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.