These pictures are from two different places. Just trying to be efficient. The first three are from a town on the outskirts of the city called Mateo, only about a 20 minute drive from Baxter. I went with a group there yesterday to translate while they built the house. The house behind the man hammering is the house the family used to live in. While the group was building I found out a lot about the family. There's the grandma, her granddaugter and two grandchildren, a 16 year old and a 3 year old. The old house was built 20 years ago by her son out of mud bricks and needs a new roof. They moved out into a smaller wooden box for safety. They set up a shack as their kitchen. When the new house is done they will repair the old house, make the front room a kitchen and the oldest grandson will live in the back room, and the ladies will live in the new wooden house. The mom is the only working person in the household, works in a furniture factory for about $50 per month. Pretty good comparatively. We encountered cows on the way there. Not something you see everyday, but I do, pretty much!
The picture of the three girls: the one on the right is the 3 year old of the house with her two cousins that came over to visit. I talked to the 75 year old grandma awhile, about her life. She was married once but has been a widow for about 25 years and raised 5 children. I asked her if she could give me any advice for marriage and after thinking a few seconds she just said, "Behave yourself! Be good!" That's it? I thought. I thought she'd get a more serious look on her face and just blow me away with a profound phrase of wisdom. But after thinking about it, I decided that that is simple, yet profound, and if we would just all behave ourselves we could save ourselves a lot of trouble.
The other pictures are another day and another group about 2 hours outside the city in a town called "Izopo", also the word for Q-Tip. It's absolutely beautiful. I helped the group do a VBS with about 70 or so kids. In one picture you see the kids getting to act out the story of David and Goliath. First a group member read it in Spanish, then the group acted it out, then they allowed some kids to act it out. This community is pretty remote, welll, ok, very remote and people were waiting outside when we arrived.Part of the group built a house across the way while the VBS was going on. ON a bus on dirt roads with some muddy spots it takes awhile to get there. it's a beautiful adventure just to arrive.