Holly, Neil, and Jorge started off their work in the classroom we had previously started painting on Monday. They painted the tops and bottoms of the room and applied a second coat to make it perfect!! After that, they painted the outside of the room with the lovely diluted paint.
Mother Abi and Sarah spent their work fine being plaster masters and filling in the holes in one of the outside walls. Mother Abi wants to note that it is not as easy as it seems! I can attest to that for I had to be a plaster master on Monday and putting it on the wall without it glooping off is quite a task!!
Marian along with some parishioners spent their work cleaning the inside of the church. They worked hard scraping gunk and old pain off the walls to reveal a revitalized look.
After we finished our work projects, we hurried into the dining room to scarf down our lunch. Today's meal consisted of pork, beans, rice, and a plantain (along with some soda that tasted like medicine.) After lunch, Maggie, holly, Neil and I had some good bonding time with Alexis and learned more about his story!! We were then interrupted to begin VBS, which didn't quite go as planned. Today was a bit crazy due to the fact that a lot of the group split up to do various tasks. We had spent hard work planning out the games and crafts and story, however things always look better on paper...... The Buen Pastor youth had quite the hard time understanding the directions for the "ships and sailors" game, my stressor #1. Then, we tried to play Marco Polo and the children just really didn't understand that they were supposed to run away from "polo"...... Stressor #2!! So we decided to begin the dramatized reading of The Prodigal Son, which didn't go too bad however the kids attention span was almost gone by then!! Our craft was drawing a heart and writing inside what was meaningful to them along with making bracelets using 4 colored beads that represented faith, family, forgiveness, and love. The bracelets actually turned out nice and we all worked together to help the children out! I was finally relaxed until I was walking upstairs and banged my head onto the ceiling.... Ecuadoreans are very small!!!
On a more positive note, while the youth and Sara were leading VBS, Mother Abi and Marian led a marriage workshop. 25-30 people gathered in the church to learn about Gods role in marriage and how to strengthen his importance. The workshop went beautifully ended in a lovely prayer.
Simultaneously, Julia and Tracie continued their "patient" rounds in the mountains with Buen Pastor parishioners. I had the privilege of going with them on Tuesday, which was an amazing experience. To offer my help to those that have so little and can't access many things necessary for their bodies was amazing. To our surprise, they shared that they had to actually call an ambulance for one of the women they were seeing. She had been living for at least a week with pneumonia and maybe worse.
My overall thoughts and lessons learned from the day was that God works in many unexpected ways. I had a vision of the way things were supposed to exactly go in VBS, and when they didn't go perfectly, I stressed. I should've just left it in the hands of God and trusted that he would take care of the children and the plan for the day. I also saw God while Jorge and I were drawing the mural together, displaying Gods love in our own way despite our language barrier. As the trip comes to a close, I can't help but smile at all the many amigos I have at Buen Pastor and how thankful I am for all the unexpected yet lovely moments.
Con Amo,
Fra!!!
Fraleigh Krause
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