Greetings from El Salvador friends and family! We are on Day 10 of this crazy 11 month journey. It feels like it’s already been a month. This is the first time I’ve had enough down time to blog as well as a good enough internet connection to post it. My team of six have been very busy since we’ve arrived. I’m posting the text below that I wrote a few days ago. I hope it gives you a snippet of what we’ve been up to. Much more to come!
Jan. 18
Today was Day 6 of my World Race. We are in El Salvador. Every day has been fantastic, but this day was my favorite thus far. It was a day in which we worked hard and played hard.
We are involved in a lot of different ministries this month. I like having the variety. Our work will include ministering to and feeding the poor, working with orphans, loving on and spending time with children who have brain paralysis, conducting youth outreach at some local churches, and helping a new church prepare for its opening celebration at the end of the month, which we will be a part of!
Yesterday was our second day of doing manual labor at a new church located in an area called San Diego. We have been traveling to this church which is located near La Libertad, about an hour’s drive from San Salvador (the capitol). This month we are living in a pastor’s house in the capitol, though he is living somewhere else for the year. Our local contact is named Juan Carlos and he is amazing. It’s been so much fun joking around with him in his broken English and our broken Spanish. Fortunately, most of my teammates speak Spanish.
My team: Team All.LOVE Branch
The church we’ve been working at is under construction. The church property has a corn field and it has been our job to remove the stalks and all the remaining vegetation in the field. See the before and after photos! We’ve been using basic, primitive (in North American standards) equipment: machetes, shovels and our hands! Back home, this work would have been accomplished quickly with a backhoe, bulldozer, or a number of other mechanized equipment.
Erica and Joshua chopping down the old corn stalks!
Where'd all that vegetation go? Two days of hard work!
We spent the last two days removing the vegetation and spreading dirt. They will be using the area for a place to park cars. They will also use the area for a swimming pool in the future. We will be helping them prepare for the opening of the church at the end of the month. After working hard these last two days, we’ve headed to a nearby beach called Playa San Diego, to wash off all the dirt and get some sea salt into our blisters. The beach is absolutely beautiful. It’s been a great way to wash away the grime from the hard day’s work and watch the sun set.
Playa San Diego
We also took a long lunch with our local hosts today as well. I had fried fish. For dinner, we’ve been eating the country’s typical food: pupusas! Corn or rice tortillas filled with beans and queso (cheese). Yum! mas pupusas, por favor!
Our first night eating pupusas! Hot off the griddle!
Fried fish.
While we've been working hard, we've also been building relationships with the people here! More on that to come! Hasta luego! Sending warm wishes to you back in Alaska and elsewhere!
