Finally... El Salvador Part 1

Welcome to Castillo del Rey (aka King's Castle) in El Salvador.

We arrived in El Salvador on a cool, misty morning. Our flight left Seattle in the evening and we flew through the night. The missionaries we were to work with met us at the airport and took us to camp where we would be staying for the week.

After dropping off our bags in the "dorms" we had time to wander around the camp for a little while before our orientation. Since my camera pales in comparison to my teammates it stayed in my camera for most of the trip. These pictures were ALL taken by my friend, April.

After a brief orientation (breakfast is served at 6a, dinner is at 6p, the guard dogs are relieced at 10p so you better be in your dorm, and don't throw the TP in the toilet) we all gathered in a small room to prepare for the week's purpose. Provide medical care for the people of El Salvador who have none. Back in Seattle we had raised money to buy drugs to send down. The drugs arrived only two days before we did and now it was time to sort the huge bottles of pills in to one month doses.
Tim and Pam are American missionaries who live in El Salvador now. They were our go to people. They are in the brown shirts with their backs to the camera. Joshua is sitting at the head of the table. Mark has his elbows on the table (tsk, tsk) and Ed is sitting next to me. The rest of the team will be introduced later.
I can't remember how many hours we spent counting those pills, but it was a long time. Especially since we essentially rolled off the plane and got to work. Nurse Mary (the only real nurse on our medical team) is sitting next to me. Spending these hours at the table counting pills was a great opportunity for us all to get to know each other. We had had meeting before the trip, but this was the first time we had all just hung out together. And once the sleep deprived delirium started setting in things got really interesting!
Each team that comes Castillo del Rey is assigned a couple Master's Commission students. These were two of our four, Beta (32) and Vanessa (22). Master's Commission is esentially college/university for those who want to be missionaries. It's an incredible program. I learned a lot about faith from these two.
On Day 2 (aka Sunday) we went to church. This tent is the church. "We aren't going to keep people from getting saved just because we don't have a building." I don't remember who from King's Castle said this, but boy, it sure does say a lot doesn't it? Busloads of people came from all over the region to attend church.
Shortly after we got there, the kids came over to meet us, chat, ask questions, touch our hair, hold our hands, and sit on our laps. Here I am with Stacy and a couple of the girls. This was my first chance to test out my Spanish! Luckily I still remember enough to ask them their names, ages, favorite classes in school, favorite colors, and things like that. They were very sweet and had grins on their faces from ear to ear.
Worship was a pretty incredible experience. We didn't recognize many of the songs, but the emotions under the tent were pretty universal.
At one point during the service the ladies on the mission team were invited to hand out food sacks to some of the members of the congregation. These were people whose pastors had given an ID card to to indicate that they were in need of food. Stacy gave this man a bag and look how grateful he is. By American standards there was virtually nothing in the bag, look how small it is, but to these people who have so little, this food would help get them through the month!
We were all very moved by the whole church experience. Here Mary, Tony, and Ed are joined together for prayer. We were very fortunate to have a guest speaker at the church while we were there. He spoke in Spanish while his brother who founded Castillo del Rey Ministries translated the message to English for us.
Here Mary and (the other) Ed are praying for a young boy to be healed.
On our first day of the medical clinics (aka day three aka Monday) it was beautiful out. We hadn't been able to see the tops of the mountains because of the rain and the fog that had been there before, but that was gone now and it was beautiful!
Our white school bus drove us all over San Salvador. We spent hours on that bus every day and loved it. It gave us an opportunity to see the country as well as spend hours talking, sharing, and getting to know each other. The trip wouldn't have been the same without that bus.

Tony found a lovely pair of women's scrubs to wear. When April bet him $100 that he wouldn't wear them for two days of clinics he jumped at the chance to earn money for the ministry.

We arrived at our first clinic of the week to a room full of people. Tony handed out stickers to the kids while Mary and Joel set up. The folks waiting got quite a kick out of Tony's scrubs.

Tony also used his artistic skills to draw characatures of all the kids. He also learned to write God Bless You on each picture. The kids LOVED it!

This was our pharmacy. Each bin was filled with bags. Each bag was filled with little bags with a month's worth of meds. We had Blood Pressure meds, inhalers, anti-fungals, pain killers, vitamins, etc. I spent most of my time at the pharmacy with Ed. We had a great system down and a lot of fun!

Some of the kids came down with a rare condition of sticker pox.

After seeing the doctor each visitor to the clinic went to see a counselor. The counselors were the Master's Commission students. Here Vanessa is praying with a man. While with the counselor each person was asked if they knew Jesus. Then they would talk about things they could pray for. If the person chose to ask God into their lives they would pray about that and of course anything else that was on the person's heart.

Nurse Mary and Missionary Tim took blood pressure, pulses, and other basic intake info at the first station.

This young guy is coloring the pictures Tony drew for him while his mother spoke with the doctor.

This gal was waiting for her mom to go through all the lines so I went and chatted with her for a bit. She likes playing soccer and loves to score.

Dios le Bendiga!

Here is our crew in action!

Here's to a successful first day of working the medical clinic!

To be continued...

Happy 2010

Harvard doesn't quite understand the "dog bed" concept.

So I'm a little late with a New Year's post but that's ok. It's not like I'm in the habit of updating on a regular basis anyway. Life has been pretty good so far in 2010 if I recall correctly...

New Years was kinda crappy, but I've generally thought it was an overrated holiday anyway. That was Thursday night.

By Friday I was feeling good. I worked on unpacking and had sushi with my friend that night. It was a nice way to spend the day.

Saturday, I went to my usual kickboxing class and had a good chat with one of the other regulars. She said she was going to a tango practica later that night and said I should go too. I said I'd think about it. I did some more unpacking than called up my friend Gina to see if she wanted to go to the practica with me. And she did! So we went! It was pretty intimidating. I've never tangoed so it was all new, but it was fun. We learned some basics and met some new people. I'm glad that I tried it, but I don't know if I'll go back. I think I want to learn a dance, I'm just not sure tango is it.

On Sunday I went to church then to lunch with a friend. It was so nice out that we walked Greenlake after. Beautiful winter days are so few and far between that we would have been foolish not to!

Then Monday came and with it came school and basketball again. Both are fun and challenging in their own ways. I heart teaching. It's totally worth getting out of bed every day for.

On Tuesday I got to have dinner with my friend April. We went to El Salvador together with our church. We had good food and great conversation. The relationships that came from that trip have meant SO much to me I can't even begin to articulate it.

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much business as usual, except for snowboarding. I'm a chaperon for the school's ski and snowboard bus. Which means I get to go snowboarding every Thursday for the next six weeks. It makes for LONG (13hr) days, but it's super fun and when else do I get to learn to snowboard and ride for free?!

On Friday I had an awesome day. I don't usually work on Fridays unless I'm subbing so I had the day off. I used some gift cards to buy a bunch of books online and groceries at PCC (I've decided to "go organic" and this was my first real step in that direction). Then Harvard and I went for a nice two mile long walk through my new neighborhood. I found a park (and P-Patch) that I didn't know was there then made my way down to the Lake Washington shores. It was so nice. We really lucked out with the weather too. It sprinkled occasionally but didn't start raining until we were almost back at the house. Once we got back I did some organizing/cleaning while Harvard napped. Later that night I went to see my pastor's son play varsity basketball. I haven't been to a high school basketball game in ages. It was fun and I was surprised by how many friends from church came to watch too.

Saturday my friend took me to my first orienteering race at Marymoor park. If you aren't familiar with orienteering it's pretty basic. They give you a map with check points on it and you go to the check points (in order) then return to the start. My course had 11 check points. The toughest course had 28 check points. I ran around, got muddy, tired, and cut up but had so much fun! I think I'm definitely going to have to do it again sometime. Sometime soon. AND it's something that Harvard can do with me. Unfortunately, kickboxing isn't the most pet friendly activity. From there I raced home to clean up so that I could meet my friend Stacey for lunch. She's another friend from my El Salvador mission. Like I said, those relationships have been a blessing! Then Saturday evening I babysat. It was a long/busy day. But it was such a good day.

Yesterday (Sunday) Harvard and I went to church. Yes, I took my dog to church with me! We got there early so we could go for a walk then we stood out front of church to greet my friends as they came by. I think Harvard enjoyed all the attention. He took a nap in the truck while I was at the service. After we went to puppy class! I've been looking forward to this class since the last class ended. This is Intermediate Obedience/Beginning Agility. Harvard is going to get to weave through cones, go up and down ramps, and jump through hoops. Not to mention hone his other basic commands like staying and heeling. He's such a good little student. After class he got his nails trimmed then went home for a much deserved nap. I got to organize my closet which is something I hadn't done. I had been just putting everything in there that belonged in there. But now everything is where it ought to be and it is so nice. I'm feeling much more settled now. For dinner I went over to a friend's house. We had Mexi-Sunday because Mexi-Mondays are no more. It had been several weeks since Christine and I had hung out so it was really good to talk with her. We also watched Away We Go, which is super cute.

So that's been my life lately. Mostly good things are going on. Each day I'm feeling more settled, relaxed, and optimistic. I suppose I should fill in some blanks... Flynn and I are no longer together as of a little over a month ago. That change meant I had to move, hence all the unpacking and organizing. I'm working on trusting God's plan for my life and so far so good. So yeah. 2010. I think it's going to be a pretty good year.

Harvard on his way home from puppy class. He's falling asleep sitting up!

He tried to fight it... but it was useless. The sleep was inevitable.