We spent this month working with the Assemblies of God church of Jehova Nisi in San Rafael Cedros, El Salvador. Our ministry assignments were varied and different everyday. Instead of trying to explain all the things we did, I thought pictures would tell the story better.
This is San Rafael Cedros
The streets of SRC
Cacao beans to make chocolate
We helped our friends shell the cacao beans so they could make us hot chocolate
This is Emily’s happy place…near a mango
Joel and his beard bling
Joel decided he wanted to make a mango rocket launcher
These are some of the 600 women who came to the Mother’s Day event at the school we were helping with. We did a skit and preached to them.
This is our team after the Mother’s Day skit with Jorge, our contact for the month
Jorge and Brent
Meet Bobby…one of our pets in El Salvador
Joel preaching at an open air crusade and me translating for him
On this night our team was interrupted by some loud noises on the roof. We didn’t think much of it because we hear rats running around in the ceiling tiles every night. But the family came outside and said it was a large local rodent (ala The Princess Bride??) and that we needed to kill it.
So of course, instead of simply beating it with a stick, they brought out the shotgun.
Our champion rodent killers
Girls movie night in the “fort” that Joy built
This is Leno. We saw God heal his heart and his knee. Blog soon to come about him and his story…
Our Mother’s Day decorations for our substitute El Salvadoran moms
Happy Birthday Katie!!
This is the rest of us taking a very, very leisurely boat ride around the Lago de Ilopango while Katie scuba dived
Lago de Ilopango
Lago de Ilopango
Katie’s picnic birthday lunch
And her birthday nose piercing
Tiffany got some new ear bling
And then we got interviewed for the national newspaper telling our mothers Happy Mother’s Day
Jorge lighting Katie’s candles that proceeded to relight themselves for the next ten minutes
Tortilla making lessons!
Don’t let my face fool you…I’m a horrible tortilla maker!
My squishy fail tortilla
These are the good ones that I had absolutely nothing to do with
One of the nice parts about door to door ministry on the World Race is that you frequently get invited into people’s houses and fed free food. In this case, we were only trying to park at these people’s house, but we discovered that they own a candy making business so we got a lesson and some samples before heading on our way.
Jorge rushed into team time on this night excitedly yelling that we had made the national paper…our Mother’s Day greetings were a hit.
Translation of the caption: “Some foreign tourists also took advantage [of the camera crew and interview opportunity] to send their greetings to other parts of the world. So great was their joy that they dedicated a spontaneous song with an original greeting.” Never mind that the “spontaneous song” was just Brent and Joel singing Happy Mother’s Day to the tune of Happy Birthday…don’t tell our adoring fans. These are the joys of being an endlessly fascinating foreigner.
Team Wreckonciled enjoying our fifteen minutes of fame
The woman in the middle is Jesus. We got to see her healed of foot and back pain, and see her son and her open up to God. Blog soon to come about them…
Brent rescued a calf from himself
Meet Lunch
The fixings for homemade chicken soup…blog with a video soon to come about this day
The chicken was very fresh
While I was busy filming the chicken slaughter, Katie decided to capture my natural response to blood and guts
Eventually I had to make a call to the bullpen, hand over the camera, and take a breather from the butchering
This is Iglesia Jehova Nisi, the church we were working with this month
Some of the Wreckonciled girls at an outdoor children’s event
We spent the last week working with a team from a ministry called King’s Castle (Castillo del Rey) who were in the Master’s Commission training program
We helped them put on nightly children’s rallies in a local village
Joy preaching and me translating
This was Brent’s favorite member of the team
King’s Castle people
Katie and her attempts at jump roping
These are Joy’s new friends
This just in: Central American children are beautiful
One of the other occupational joys/hazards of the World Race is that in the course of your door to door ministry you just may find yourself at the home of a nice Jehovah’s witness who happens to be a natural healer, and he may decide to crack all the bones in your neck and back
This is Emily’s other happy place
Jorge is very hip
We helped with a youth group retreat for Iglesia Jehova Nisi on our last weekend here
We performed the Lifehouse Everything skit
Katie preaching and me translating
This is Rebeca, Joel’s archnemesis
Brent preaching and me translating
No matter where you are in the world, if you find yourself at a youth group retreat, there is a 100% chance of water balloons
This game is called, “If you don’t know enough about the Bible, we’re going to hose you down”
Joel plotting something…shocker
This is when Brent and I were trying to be lazy and preach from inside the van so we didn’t have to stand up…fail.
This is Manuel. He is very old and very adorable, and we prayed for him several times and gave him a New Testament.
Since the world was supposed to end at 6:00 pm on May 21st, we thought we would get a little momentum going into the rapture…
But sadly, we landed just like everyone else. For an account of the day and our thoughts on the world’s almost end, see my recent blog
Just after the world failed to end, the sky opened up and a huge storm broke out, effectively ending the youth retreat and our ministry time in El Salvador. It was a good month!! Time for debrief in Guatemala and then on to Thailand!
