Day Three: "Camina con Jesus"

This morning everyone was excited to start the first day of our mission. After breakfast since we were a little short on time, we said a quick prayer as we were loading the bus, then we were off. We arrived at Little Ascension and immediately started setting up for the day. My job was to paint the words "Camina con Jesus" on a big white sheet. These words mean "Walk with Jesus," which is our theme for the whole week. While I was painting, everyone else was busy setting up the arts and crafts, snack, and game stations.      The children started to arrive around 10am. The ages of the kids ranged from three to sixteen.  When all of the children had arrived, Kristen who is our guide, gave a short introduction and we all went around and said our names. After that, Father Eduardo and Jeff taught them "Jesus Loves Me." Father Eduardo doesn't speak English very well but he is very entertaining with the kids and they had a lot of fun singing! After we sang Jesus Loves Me about five times, Jackson Massey, Alice McGowin, and Tim Vaught put on a skit that went along to the story we read to them. It was the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet which also goes along perfectly with our theme! For the first activity we had the children line up and take off their shoes. Outside we laid the big sheet with "Camina con Jesus" written on it and the kids stepped in paint and walked across the sheet. Earlier, we had filled up a baby pool with water and soap, so after they walked across the sheet we washed their feet in the pool. Finally, after everyone had finished, we split the children into groups by ages. I had the youngest group and it was three little girls. Their names are Krystell, Florella, and Hillary. Florella was adorable and only three years old. She missed her mama so she cried almost the whole time. I carried her around to each of our rotations. For games we played duck, duck, goose and red light, green light or "rojo luz, verde luz." Then we moved on to arts and crafts where we made "stained glass" crosses with contact paper and tissue paper. Florella loved ripping up the tissue paper and that was the only time I saw her smile. In snack we made caterpillars with bananas, peanut butter, and pretzels. It was kind of hard understanding the little children, but I could understand some simple words. When all the children left, I could tell they had fun because the little ones came up to me and gave me hugs, which was really cute! When all of the kids left, we cleaned up then had lunch. Around 1 we started the construction work. There were different jobs to do and some were a lot harder than others. The guys in the group mainly stuck to breaking the concrete all the way down to the earth beneath it. The girls were mostly working with rebar and other metalwork. I moved around from the concrete to the metal. As time went on, the concrete workers found easier and smarter ways that required less energy to break up the concrete. By four o'clock we could tell a huge difference. There is a big area where we took up the concrete and a giant rubble pile! I felt really good about how much work we all did together, especially since there was a big difference. We were all sooo dirty, gross, and sore afterwards. When we got back to the diocesan house, we learned that a latin dance class had been set up for us. I was excited but I wasn't sure if I could make it because I was so tired! As we started learning some moves it felt exactly like a zumba class, and we were all soon very sweaty. Some of the dances we learned were the Cha Cha, the Salsa, a Dominican dance, and a traditional Costa Rican dance. At the end of the hour long class, Alice, Virginia Reed, and I taught the instructor a dance called the Wobble, which is very popular in America. Dinner was served shortly after our dance class was over and it was really good. After dinner we had compline and talked about what is happening tomorrow. I can't wait for tomorrow!!

-Elizabeth McGowin, 16