Today consisted of hard work. There is a river that runs alongside this mission compound, one of very small porportions mind you, and in this river there is sand, which is apparantly quite expensive here, so since it is right there at their reach, they decided to take the sand from the river so that they could use it to make bricks. The particular place where we had to remove the sand was a place where there is already a dam made, and there is a path going down to it.
Problem number one, the path is real steep. We had about 3 people in the river filling the buckets with sand, and then we had a line of us passing buckets up to the top where they were emptied into a pile. Problem number two, the path had water running down it for some reason, which caused it to be rather slippery and difficult to maneuver on. This path is about 40 feet from the river to the top, or so I would estimate. I was kind of in the middle, and it happened to be one of the steeper parts and there was a big gap between me and the next ones, so I definitely got a workout, walking down to get the bucket and carrying it up to the next guy – speaking of which I was the only girl helping, since the others had gone to clean, and the guys were joking about how I would soon have the biggest muscles of all of them with the work we were doing...
Anyway so that was a very difficult task, and I became quite muddy in the process, and then they were trying to fix the showers, so they had turned the water off so I was not able to get a shower for quite some time which was rather unpleasant I must say, but all is well.
Following that, lunch, and clean-up, we had to go to the town hall to practice special music for that night, which first of all started out being a combination of Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise, and O Worship The King, and ended up being It Is Well With My Soul, which was the original plan. It was fairly good, but we were missing two singers, so the volume was not what it should have been, but the Lord blessed us nonetheless.
After that I went to help out with the kids, but it was so loud in there that I had to leave because I couldn't deal with the noise anymore, so I came back to the town hall (calmly ignoring the calls of “Hey Baby” that followed me) and listened to the rest of the meeting, which was about the Sabbath. I came for the last little bit, whereupon he made an appeal and asked those who wished to keep the Sabbath to stand up and come to the front – and the result was wonderful, about 30-50 people came up to that appeal. From what I had understood of the meeting and from what was translated to me, he presented the topic very well, he didn't mess around at all and said it like it was, and it was well recieved, and even a pastor from another church stood up, which was quite incredible to me, since you would think they would be the last ones to admit they were wrong.
After the meeting, after we cleaned up a little, I left the building because we were going to come back, and I went outside and saw that Kestas was talking to this guy, thereby informing me that he spoke English, so I went over to them. (This guy was probably around my age, perhaps a little older, I am not sure) and I approached with the comment of, “So you found someone else who speaks English!” And then this guy was asking us in very broken English whether we knew Spanish or not, and then after we had responded he turned to Kestas and was like, “She is so beautiful!” Which caught me by surprise since it was completely random, and then Kestas was responded by saying, “Yes she is” whilst I responded with a loud “Pfffft” and then loudly proclaimed, “Ok well I'm going home now, Good Night!!!” And I started to walk away, then Kestas called, “Are you going by yourself??” And I realized that everyone had already gone on, so I was like, “Nope, you're coming with me!” And I took him by the shoulder and off I marched. Ohhhh man. If you don't know Kestas you will not understand the full humour of the situation, but it was such a classic “Hi my name is Sarah and I have no tact whatsoever” moment that I had to share it. Dad if you were here I think you would probably build me a barracade that I could take with me wherever I went so that no male could set eyes on me. All of us gringo girls get plenty of comments and looks by the guys here, it is quite ridiculous. You walk down the street, and silence falls, and the guys just stop and stare, mouths agape, as they watch you go by – all the way by. But it is usually accompanied by comments of “bonita!” which means pretty, and also this noise they make which is like “Tsh tsh tsh” apparantly kind of like 'hey' or something like that, and various other comments...the worst of it being that I don't know what they say.
Anywayyyyyyy it's an interesting time, but fret not, Rob lent me his knife...I just flick it open every once in a while if they're leering...:P
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