Crafts
Lorraine and Catherine made tremendous progress teaching the ladies to crochet as well as how to make handicrafts that might sell. The village ladies determined that Reina would be the leader of the ladies craft group. Soon she had a whole bunch of ladies on her team working together to make crafts. Gerry placed the first order!
Carol Ryder worked with the children to express their ideas of beauty in God’s kingdom through colored pencils and water paint. The children made cards. Since it was Gerry’s birthday he received a very special card while all of the children sang Happy Birthday.
Health
Maxine and Ken worked the deworming area. Only one child cried out of nearly a hundred! You would’ve thought it was ice cream. From deworming they went off to fluoride where Carol Hidlay held forth.
I Love Jesus / Jesus Loves Me
Debbie, our translator, taught all of the children how to sign I Love Jesus, Jesus loves me. Each child received a Dios Te Ama bracelet as a reminder of the love of God.
Justa Stove Construction
Many of the men on the team encouraged Santos, the local Justa stove expert. He built a stove on his own while the folks from Teo observed, questioned and took notes. Allen announced that Montanita was self sufficient in stove building!
Glasses
Holley and I worked with Maynor on glasses for reading and sewing. Since the auto refractor wasn’t working we used a printed eye chart to test near vision. There were 25 patients and we were able to provide a good fit for 23 of them. Ken provided sunglasses to all of the patients. The big aha is that now Maynor can carry on this service to other villages.
Words from the heart
At the end of the day Holley, Allen, Ken and I sat down with two of the village leaders, Juana and Xiomara. Together we reflected on the events of the past several days. Since other teams will be visiting the village we urged them to reinforce the dental hygiene training and assured them we were going to check everyone’s teeth the next time any of us were to be in the village!
As we summarized, we commented on their tremendous spirit of collaboration. The village really pulled together. We stressed the need to continue to help one another and their neighbors. Juana told us how she had seen the love of God coming from us and that surely God had filled us with His love so that we could share that love with them. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Up to that point we didn’t know Juana was a Christian and here she was speaking the words we all believe. Truly we saw God that day.
June
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