La Colonia
While the men went to the worksite again, the children’s team (Joanne, Chrissy, Anika, MaeAnn, Renee and Kathy) went to La Colonia ("The Colony") to do a service for the children. The youth team joined in later and had a great time blessing the kids there. La Colonia is an evacuee village of sorts for the families whose homes were destroyed in a huge mudslide in 2004. Some of the most extreme poverty in Santiago is found in La Colonia and the families who live there are generally ostracized by the rest of the community. The team passed out the clothes and flip flops we brought specifically for each child there and gave out soccer balls as well.
Routine means of transportation to and from ministry sites
Children playing at La Colonia
After the childrens' service at La Colonia
Passing out sponsored soccer balls at La Colonia
Painting Tables
While the men worked and the children's team ministered to the children at La Colonia, the youth women plus Travis set off for Alfa y Omega to paint the tables used in all the children’s classrooms. It took some time to get organized, but eventually we got started painting under the supervision of an incredible professional artist, Juan. He mixed the few colors of paint he had purchased and created some beautiful colors that covered the tables. After a couple of hours of painting, we headed back to the hotel for lunch. After lunch, Lisa, Anika and I went to worksite to work for an hour or so. Lisa and I experienced chiseling rocks into smaller rocks to be used for concrete mix. It was so much harder than I expected. We didn’t stay long, though, because we had to go finish decorating the tables we had painted.
Painted tables, ready to be decorated
The entire youth and children’s teams met at Alfa y Omega and began the process of painting decorations on the tables. Initially planning to use stencils, we soon discovered that coming up with freehand simple designs were best. We opted for ladybugs, shapes, balloons, and trees. Juan embellished a few of our designs and gave us a hint of his amazing talent. After we finished all the tables, we headed back to the hotel for another wonderful dinner, stopping briefly to check out where Chrissy lives with the pastor of Alfa y Omega.
Table painted by our talented new friend, Juan
Children at Alfa y Omeag sitting at a newly painted table
About to go inside the home where Chrissy lives
Youth team
That night we had a fascinating practical lesson in phonetics and language acquisition. Wayne taught us the process that is used by Bible translators to learn an unwritten language, create an alphabet, and identify proper grammar structures. He then had a man who spoke Tz’utujil join us and taught us how he would learn the language through utilizing different sizes and quantities of certain objects. It was incredible and gave me so much more respect and admiration for the people who have dedicated their lives to this work.
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