Childrens Fair and Pool dia!

Hola! This weekend was filled with some intense adventure full of ocean fun and a fiesta at the school. The fair included games such as hillbilly horse shoes, bean bag toss, face painting, jewelry making and more. The kids gathered from all over San Lorenzo by word of mouth and crowded into the school grounds. They were so excited to play the games that they weren't even focused on what they could win. Once candy ran out, they were surprisingly more excited to receive stickers because they had English words on them. At the end of the fair, people from a church came in and told the story of Jesus through a flannel-graph presentation. It was cool to see God work because although they were speaking in Spanish, the flannel-graph of Jesus' story was universal.

After the fair was over, as a few of us were walking back to La Cueva, we started Red Rover with some of the girls. They were laughing and having a lot of fun. Then we all piled in pickup trucks, ate some delicious lunch at the orphanage, and drove the kids to the beach. We arrived at beach and some kids immediately jumped out and climbed up the sand mountains. One of the kids demonstrated a lot of patience as they held their hand out to help Melissa climb up after falling down countless times. He was about half her size and actually pulled her entire weight up. It really shows how much these kids are serving us even though we're here to serve them. The beach day continued with various activities: volleyball, football, and unexpected swimming with the children. Some of us didn't plan on getting in the water, but after the kids pulled us in to jump on the waves with them, it was pretty hard to resist. Note to self: there is always more sand in your clothes than you think.

This morning, we woke up early to attend Pacoche church with the kids. The church service was full of excitement as we worshiped to the beat of the tambourine. Then we took the kids to Sunday school to hear a story and do a craft while the adults stayed in the church. Although the entire message was in Spanish, we were able to follow along through Paul interpreting and read the scripture references.

After church, we proceeded down to the local pool with the kids to eat and swim. The bus ride there was awesome as we sang worship songs in Spanish. The kids were dancing and laughing. I'm sure they were making fun of our pathetic attempts at singing in their language. We arrived at the pool and the children jumped in right away. They sure love water! They had never-ending amounts of energy as they slid down the slide and did flips. We tried to get a few of them to dance at the end but they were a bit shy, and called our dancing methods "loco". The bus ride back felt like the kids had more energy than they started with and after we dropped them off the bus was oddly silent.

At the moment, we're bagging rice for the people at the Manta dump that we will be visiting tomorrow.

On behalf of the team,

Tim and Melissa

Ps. Hi Mom and Dad and Matthew and Michael and Nina! Hope you guys are doing well, miss you!