June 30, Call Me Farmer Patty

Mis amigos who helped Diane and me plant.

June 30, 2011:  Call me Farmer Patty    

I wasn’t really sure what I was going to be doing today.  The available jobs were:  VBS at the Didasko Orphanage (I think I forgot to say, but I think they have done that the last two days.), 2 house builds,  Daughters of the King (I’ll explain later.), and  hospital visitation.  There year has had an interesting dynamic, fewer people are signing up for the manual labor jobs like building a house.  We even have people sitting in line at 6:30 am waiting for the sign up sheet.  I guess they are eager beavers!!! J

                Evelyn, the director of the daycare, had called our leader and had asked for the leaders, Terry and Margaret, Diane and me, as well as several others to come up to the daycare because she wanted to show her gratitude to us.  Because of that, Diane and I went back to Moaloa where they were doing the Daughters of the King.  She actually needed to finish her organic garden that she had started for Evelyn.

This is Evelyn's house to the right, you see the kitchen in the middle.  There are children lining up to be feed.  The building to the left is the church.

We went up the mountain to the daycare not knowing what to expect.   Evelyn has been taking English classes and she got up in front of us and told us how much she thanked  us for all of the things that we have done for the children.  There was not a dry eye among us!  Then they got about 10 of the four and five year olds to stand in front of us and they sang us some songs.  Each child walked up to one of us and gave us a card they had made.  Each card had a photograph of the child who made it.  Wow, it’s hard to express the love we felt! (I didn't have my camera with me.  I'm hoping to get pictures later from Facebook.)

                We went back down to the Inglesia de Cristo where we would be working on “el jardin” and the rest of the people would be doing the Daughters of the King.  I have never been involved in this project but it was .really special.  They idea was to treat these girls and women like princesses because they often aren’t very respected in this culture.  They begin by washing the girls’ hair.  Usually, it is so dirty they have to run water over it several times before they use shampoo.  Then, they braid their hair and put ribbons in it.  Next they wash their hands and feet and give them a manicure and pedicure.  They also massage them and use scented lotion.  This year, some ladies’ had made pillowcase dresses and they had a changing area where they put the dresses on.  Finally, they took a picture and gave it to them.  Here is the best part…We had large burly men giving manicures and washing hair.  The ladies and little girls loved it!Someone said last year that some of the little girls would just smell of the scented lotion and say, “Mmmmmm”.

                Diane and I had a less glamorous, but important job.  We set up the drip irrigation system for Evelyn’s garden.  It is really interesting how it was put together, but I won’t bore you with the details.(Hopefully, the picture will give you an idea.)  Todd from FL and Aldo a 20 year old Hondauran cut some wood left over from a house build to made a post to hold the bucket for drip irrigation.  A little boy named Enrique had said he wanted to learn about the garden, so he helped us plant moringa, tomatoes, beans, onions and some pumpkins.  I had a fun time trying to talk to him in Spanish.

We finished kind of early and went in to watch the Daughters of the King, while this was going on, the ladies were still working in the kitchen to prepare the daily meal.  I’m pretty sure they fixed them spaghetti and I’m not sure what else. Girls kept coming from near and far and it was obvious that they wouldn’t be getting done anytime soon, so Diane and I felt like we should pitch in, so we decided to help out in the kitchen.  You wouldn’t believe the dishes we washed.  Evidently, they feed many more today because of this special project.  I think we washed dishes for almost two hours.  Three days of hard physical labor has almost done me in!  The worse part is we’ve had electrical problems and I have had ice cold showers for two days.  Luckily, when I got back tonight, the shower was warm!!! Praise God!!! This was also the first night that we got back early enough that we some down time.

I have started posting on the next day. Today, I went with a group that went to Hospital Escuela and a special needs orphanage.  Until next time!  (I appreciate all of your comments.  It's nice to hear from everyone in the U.S.)