November 18, 2007 - Sunday

Greetings – several days have now passed between entries, and unfortunately it was because these days were fairly eventful, but alas the time never came for me to be able to sit down and record them so I will go over it in point format due to the fact that this is probably quite long and boring in general to have to wade through, so I shall attempt to shorten my entries.

Friday – we went to town in the back of a pick up truck, standing, for all 45 minutes of it. It was most enjoyable I must say. Whilst there we were able to use the internet, and then we went to the market for a short while whereupon some bought necessities such as flip flops, and others bought things such as leechee fruit, bananas, oranges, and other various comestibles. Then we came back to our home base, and had an evening vespers. During this time, some local males came along, quite out of the blue (well, black I suppose since it was quite dark outside) and joined us. They ranged in ages from 14-19, I would guess, and there was about 7 or 8 of them. They lingered around as long as possible afterwards, making eyes at all of us white girls, and being generally quite lecherous.

Sabbath – we had our first church service in the church that is about a 15 second walk from where we stay, and had some visitors from the village, which was nice. Werner preached the sermon, and we all took part in various different ways. Following that, we had a potluck type of lunch, and then in the afternoon we had some time, wherein I, along with some others, listened to part of Patrick's testimony which he shared with us, and then some of us took a short hike up the mountain behind our abode. The view was lovely, the day was hot, and the sun shone brightly in the sky. We descended, and stopped by this swimming hole in the little river that goes by, and Johannes and I jumped in due to the extreme temperatures. The others were quite unprepared for such a jump and therefore remained at bay, on the rocks looking on. Following this we returned to our mission station (which by the way is what I have referred to as our abode, etc.) and had some supper. After supper, Samuel, the bible worker who lives here, had arranged some evening activities, and lo and behold, our lecherous young friends showed up again, having had grown in number since the previous night, until there was approx. 12 of them. They were just as they were before, and spent most of the time gazing at the white girls, with great longing...It was slightly disconcerting, yet most hilarious as well. The games were rather entertaining though, silly of course, yet fun nonetheless. After the games had been played, we attempted to call it a night, hinting that it was time for these guys to go back home, but they of course insisted on lingering as long as possible, doing all in their power to get our attention and win our favour. We had to practice a play for the following day though, so they were quite ignored, yet not unperturbed. Eventually, they left, for a while at least, because one of them had forgotten or perhaps “forgotten” his cell phone, so he along with another couple had to come back to get it...mildly sketchy to say the least, but they finally vanished.

Sunday – We had classes for a couple hours in the morning, and then had to go to la casa de Alexander, where we are going to be having a children's program, every Sunday, at 11:00 am – 12 something. We arrived there, right around 11, and lo and behold, no children. Since it is slightly difficult to have a children's program when there are no children, we split into a couple of groups and set out to find children to bring them in. Our group was probably gone for about 20 minutes or so, and by the time we came back, there were about 40 kids there, and the number continued to grow. I am afraid I do not know the exact number, but it was fairly high to say the least. The program went very well and the kids seemed to really enjoy it, for which we must say praise the Lord! And if there were some not there, I am positive that the children will spread the word about it, and next week the number will definitely have increased. After the program we returned here for lunch (it is about a 10-15 minute walk to go from the village plaza to this mission station.) And then, since the day was also hot, some of us wanted to go back to the swimming hole to go swimming again. (A short word about the swimming hole: it has a radius of about 1.5 meters, and a depth of a little less than a meter, therefore you cannot really swim in it, but it works for cooling off in.) But we had to go to a meeting first, and during that time, guess who showed up?? Yes, those lovely lecherous boys again. Luckily, we managed to tactfully send them away, and managed to sneak off and go swimming after all. Then we had outreach at 4, so off we set for that. Oh, backtracking a little, when we were coming back from the childrens program, we were passing by this one house, and all of a sudden this guy comes out (perhaps around the age of 25ish) and is kind of calling to us in English, and I stopped thinking that it was someone that I had met on outreach, and felt I should talk to him So he came up to the gate and was speaking rather difficult to understand English, and was like, “What is your name?” I replied, and then he said, “You are looking so beautiful today!” And I was just kind of like umm okayyy...and then he asked where I was going, and I vaguely waved my hand and said that we were going back to eat lunch, and he in a very excited tone of voice said; “So am I!!” And once again I was thinking okayyy this guy is making no sense. And then he asked me if I came from Houston, and I responded that I come from Canada, and he again said something about how beautiful I looked, and I simply waved and wished him a good day and carried on with my life.
So that is a short example of the types of scenarios you may find yourself in if you come to Central America, are white, and are female.

Ok, going forward again now...so. We set off for outreach, and went met up with this guy that has been showing us around, Luis, who had lived in the States and knows English, and he took us to his aunts place to meet her. While there the guys got the job of cutting down a few trees via machetes, so they can have a place to build their new house. They are quite elderly, she is 69 but looks as if she is 90, and he is 89, and looks as if he is 60...quite peculiar I must say. Anyhow, they are very nice people of course, and we were happy to have found someone who we could do something for, and hope to find more in the future.

So that sums up the weekend – so much for my keeping it short...sorry!