Hey All! We’ve been in El Salvador for one week and it has been one full week. I wanted to take a minute to share with you about where we are.
Welcome to Playa El Tunco
Our ministry is located in a small beach town of El Tunco. It is a big draw for surfers and that’s actually how our ministry partner got started, by evangelizing to local surfers. Their ministry grew from there to a church, La Red, and reaches out to many in the community.
Where work gets done
At the coffee shop some of our team meeting with our ministry host about a project
We don’t have wifi where we are staying so we often work at the local coffee shop or one of the two restaurants we’ve found that offers wifi if we need it. In all locations, it’s not great, but we’re making do with what is available to us–besides, who can complain about working with that view.
Our ministry and our home
La Red holds its main service outside, taking advantage of the beautiful year round weather.
There are two classrooms to hold Sunday school in. We spent the first week sleeping in one of the two classroom buildings as maintenance was being done to the structure outside.
Welcome to our dining room. Most of our time as a team is spent in the small pavilion attached to the kitchen. We’ve already enjoyed many nights of card games, group talks and meals around those plastic tables. (That’s Will in the picture playing with one of the local children as his mother was preparing the church Saturday morning.)
The kitchen is modest but serves our purposes. We cook as a team usually in shifts, 3 on cooking duty and 3 on clean up. Food has been simple, but good — so far a lot of eggs, toast, spaghetti, quesadillas, beans and rice, and tacos.
Amenities – We have not one, but TWO American toilets and TWO showers. The showers are outdoors and only have cold water, but still way better than our accommodations at training camp. We’re pretty happy about this, and the cold water is usually refreshing considering the hot sticky weather.
Laundry – This is where we do our laundry — I know it doesn’t look like much but it gets the job done. We get a good core exercise and have resorted to only doing a few items at a time. When we first arrived our host said that we could pay someone to do our washing, but I was surprised to find out she did it the same way — whatever she asks for compensation, is probably not enough.
The Loft
Me in my hammock for the evening.
View from my hammock in the morning.
After the staining was completed on the upper deck area we quickly moved upstairs to outdoor arrangements. The space is full of tents and hammocks and has been significantly cooler than the room we were sleeping in. It is also louder–roosters crow ALL through the night, I’m thankful for earplugs.
All things considered, we feel extremely blessed to be here. Accommodations are modest, but beautiful and very peaceful. We’ve made this sweet little open air church our home over the last week and the town is wonderful. We’re continuing to pray for how we will impact this community who’s economy is primarily driven by tourism. Weekends bring tourists and locals alike out to the bars and clubs into the late hours of the night and the church is striving to reach the locals here. They do this through a variety of programs in the community that we are helping with this week.
Please pray for us individually as a team that we will be bold and find ways to use our individual gifts and talents to impact the community.
Also pray for La Red and all they are doing here in the community, that they continue to grow and reach out to those who need them most.
And for the Castellanos family, they are the driving force behind La Red and all of it’s programs and they each serve with passion in all they do.
Thank you so much for your support, everyday I thank God that I am here and able to serve in such a way and that’s only possible through the generosity of supporters like you. I still have a little over $6,000 to raise and would love for you to join me on this journey. Consider making a donation of any amount today by clickin on the “donate!” link above.
Here are some more pictures I could upload in no particular order.
Finally here and in the shuttle to La Red
Our ministry host helping us get settled with team phones. We all fell in love with this sweet baby.
Just the cutest.
We tried papusas for the first time–they are delicious!
View from my hammock in the mornings.
