Another rewarding day

Another great day here in Ahuachapan! As you will see from the pictures today, we had a tough day of work and a fun day of building relationships in Getsemani. We started the day with our typical breakfast of some of the freshest fruit you can imagine in our beautiful hotel courtyard under an avocado tree. A simple reminder of how blessed we are before we travel to the Getsemani community.

During the day, Natalie and Elizabeth had the opportunity to play with the kids in the community and continue their English education and help them with some coloring and arts projects. The children are loving it and are rewarding them with ample hugs.

The rest of the group had the chance to participate in the exciting task of pouring a foundation for one of the houses. We have been working on two other homes where we are raising the walls of concrete block. But today, they needed our help with a foundation pour which requires a lot of people to accomplish given the need to get all the concrete mixed and poured in the same day. Picture an old fashioned barn raising where work stops in some places so you can all work as a team on a community effort. Old fashioned is also a fitting description as they don't have concrete mixers, pump trucks, or power tools down here. We mix up a huge pile of about 1000 pounds gravel, sand, and concrete mix, turn it over multiple times under the watchful eye of our masons, form it into a giant “volcano”, and add water. The final step is the “volcano dance”. You can see this in action at www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsqQXvqw2vA. After mixing the concrete we shovel it into buckets and use a “bucket brigade” to deliver the concrete to the foundation. After working up six volcanoes of concrete, we finished the foundation. What a back breaking day. If you don’t hear from us tomorrow it was because we couldn’t get out of bed. As you will see in the photo below, Robbie had to get a little rest before we even got home. (But maybe he was just tired from showing off for his mason by doing handstands earlier in the day).

After celebrating the completion of the foundation, we had an opportunity to join in a community soccer game. The teams were made up of local guys and girls and some of the college kids from California Lutheran University joined in. We quickly witnessed that even in poorer communities, soccer is the sport in Central America and the Getsemani gang played like they knew what they were doing. It was really fun to see the spirit in the community and all the friends and family that came out to watch and cheer. While many things seem so different here, many things are quite the same.

Today is Maundy Thursday and we were invited to join a local church for their service this evening. It was very interesting as the entire service was in Spanish but Enrique and Dennis tried to keep us tuned in to what was being said. As it turns out, our group was invited to sit on the front row and they called us up individually and introduced us by name on the stage (the service was held in an old classical theater with a stage and opera pit). Unbeknownst to us, we were the subject of the sermon. The message was one of thanks to our team for coming from so far away to help the poor in their community. But it evolved into using us as examples for the congregation and challenging them to get inspired to help the poor by joining in the project in Getsemani. Enrique was even called back up to the stage to share more information about our upcoming youth trip to Getsemani in June. What a great feeling it was to not only be thanked for our efforts but to know that perhaps those efforts may influence others to consider how they can help in their own community.

The evening concluded with us walking out into the streets and seeing a parade of candlelight coming our way. The pageantry continues through Holy Week and this evening a silent procession walked through town leading a float carried on the shoulders of men dressed as Roman soldiers, depicting Jesus being led away in chains. While many of us have seen religious pageantry around Christmas holidays, it is really interesting to see the same level of excitement and attention being paid to Easter and Holy week here in El Salvador – and not an Easter Bunny in sight :)