a state of stagnation where I don´t do anything to get stronger.
So since people have been telling me I don´t write about anything interesting, I am going to write about a certain character we met named mario. Last weekend we spent a majority of the weekend with a friend of Emil´s named Mario. Mario is 48, from Guatemala, and very rich. He is the one who made us wake up at 4:30 to go on that hike. On the hike, Mario basically ran the entire time. Since he never had a daughter he loved having Shannon around and made her keep up with him the whole time. Also he would speak insanely fast which was very difficult for Tyler and me to understand, which made us feel kind of stupid.
Mario took very good care of us and fed us very well, which we are very grateful for. He actually fed us a little too well. You had to finish whatever you put on your plate or whatever Mario put on your plate, which was usually a lot more then you could handle. I´ve never eaten as much as I did that weekend.
One night for dinner we had rabbit. Mario told Tyler to cook the rabbit and Tyler asked me to help him. He didn´t tell us where the rabbit was, what the rabbit looked like, or how to prepare it. Luckily some Guatemalan women came into the kitchen and took over.
Staying at Mario´s was quite an experience. Emil told us that the point of spending so much time with Mario was to see that Guatemala is not just a country in total poverty. There are people who are very well off. This kinf of put the country in a different light for me. I can see how it is very difficult to get out of poverty, but I also saw opportunity this weekend. This makes it a little more difficult to define my mission for a country like this. I mean the mission is to help the people here. The question is how do we help them. Maybe just pray for clarity for Tyler, Shannon, and me on that topic.
This is our last night in Antigua so we will be starting to live in a much more difficult situation soon. I want to be used and I want to keep my spirits high while also having a soft heart for what God does. I don´t know if I´ll get to a computer soon, but I will try.
-Colter
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