Club de Ninos

Above: Lucy handing out with some kids before club starts.

Almost since we’ve been here in Honduras, we’ve been helping to put on a weekly kids club out in Armenia Bonito.  Lindsey and I have loved this chance to minister to the local kids, and we’ve also loved the opportunity to involve our girl in our work.  All the kids love playing with Lucy and touching Ellie, even when it isn’t returned by Lucy.  When the kids get too close, Lucy will let fly with a whiney “NOOOO!!”  Although for us as parents this is very rude and utterly embarrassing, the kids aren’t phased in the least.  One girl, Gabby, thought it was so funny she started doing right back in Lucy’s face, which, amazingly, Lucy thought was hilarious.  So now when they see each other they whine and yell in each others faces.  Odd, but fun.

Every week, before we start the organized part of the club, we usually have a game or two to help draw kids in and get some energy out.  Above the kids are lined up for a game of “Luz verde, luz roja.”

After the game, we move to some songs (with lots of movement and interaction), followed by a skit based on a story from the bible.  Next comes prayer, a memory verse game, and a craft.  The highlights are ususally the skit (because the gringos dress funny and usually make fools of themselves) and the craft.  The kids, from 2 all the way up, love to color.  They will spend a good 15-20 minutes coloring a picture, perfectly inside the lines with realistic color.  If they don’t know what something is, they will ask us to make sure they get the right color, some kids even ask for another sheet if they color something the “wrong” color.

This all lasts about an hour, after which we hang out and play some more.  Lately, we’ve been without a ride, so we’ve taken the bus out and/or back, one hour each way.  It makes for a long day, but we really love spending our Monday afternoons with these kids.

Health Classes

Above: Lindsey, Ellie, and Jamie explaining the food pyramid.

Our team has recently started another ministry which Lindsey is heavily involved in. The public elementary school in Armenia Bonito approached us about teaching some health classes. Lins spent a while researching, translating, and drawing on her health background, and came up with 4 curriculums for 4 different age groups.  Along with Jamie and Erin, they went out to the school one morning and jumped from class to class, teaching basic health and nutrition to kids ranging from 1st to 6th grade.

Everyone had their hands full, so Lins just strapped on Ellie and taught away. Imagine teaching nutrition to 30 kids (without the teacher present), in Spanish, with a chunky 4 month-old along for the ride. Not quite like the US, but hopefully the beginning seeds of changing the culture of health and nutrition.

Where We Live

Above: A map of our neighborhood made by our GPS-wielding intern, Bob Severinghaus and his boys.

When we moved to San Jose, Costa Rica, we had an advantage of living in a pretty big city (over one million). There were lots of stores, a decent downtown, and lots of places to explore. Along with all of that came some good maps and great pictures on Google earth (some of you may remember our neighborhood map).

Well La Ceiba is a little bit smaller, too small in fact for Google Earth to take a close picture of the city. We’ve tried to get a map of our neighborhood, but it all comes out as a big blur.

So last month, our team purchased some GPS mapping software to be used by our teammate Bob, who is trained in that sort of thing. He started off with the ambitious project of mapping Armenia Bonito, which we’ll use for ministry and census purposes. Next, we asked him if he could do our neighborhood, El Sauce.

Above is the completed map, with our house as the red star. We’re guessing there are about 400 houses in our neighborhood, but as you can see, it is pretty small, size-wise, because all of these houses touch each other.

Some other things of note on the map. We don’t have a park, so Lucy and I go up to the soccer fields on the NW side to play. The shops in the NE corner include a Popeye’s, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins, banks, and a pharmacy.

The neighborhood also has lots of little shops, a restaurant, a few catholic churches, a big private school in the back, and a butterfly museum, which we need to go to.

So far we love it.  The best part is it’s quiet and has side walks for nice walks with the girls.

Girls Beauty Day

We mentioned here a few weeks ago that our team was planning a girls day out that included make0vers and a movie.  Well after lots of planning, we put on the event this past Saturday.  Lots of girls (and moms, aunts, grandmothers, etc.) showed up to get their hair washed, cut, and styled, and to get their nails done.  While I stayed home with Lucy (not yet old enough, thank goodness), Lins and Ellie headed down the river with the rest of the girls on our team.

One of Lins’ jobs for the day was pictures.  She roamed around and took some great pictures of all the girls.

The day started with all the girls bathing in the river.  This is not uncommon for people wanting to cool off, or just searching for a place with running water.  A couple of our volunteers jumped right in, as you can see.  Some of the other girls were more interested in sitting in chairs on the bank and having water poured over their hair, more like a salon in the states.

The next stop after the washing is the styling.  This got tricky about half-way through the day when it was discovered that most of the girls had lice.  Fortunately, we were prepared with the right shampoo, so the beauty day turned into an impromptu health clinic of lice and hair care.

The last stop of the morning for the girls was getting their nails done.  We had lots of fun colors and styles, so this stop was quite a hit.

In the end our team saw dozens of girls in a few hours, but their day wasn’t done there.

After a brief nap, we headed back out, loaded up 60 girls on a bus and brought them into town for a movie.  We rented out a large room, brought in a DVD player and projector, added pizza and popcorn, and put on a fun movie night.  It was great to see all the girls dressed up and enjoying themselves.  For some of these girls, this was their first time in the “city,” even though they have lived their whole lives only 30 minutes away.  Most of them couldn’t contain their excitement and sit still for the whole movie, but none of us really cared, we were just glad they were having so much fun!

We want to thank all of you who sent in donations.  We had enough supplies to serve all of the girls, and then gave them each some beauty supplies to take back home with them.  One the way home on the bus, they were clinging to their prizes, even though they didn’t know what they did!  I had to translate for some of them so they knew who had nail polish remover and who had hairspray.  Thank you all again for your kind generosity, because of your gifts and prayers these girls truly had a the “time of their lives”.