2nd Day at Carmen Bajo

Our second day at Carmen Bajo has passed and we are all winding down in the living room now. First, I must apologize, there may be times in the blog where I begin to blog in 'spanglish', I'll try to correct everything before posting but I can't promise anything. Second, I would like to thank everyone who made this mission trip possible for all of us. Third, I would like to ask all you to keep all of us in your prayers (if you don't already), a couple girls were sick today, but in the name of Jesus they are healed! I know this is devil attack our group because God has some amazing things planned for the remainder of our time here. Okay, so the reason I am blogging: to tell you what happened today!


During the morning, our group broke up into smaller groups doing crafts, music, games or teaching English, which is the group I was in. These past two days that I have spent with the children has been life altering. Every class we walk into, before we can get a word out, the children stand up and say "Good morning, God bless you, Teacher", without fail, even in the afternoon. The looks in their faces as we walk into their classes always causes my heart to soar. They are so happy to see us and spend time with us, I am just in awe. A couple of the classes my group worked with today were the same we worked with yesterday which in my opinion helped a lot! Not only did we not have to go through the long introductions but I saw even the little bit of work we did with the students yesterday helped them. There was a class we went to yesterday that I just wasn't sure if I was getting through to them at all, the whole entire time they looked bored and disinterested, not paying any attention to me, and then when we returned to their class today, they knew the vocabulary we went over yesterday and were kind of competing to see who could get the word right. It was such a humbling experience.


After our sessions with the classes, our groups got a much needed break (most of us slept during this time, on mattresses they provided for us, Thank you Lord!) before moving on to painting the classes on the top floor of the school. In my personal opinion painting those two rooms--which we did not complete--was harder than the six rooms, hallway and staircase we painted at Alliance Academy International...but just as fun. Part of painting job included painting the bottom half of the walls with an oil-based paint. Oh man. Oil-based paint does not smell good, think of a gallon of gasoline in a small (very small) classroom with little circulation and voila! You have the room we were in for an hour, needless to say, we were getting a little loopy at the end. 


To top off a fun day, we were invited to eat dinner with a future Greenville College student and his family. Where we played signs, which has become the choice game of the group, after eating pizza--from Domino's nonetheless.


Okay, if you make all the way down to the bottom of this post, I am sorry for the extremely long length but I hope what I have written was sufficient for you. God Bless.
-Maria Rodriguez :)