Jennifer Lost a Tooth

Jennifer lost her first tooth today. Well, really we pulled it for her. She was very brave and didn't even cry. Jennifer seemed very uninterested in the tooth when I showed it to her. I was so excited and said "look Jennifer your tooth...it's so little and cute! Can you believe that came out of your mouth?" You know the normal types of things that you say to kids when they lose their first tooth. She glanced at it and ran off to play. I tried to show her off to people but she didn't really seem to care that she had lost a tooth. Which for Jenn Jenn is a funny, since she is always wanting to show everyone what she has done. I guess she didn't feel like she had accomplished anything when little white thing fell out of her mouth. I was so excited for her. And even though she wasn't impressed with her tooth falling out she does enjoy sticking her tongue through the new hole in her teeth.

Some reasons I love it here...

The next day

After making it to the Mission House, and through the night we had a long day ahead of us. By 7:45 in the morning all the kids were up and feed. What we were going to do now? For a while they just ran around in the court yard, a couple collapsed into tears. So we made a plan. We had to do something with the kids. We decided to take them to the zoo! We gathered them all together, put on their shoes, and the Mission Housed packed us snacks. Then we headed out to Picacho, a park with a zoo just minutes from the Mission House. The kids loved seeing the animals. It was a small zoo but had crocodiles, monkeys, pigs, peacocks, jaguar, raccoons, bunnies, among other animals. After seeing all the animals, we had a snack, then walked down through the rest of the park. There is a great view of the city from Picacho. There is also a very large statue of Jesus there that we went to see. The park was beautiful, and it gave us something to do with the kids for the day. I was so glad that we were able to take them to Picacho. After Picacho we headed back to the Mission House for lunch. After lunch we went back to the Ranch. Then I went to sleep. I was exhausted! It was a very eventful two days.

Fire

As many of you know, a couple of weeks ago we had fires cross over onto Ranch property. Here is a picture taken I believe from the pond while cleaning up brush. During dry season, it is not uncommon to see lots of fires, but for us it became scary as they made there way to the Ranch. Everyone pitched into help clear out brush and make fire breaks. After putting in some time cleaning brush we organized an evacuation. All the small kids and ministry girls were taken off the Ranch. Since a lot of the house parents were on their time off some of the teachers (including me) went up to the Mission House to take care of the kids. The van I drove started it's hour and a half journey off the Ranch up to the Mission House around 8:30 at night. Putting us our final destination after 10:00. Which wouldn't have been a problem if we weren't taking care of small children the next day in a confined house. The kids got to sleep around 11:00. The mission house was great pitching in and giving us all a place to sleep and meals to eat at just a moments notice. I'm told that they got light rain that night at the Ranch which was an answer to prayer. The next day we were able to return to the Ranch as the fires were under control. People stayed up late keeping an eye on the fires. Shortly there after we got a good rain at the Ranch taking care of the last of the fire. Thank you for all your prayers. God certainly took care of us at the Ranch. While the fires were on Ranch property they never made it down to the houses, and didn't leave us with any real damages.

The People's Church team

The week of April 19-26 was one to remember. My home church sent down a construction team. Having people from your home church come visit is an honor to any missionary. Being able to share my experiences with people from my home church was great. My aunt, uncle and cousins were able to come down with the team. Also, Beck Webb, an old friend was able to come down. I loved getting to know all the other team members, they were a blast. There was constant laughter the whole week. The team worked hard and played harder! One night, Andy Green, a fabulous cook headed up the kitchen. With the help of the rest of the team and a couple girls they prepared a wonderful meal for the whole Ranch. I think that I can speak for everyone at the Ranch when I say that we loved the meal. It was a great idea, and everyone at the Ranch was blessed by it. We really liked the green beans! I was able to take the team down to the waterfalls, which anyone who has read my blog before knows is one of my favorite places to go. The teams seemed to have a lot of fun playing in the waterfalls. Really the team seemed to have fun doing everything they did, from card tricks, to putting up walls, to eating cookies, playing soccer and football, going to church in the community, and visiting the medical brigade. They were such a joy to have. The teams main job was to work on the staff housing, they put up the porch (shown in picture) and I think some interior walls, along with plastering and sanding. My aunt and cousins got to visit my class, they picked berries, they applied polyurethane, sanded, and picked up sticks out of the coffee field. Not only was the team fun but they were a blessing too. I was sad to say good-bye to them. It was a great week and I was so thankful they were able to come.

Photo shoot

On this particular day I thought it would be a nice idea to take a picture with my class because I had one of the other teachers digital cameras handy. So I gathered my kids together and bribed them to stand still to take a picture with me. Here are all of our attempts at one good picture . Even the last picture isn't that good but everyone is looking at the camera and I guess that is all I can ask for with 5 preschoolers! Here I appear to be smashing Cristian and Marlon...Daniel is making a face and Yolibeth looks as if she doesn't know what were doing ( I know this because that is not here "camera" face.) Jennifer at least has her act together.
Ok this one is worse than first. I'm no longer crushing anyone, but I'm not smiling either. I look scared, which maybe I was...Yolibeth looks like she wants to eat someone. Marlon is forever distracted by what the other kids are doing, just like in this picture where he is laughing at Yolibeth. Daniel looks smashing with that beautiful smile. Cristian and Jennifer look like they should. We are improving by this picture where Jennifer, Cristian, Yolibeth and I are all looking at the camera and smiling. I'm sure inwardly I was crying since Marlon is standing on my feet, which look twisted to the side in a painful way topped by 35 pounds of Marlon. Daniel is being "funny."Finally we have a keeper. Not the best picture ever but pretty darn cute! We are all looking at the camera. Everyone is smiling except Marlon, whom I'm sure is mad because once again I said to him "Stand still and look at the camera" and he is way past interested in taking a picture. In fact he was probably past taking pictures before the first one was taken, so it was a challenging 3 minutes for him. Daniel is kind of blocking Jennifer a little and is doing something interesting with he shirt that he took off, I guess he wanted to show off his muscles. Jennifer is the winner of "Good picture taker" because she is the only that is ready for every picture. Yolibeth looks sassy with her foot kicked up. Cristian has a fake smile on his face...but hey he is 4 what do I expect?

Superpowers!

The other day I was reading to the kindergarten class when I noticed one of the kids sticking a metal hair clip into the electric outlet. I of course took the hair clip from them immediately, and started explaining the dangers of sticking stuff into electric outlets. I told them how it could really hurt them. They asked me lots of questions about how it worked and what might happen to them if they did in fact try to stick something in those fascinating little holes in the wall. I answered all of their question and felt that I made it very clear that getting shocked hurts very badly and they didn't want to mess around with it. Then Junior looked at me and said "I have superpowers so it wont hurt me if I stick something in there." I told him that unfortunately it still hurts people that did have superpowers and not to stick anything into it. I thought that Junior's response was such a classic human response to someone warning us against something that could be harmful to us. To some degree I think most humans think that we are invincible. We pick and choose what advice we listen. We might even listen to what someone says and say, "yeah they have a point, that might be true for someone, but I think it's OK for me." As we get older we have less and less people telling us their opinions about life, but God's word stands for all of us and there are lots of commands God gives us that we do not heed to. We think "but that is such a little thing...it doesn't matter." The thing is though, if it didn't matter to God then he wouldn't have said it in the first place. Listen to Junior's response made me laugh initially, but made me really think about myself and the way I as a human respond so often to advice given to me.