Photos of Panama can be found at: https://kathrynrhodenbaugh.wordpress.com
Country: Panama
Dates: March 18, 2019- April 4, 2019
Team Name: new team- eXpresso/Lunachicks/Radigals/She-unit (we couldn’t decide on a name)
Local Currency: USD
Local Language: Spanish
Ministry Partner Name: ICJesusMinistries, run by Danny and Heather
Ministry Partner Locations: Las Lajas (a seemingly abandoned beach town in the middle of nowhere)
Living Accomodations: My team stayed in our hosts Mother’s house while she was away visiting family and had the whole house to ourselves! We slept in bunk beds and had hot showers! And a washing machine!!! Since we lived in the middle of nowhere, the power and water went out at least 2x day, which at first left us in a frenzy with cooking and keeping our food from going bad in the fridge, but then we got used to it.
Meals: Team prepared meals. We took turns cooking and filtering our drinking water. Fruit and vegetables were limited in Las Lajas- the amount of PB & J’s and pancakes I consumed is outrageous. #worldracebudget
We spent our mornings shoveling piles of dirt and laying the foundation for Danny and Heather’s new church, which they hope to have built in the next 5 years. Our hosts currently have a home church on Sundays, and fellowship on Thursdays in their home. In the evenings, we drove 45 minutes away to the Ngabe Bugle Camarca indigenous reservation. Danny runs a bible study for the teenagers on the Res, while Heather runs an after school learning program for the younger children. Included in this program is Moises, a child who was born deaf. Heather teaches him sign language and is the only person in his family and his community who can communicate with him via sign. My teammate, Alivya, studied ASL in college and was able to assist Heather in teaching Moises, and it was really beautiful to watch Alivya and Moises connect through sign. It has been fun to continue to watch Alivya make sign language videos in each new country and send them to Moises to update him on where we are!
