Friday

From the village of Otoxha: what an amazing day! When we arrived the entire church community was waiting to pray with us to celebrate one of their biggest feast days. This pilgrimage to the Basilica of the Black Christ at Esquipulas is celebrated in Guatemala. This is a feast that honors members of the community who are sick or who have passed away. They included lighting a candle for Vernon's mother who recently passed away and Gordon's mom who was diagnosed with cancer. It was a very moving ceremony. We were blessed to be invited to pray with our community.
The prayer service took place in the newly tiled church! We arrived to find that the village members had completely finished the work in our absence on Thursday. The men who were ready to work helped with the final cleanup and left many of the tools there for the village to have for future use.
The students received their pictures and completed the pen pals which are now in route to the classrooms back home.
Goodbyes were said (some tearfully!) with the understanding it is really so long for now - we will see everyone next year!
We left under the instruction of the Alcade (mayor) to call when are safely back on American soil. Ann obediently will comply!

After a nice lunch in Otoxha, the group drove to Corazon Creek to pick up our painters, and discovered that they had been invited to eat another lunch ( same menu, Caldo!) Mike and Bobby were happy to show off the completely painted church!

Don, Desiree, Jill and Rose were back in San Lucas. It is a small school, with 38 students in just two classrooms. The principal was gone to a workshop in Punta Gorda, so there was only one teacher present. When they arrived they discovered Maria, the teacher, was not feeling well so Father Don drove her to the health post in the next village, Santa Teresa, only to discover it is only open and staffed on Wednesdays. When they got back to San Lucas they sent Maria home to bed leaving our teachers in charge of the whole school.
They had a great day, playing cooperative games with jelly beans, doing a STEM activity based on the Three Little Pigs, built towers with Dots candy and toothpicks, and learned about carbonation by "dancing" raisins in Sprite. Three of the four raisins danced and one child's observation was that the fourth raisin was dead! They ended the day with relay races, maybe not the best decision on the hottest day of the week, especially when one of the students told them it was too hot to be outside.

Cathy, Phil, Suzanne and Anita were in Blue Creek. The principal was also gone to a meeting, so the Standard 1 and 2 students were dismissed for the day. We finished the PenPal letters, made foam crosses, created pipe cleaner dogs, and worked on short vowel sounds.
Cathy and Phil taught the oldest kids how to play chess and then had a friendly math competition between the boys and girls. Cathy prepared the girls to remember their fours times tables by having them do a different motion for each fact, they will remember those facts forever.
We heard "GIRL POWER" many times during the competition.
The village of Blue Creek literally sits on the water, so we ate lunch sitting with our feet in the water, ahhhhh, heaven.
The teachers and students ended the day with a beautiful celebration, students read simple speeches and presented each of us with a small gift. Very touching and heartfelt. The students sang their national anthem to end the celebration.

The quote of the day comes from Blue Creek. Cathy was really hot after running around with the kids, so she stuck her head under a water pump to cool off. One of the boys said, " Miss, don't get your head wet, you will get a headache!"