whew! what a weekend. saturday morning, instead of the class that we usually have, we went to a woman's house to help with the kid's class. mimi, david, martha, davisito, and leti did a muppet show about noah's ark. it was funny, and the kids loved it...
then we went to a park (and by park i mean concrete slab) and played soccer for awhile with the kids from the class. it reminded me so much of vbs at our old ministry site!

i went to roca de salvacion this morning and it was awesome (as always). pastor cande talked a little bit about his trip to new york (where he saw my parents!) and how great that was for him and his wife. he mentioned how our church is more than 250 years old, and iw as thinking about that later...this september mexico is celebrating its 200th anniversary. a church that's 250 years old, then, is really old if you're in mexico!
in the young adult class, pastor cande's wife, angelica, was talking about when jesus entered the temple and became angry because people were using it as a marketplace. she was saying he was mad because it was a holy place, it was supposed to be...and then couldn't think of the word she wanted to say. i said 'santificado' and she just looked at me and goes, 'yeah!' they still don't believe that i can understand as much spanish as i do. it's so funny!
then we went to lunch downtown in this mexican place that was packed. that's always a good sign...the food was delicious. tostadas, enchiladas, flautas, posole, and hibiscus water...

then eliseo, the pastor's son, was going to drop rocio and i off at a park to hang out (there's always singing and dancing in parks on sunday afternoon) but ended up staying with us. we went downtown by the flag, where apparently every sunday there's a clown show at the harbor. eliseo is scared of clowns so he kept his distance, but rocio knew them somehow (she knows everyone) and when one of the clowns came by asking for money, he said hi to her and she introduced me. he asked where i was from, and when i said new york he got super excited and went to tell his clown friend. eliseo and i slowly started sneaking away because i knew he was going to do something embarassing...but he caught us. he goes, 'everyone, meet my friend from the homeland!' and he ran after me and gave me a big hug. it was funny.

while we were there i saw this kid that i ALWAYS see...he was in a kids camp skit several years ago and lived in washington for awhile so he speaks english. he's been to kids camp every year since then, and last year i saw him in april at a site iwas visiting with barnabas. then i saw him a couple months ago at a youth group in porvenir. crazy! he thinks i'm so weird because everytime i see him i get so excited and expect him to remember me...he's like 15 so i'm sure i embarrass the heck out of him hahahaha.

we went back to the park and watched a band...usually it's just older people singing traditional (and i mean traditional) mexican music, but today there was a band of younger guys singing a different type of music...easier to dance to! it was a huge band - drums, trumpets, euphoniums, singers, a tuba, and a clarinet. it was lots of fun.

no class tomorrow, because it's a national holiday. the signing of the constitution, i think. i'm going to talk to renie about taking the kids to a park this weekend. can't wait!

omar making sure he gets every last bit of chile from his bag of chips...

i worked one on one again today...very exciting for the kids. it's fun to be able to give them specific praise when they are working with me as well as constructive criticism. every kid would learn better in a 1:1 setting, though, wouldn't they? :)

omar and teddy earned their trip to the store today after proving to me that they could correctly count money and buy things in our classroom store. i've taken them to the store tons of times but this time they knew it was for something special - something they earned. lots of fun.

marisol found a dog yesterday while we were walking that has become her new best friend and she talks about it all the time. she knows it misses her and wants her to live at gabriel house :)

it was a great couple days in the states, but weird to be back to soon. i met up with krista, my college roommate, and hung out with her on tuesday. that was so fun! then yesterday i got a bunch of work done for school. i also had the opportunity to talk with jan at mexican medical for a long time, which was great. she gave me some great counsel and helped me to figure a lot of things out.

chuy was at his monthly conafe retreat today, so i worked with the kids for half an hour each all day long. it was great. i feel like i can get so much more done and they are so much happier when it's a 1:1 setting.

i walked with marcos and marisol today, and marcos was trying to convince me to buy him a dirtbike. he had seen some drive by and i tried to explain that they were a lot of money. he goes, 'like 100?' and i go no, a lot more. and he says, 'whoa, like 110?' and then he told me becky had a lot of money and would buy him one. hahaha! kids. hilarious.

good day today....we took a little bit of time this morning to go over what school was and all that good stuff. its been a week since we had classes! im headed to the states tomorrow with ted and renie for a couple days. internet still isnt working in my apartment and this computer doesnt have an apostrophe...

friday night i brought cookies over to pastor cande's house to see how eliseo, josue, and caleb were doing. i hung out there for awhile - so fun! caleb is SO MUCH like my brother andrew.
saturday we made potato tacos...martha's favorite...tortillas stuffed with mashed potatoes and deep fried. gahh. then we spent about an hour and a half trying to get the oven to work so adriana could make brownies for david (her husband's) birthday on sunday. after taking the entire oven and stove apart and deciding it didn't work, we gave up and bought flan. kind of disappointing, but not surprising. people do not use their ovens here...ever. they're used as storage for pans. it's so different!
today i worked in the baby room because estella, the woman who was supposed to work, now lives off of a flowing river instead of a street. needless to say, she couldn't get here today. it was fun...i love the babies, but it was a bummer to miss church. oh well. next week i'm going to roca de salvacion, where cande is the preacher. i can't wait to hear how their trip to new york was!

this afternoon, some people from church showed up to hang out with the boys. teret, noe, davidsito, paco, mimi, and dalia were here. it was AWESOME. the boys were so happy. they left right before dinner, and as we were praying before we ate teddy goes, 'thank you for our new friends, and that they played with us, and that they brought us yogurt, and that they'll come back everyday.' ha! it was really great that they were mexican, too. alex, jose, and tonio don't talk, so when groups come from the states and don't speak much spanish it's hard for them to communicate. not that it matters; the boys still have a super time with anyone who comes. but still, it was great.

i'm fairly certain we'll have class tomorrow, after almost a week without it! should be interesting...

check it out. the next post is betzy the day she got here, and then today. WOW. nothing like a lot of a love and a healthy diet!

i think the worst is over. it's still raining and windy, but intermittently and less forcefully. we've started cleaning up and getting things back to normal. i spent the morning with the boys, playing store, bingo, and reading along to a book on cd.

i'm headed to pastor cande's house tonight with some cookies to make sure his boys are still alive...
cande and his wife are in the states, visiting hopewell. their three sons are home alone and may or may not know how to fend for themselves...haha! just kidding. but i'm going to stop by and see how they're doing.

what a week it has been!

ok i'm going to write this quickly before we lose power again...

angelica, the supervisor, said it hasn't stormed this badly since 1997. today was full of winds that just ripped roofs right off of houses, water everywhere it shouldn't be, fallen trees, power lines, street lights...gahh. it's crazy!

the sun came out for a little bit and then we lost power for most of the afternoon. it stopped raining after dinner but now the wind and rain have started again. here's to hoping we don't lose anything major during the night!

no school again...more rain...

i worked with the kids that i didn't get a chance to work with yesterday. we're working on money, and once each kid proves to me that he or she can count money without help, i'm going to take them to the store and let them buy something all by themselves! they're very excited, which is great, because this could take awhile. mexican money is so much easier than american, though, thank goodness. the coins have huge numbers on them and they bigger they are, the most they're worth. none of this the thinnest and smallest is worth 10 cents, the fattest is worth 5, the one that's not silver is a penny, and the biggest is a quarter. oh and they all have faces on them. not very easy!

i went to pastor cande's house this afternoon to drop off their christmas gift. cande was working in the states but the boys (eliseo, josue, and caleb) and angelica were there. it was so wonderful to be with them. they let me just slide right in and i felt like i had been there for ages. they invited me to stay for dinner (yum) and then we hung out for awhile. i was there for like 5 hours! eliseo had to pick something up from school, so i went to uabc with him - the university across from the hospital in chapultapec. i think it's chapultapec. maybe it's still ensenada. anyways...it was fun to see the university. it's the best public university in ensenada. cande and angelica are headed to the states tomorrow - crazy! it will be so fun for them. now we just have to get eliseo there...

woo hoo! crazy rain today. all of the water that you see is covering a road. our road. the only road to get to the front door of the big house. at least is makes for a pretty reflection of the sky...

no classes again today, but i worked one on one with almost everyone in 1st grade and preschool. it was SO FUN. the kids are always eager for one on one attention, and everyone, especially marcos, worked very hard and did a great job. it was just the encouragement i needed.

the boys and marcos and i skyped with becky tonight. she's in costa rica, at a language school for missionaries. it was so fun. they loved talking to her!

here's a video of the view from my house, and josue eating dessert.
more rain tomorrow. eek.

so all weekend people have been talking about how it was going to rain today...and i mean rain. like the strongest, most forceful rain in years. well, we kind of spent all day waiting for said rain to come, and around dinnertime it started raining, but it wasn't anything worse than what we've already had. it's funny when it rains here, because ensenada practically stops moving. people don't go out, events are canceled, plans are changed, stores are closed...it makes me realized what a rainy day actually is. we'll see what happens tomorrow; it's supposed to rain all week.

it was nice to have some extra time to play with the kids, though, because we canceled afternoon classes thinking it would rain. i got to be in the big house with all of those kids, spend time with the ladies, and help with dinner.

angel, bryan's dad, is our resident 'respiratory expert.' that's his new nickname from renie. it will be so great to have him...he's going to work alongside the ladies, teaching them how to work with our kids even better and more effectively.

other than that, nothing much to report. hope all is well in the states.

oops! totally forgot to post on friday. i was running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

i spent the weekend at church, working on the new room and hanging out with people i haven't seen in a month! new life, the church from california that comes every couple of weeks (!) to work on the room, was here again to paint. the room is looking great. i'll take a picture of it next week...when i got here it was 3 walls and nothing else, and now it's got a roof, another wall, windows, and is painted! it was good to be back at church and see everyone. kerly, david and adriana's 1 year old daughter is just as adorable as when i left, and now she knows the motions to some songs...it's so precious.

angel is here! he has a 9 year old son, bryan, who was born 3 months early and weighed 2 pounds. he has cognitive impairments, a seizure disorder, and cerebral palsy. his dad has been his only caretaker for these past 9 years...he uses a feeding tube, is almost always on a nebulizer, and has a trach tube. angel is a welder, and would bring bryan to job sites, use the electricity to keep his machine running, and work. he was working in the states and took classes to learn how to take care of bryan, but was there illegally and got sent back to mexico when immigration found out about him. he has a great spirit but seems tired...i hope we can help him rest a bit. the plan is to have him work and live here at gabriel house while he teaches the ladies how to take care of bryan. the plan is not for him to leave bryan, but rather to help us as we help him. he seems like a good guy... i hope this works out.

i just found out that two hope students died in a plane crash today. one was an exchange student from kenya who wanted to be a missionary pilot and the other was in my roommate's small group and was one of those girls who did EVERYTHING and did it perfectly. gahh. life is so fragile.
this is a good time for hillsong...
no weeping, no hurt or pain no suffering
You hold them now You hold them now
no darkness no sick or lame no hiding
You hold them now, You hold them now.

both 1st grade and preschool had a lot of fun today with hearing themselves talk...we used these things that look like retro phones to practice our sounds. the kids speak into them and their voices are directed right into their ears, so its fun to use but also serves a purpose because their voices are magnified. marcos, who has some trouble speaking, was able to spell a lot better when he said the words he wanted to write into the phone. he also loved to use it, which is awesome because he has the shortest attention span of anyone i've ever worked with. we practiced one syllable sounds in preschool. that was really exciting because all of our kids in preschool have the ability to talk, they just haven't quite mastered it yet. with looking at my mouth and hearing themselves with the phones, they were able to speak a lot clearer than i've ever heard before. granted, they were one syllable chunks, and it's the first day we've used them, but still...i'm going to celebrate this!

marisol brought her baby to work today...her name's andrea and she's two months old! YES.

i went for a long walk with joanna, luisa, and the kids down below before dinner. it was a gorgeous day and the kids had so much fun...we walked past some horses and down a few streets the kids had never been to before. i LOVE watching them see things for the first time, even if its just a dirt road or a store.

we were in the middle of science today when a man playing a trumpet and snare (at the same time!) and a woman playing a drum about two blocks away got the kids' attention. a woman had stopped by gabriel house to ask about something and marcos and omar asked her to tell the musicians to come to gabriel house. she did, and they slowly made their way to our classroom, the music getting louder as they got closer. the kids were enthralled. it was fun to watch them. they didn't understand, marcos especially, why they couldn't get a chance to play the trumpet. i still don't know how to say germs in spanish...



adele bought some sand timers for us - a huge one that goes for 5 minutes, and then 5 others that go for 3 or less. we used them for the first time today, and WOW. they're cool enough that the kids think they're toys (as much as i explain that no, they're things to help us, not toys) so they like to use them. it helped a lot for marcos, which i was really hoping for. i wish we'd been using them sooner!

i am just amazed and inspired by how much love these kids have. so many of them want to give hug after hug. day after day, they run up to me with arms open wide and huge smiles on their faces. and what did i do to deserve this? nothing.

beautiful.

here's a video of circle time at preschool...
ignore the singing...please. note that everyone forgot all of the words to this song except the last (and most important). :)


well, there's nothing like hitting the ground running! i jumped right back into school today, which has been going on for about a week. nothing major has changed, but the boys' house is so close to being done! the tile floors are down, and i think they're just finishing up the bathroom. cannot wait for that. the kids got some great christmas presents that they are still so excited about (it's been 2 weeks - that's a good sign!). the generosity that gabriel house saw during the christmas season was such a miracle. we finished the year in the black (gah!) and were able to give the ladies their christmas bonuses (a law here) and toys for their children, which was awesome. they work so hard for inconsistent and not a lot of pay, so anytime we can help them, we try to.
marisol, the poor girl, got her finger slammed in a door so badly that they took her fingernail off at the hospital and apparently it's split right down the middle. of course, she's the one who was in kindergarten last year and has had to play a lot of catch up with her classmates who are ahead of her. she had just been understanding the difference between chicken scratch and nice handwriting and was so proud of how beautiful she wrote...but ever since this accident she's had to write lefty. that girl is persistent, though, and never complains. renie told me yesterday that she and omar are 'so close' to being adopted. i'll miss them, but it will be so good for them!

there are a couple things i came up with over christmas break that i want to do this second half of my time here.
- take a field trip once a month, and do some pre-trip incorporation into class
- go for a walk with one or two kids each day to be able to spend more one on one time with everyone
- teach the kids money (they would rather have 5 pieces of money than 1, no matter what the value)

i went with angelica to pick up a puppy for our neighbor today...an adorable mutt that curled up in my hands...i just about took one home for myself too. we passed a park that would be perfect to take the kids to! there's a basketball court, a big grassy area, and lots of slides and swings. now we just need the manpower to get the kids there...

one last thing that i find very strange. before i left, things were pretty dead...no grass was growing, the ground was pretty dry...it looked like winter. now i'm back, and everything's alive! i have grass in front of my house; i had no idea it could grow there! so not only does it hit 70 most days, but flowers, trees, and grass are growing. LOVE IT.

i'm back! i successfully walked across the border with about 100 pounds of luggage and made it to gabriel house. it was awesome to hear the boys yelling my name while i was still a block away. i'm a little overwhelmed and way tired...it's hard to believe that i was in michigan this morning, so i'm going to unpack and head to bed. looking forward to blogging again!