Tuesday

Well, this morning we got up, ate at the "l'hotel" restaurant and met in the lobby at 8:30. We have a deal that started on Saturday that the last person down has to do twenty push-ups and it has continued. I was the last one down tonight. Anyway. Another thing is that Ed was gone today-he was in La Paz.

So we got picked up and taken to church. We started grading, I think they call it, leveling out the dirt. And then they got the concrete mixer going and over the course of the whole day, we completed the second half of the first section, the whole second section, and a fourth of the third section. We are expecting a lot of progress tomorrow because we were becoming efficient. We had two children's programs today: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. In the morning one we had 30 kids and in the afternoon we estimate that we had forty. In the morning, we winged it. Daniella, Pastor Hugo's wife, sang head-and-shoulders-knees-and-toes and if-you're-happy-and-you-know-it. Then Daniella introduced Mom, Kailey, Lynn, and I and we all said a little something with Lynn translating. And then (we hadn't had time to prepare) Mom and I (with Lynn translating) made up a puppet show between a "Pastor Walter" puppet and a little girl "Lucilla" puppet. It was lame. It was about the good shepherd and how God is our shepherd. "Pastor", I think. Then we passed out coloring pages of Salmo 23 and two crayolas per child. They colored and when they were done, Mom and Lynn had the children stand up when the words that were on their picture were called out. We did this at the "Cancha" which is the basketball court. There is a plug across the street so the people from church (Louis y (and) Marvin y some other boy that I can't remember helped bring all this) set up an extension cord and mic, CD player, y speakers for the program. And took it back in between the programs. Anyway, after the coloring pages, they returned the crayons (I think they call them "crayolas") and got a snack. It's called "cereal" I think but it looks like green packing peanuts. Like the styrofoam ones. It tastes like plain cereal. In the afternoon we had so many kids that we didn't have enough cereal so Daniella gave them orange juice or something instead. The afternoon was much more professional. We had the Spanish puppet shows on CD so we played that and Daniella y some other Bolivian lady did the puppets (they could understand the English :D). Louis y Kailey y "yo" (me) held up a white sheet so that we had a puppet "stage." But the wind was so strong that the sheet would puff out one way so that you could see the outline of the puppet-movers and then the other way so that it was rather difficult to hold. In the afternoon program, there were only about three kids at 3:00 so by 3:30, Daniella y Mama went to the school (on the other side of a dividing wall between the school y the cancha) and Daniella talked to the teachers (mystro) and brought kids out all lined up. These kids were so good and so attentive. They stayed on the bleachers and paid attention and participated and they were of all ages. Gah, I am so tired writing this. Our Wifi at the hotel is not working currently so this will probably get posted tomorrow night but at least I'll have it written down.

Okay. So after VBS we worked, we stopped, we waited for transportation, we played volleyball y talked, we loaded in the cars, took half-hour break for showers, went to Chuy's for dinner, except John Mark. He watched TV. Ordered chicken. It's a fast-food place with basically only fried chicken. I had rice y sprite y fanta y pollo (chicken) y banana y french fries. Then we walked back to the hotel and Daniel y Willie stayed while the rest of us walked a couple blocks to the ice cream place. Which had a long line. So we turned around and walked about halfway back to a restaurant with ice cream. I got maracuya, a fruit ice cream like passion fruit or mango. We ordered, got them, and walked back to the hotel and had our meeting. Jason gave a very nice devotional about Christ's younger life being relevant. Then we went to our rooms.