What´s goin on Family?
Well today is a brand new day…Sunday. It´s about 4pm now, and since I have the time, I want to tell you how my adventures in El Salvador went. First, it was Molly, Jeanette, Heather and I who chose El Salvador while the others in the squad split up and went to wherever they felt like God was leading. The most thrilling news went through my ears upon arriving in El Salvador. You want to know what it was? Alright, I´ll tell you..
The news was from Silvia, our friend from Costa Rica and our contact in El Salvador…”Yall (meaning the four of us) will be split up and will be living in separate houses with 4 families that I have chosen. They are my friends and they are very nice.” That was all I needed…you should have seen the kool-aid smile I had. We all had one. We were filled with joy and laughter at the thought of us with our minimal Spanish living in the homes of people who we thought only spoke Spanish.
As for me, my home was located directly across the street from the U.S. Embassy, so it was about the safest place of my life. Cameras posted up all over the place, guards decked out in black and white uniform with huge, intimidating guns and they themselves being scattered about always watching and waiting.
This is my family, the Chavez Family. From left to right: Jaaneth, Francisco, Tikva (5), Asael (7) and Meshak (9). I can´t express the gratitude I have towards them for taking me in and treating me like family! After spending these days with them, I know that I have a home in El Salvador.
The days were spent having great conversations with Francisco, walking to the mall with Jaaneth and having conversations with her, playing games and having movie nights with the kids, coloring with them, going to the park one day, watching soccer on TV and getting krunk when goals were scored, and my favorite…sharing meals and icecream together. For the most part, we always ate as a family…breakfast, lunch and dinner.
It didn´t take long for me to mesh with the kids. They were very shy at first, but it didn´t take long for them to get over it either. My favorite memory with them is hard to call because there were many. But I think I can narrow it down…it was the day we played ´hide and go seek´. Tikva would count and as Asael followed me, I thought he was going to hide with me, which was cool…I was all about it. But as I hid, I noticed he just stood there watching me and when Tikva got to 20 and came to find me, Asael would yell out “She´s here!!, she´s here, she´s here!!” Then I would break out in laughter and say to Asael, “Come on now…how can you just throw me to the wolves like that?” Asael and Tikva would be in the heat of laughter as she was on her way to tag me. She´d tell me to run to base and so I did and the game would start all over again. I picked one good hiding spot one time though…upstairs and under the bed that I slept in…perfect hiding spot…until they found me. But I managed to last a while up there. Fun times indeed! If I had to name a second, which, now that I think about it, really ties with first, it would be watching movies and having ice cream with them. We watched great movies like “Spirit”, “Cinderella”, “Shrek 3”, and “Valiant”.
There´s probably a short book I could write about this family that I have learned about them in these few days. Things like their kindness and hospitality, about how they are quick to serve, about the love they have for their kids and for humanity, about how they teach their kids to pray and believe God for the things that they want, about their truly living a life of faith and trusting in God. I was priveleged to hear about many stories where God proved Himself in their lives and that in itself was a huge encouragement. It gave me the opportunity to see from a different perspective the faithfulness of God.
This, really, is a micro summary of all the fun adventures I had with this family. I do miss them. But, maybe one day, hopefully sooner than later I will get the opportunity to see them again, to give them all the hugs we shared daily, to catch up on how life is going with them…maybe share a meal together. Yep, that would be nice!
So, this is only one side of the adventures I had in El Salvador. Much was crammed into these ten days. Much, much more. I´ll letcha in on it a little later though…I´m outta time now.
Peace and love to you all!
Enjoy The Journey!!
