Monday, July 16, 2012
Today was honestly my favorite day thus far of my trips to El Salvador as we received the opportunity to head into the public school system. I know, who's excited to go school, right? To start off the morning, a handful of team members headed to a school early for an assembly with the purpose of sharing the Gospel. I wasn't on this trip but would receive an opportunity later on in the day. I instead started my morning at Biggest with some awesome Jesus time for breakfast consisting of a little 'Luke' and Not A Fan. Following this though, we headed back to Pastor Rene's church to start our morning. From there, we walked to the first public school. There, we broke up into groups and proceeded into classrooms to share the Gospel. "Team Winner" consisted of Steven, Amanda, Raven, Harrison, Rachel, Jacob (as translator of course) and myself. The presentation for each class consisted of a dude and dudette giving their testimony in each classroom, followed by Steven effectively presenting the Gospel using a color bracelet as a visual aid, completed with the encouraging line of "Now Get Back to Work." Clearly something he's practiced in his classrooms a time or two. Our younger team members hit it out of the park despite their initial nervousness in sharing publicly. In addition, we also presented each student with a gift of the same color bracelet Steven used in his presentation, as well as a sucker (Who doesn't love candy, right?) and each classroom received one of our Mission Balls. After our team as a whole spoke to each classroom in the school, we then put on an assembly consisting of a skit from Pastor Rene's church, Mike Stoker's saxophone history lesson and performance and one final Gospel presentation.
As one of the last ones to leave, instead of making the hike to the next school on foot, I climbed into the back of Walter's truck and got my ride on. As Walter's red pickup rumbled down the road complete with approximately 8 Americanos in the back, we passed the rest of our team on their way up the hill and obviously waved, pointed, and laughed in glee (Yeah, I know, we're terrible human beings on the mission field. LOL.). This is when things got interesting. As the rest of our team was walking, some locals took notice of them. Milton, in a rare occurrence, became stern and demanding in telling the team to hurry up and not walk slow. Once at the school, Milton explained that the locals were members of one of the most dangerous gangs in El Salvador and wanted to know what "the gringos" were doing. The weirdest part of this whole deal was that they were totally cool with the fact that we were missionaries and wanted us to continue our work because they saw it as a good thing. While there was no hostility by the gangs shown towards us, Milton was still watching out for us. It makes you think what would happen to us if we were just randomly walking around without anyone who spoke the language. At the second school, we then did more of the same as the first. Arrive, Testimony, Gifts, Gospel, "Get Back to Work".
After this school it was then lunch time and our team headed to Pizza Hut for some good old American cuisine. I took this opportunity to spend some time with some new friends in Luke Owen, the Tildens, Stokers, Matt and Amanda Thomas, and Raven. Now, I must divulge some wisdom gleaned from this dinner. While in the U.S. of A, a salad bar normally is all you can eat, El Salvadorian salad bars are not that way. This is the story of how Matt Thomas spent $30 on salad at a Pizza Hut. Poor Fella. After lunch, we returned to the first morning school to again put on the assembly for the afternoon students. Another great response and show by our peeps.
That evening, we received the opportunity to head to Alegria for dinner and fun. This was a beautiful drive through the mountainous region of El Salvador. I was especially psyched as this was a part of the country I hadn't previously seen. On the way to eat, we stopped at the Lagoon for a bit of fun, climbing, and sight-seeing. The Lagoon is actually a previously active volcano that is now dormant with a sulfur lake in the middle of it. Once you ignore the strong scent, it is truly an amazing sight to behold. Just to point out the importance of soccer/futbol in Latin culture, there was literally a field in the middle of the area with people playing soccer. After walking to the far side of the pond and climbing up massive rock structures, it was time to Gomanos. In the town of Alegria, we finally got to our destination of Cristina's Pupaseria for dinner. The owner set up tables in the street for us so we ate outside in perhaps the most interesting environment ever. :) The pupusas were awesome, probably not as good as the church the previous evening, but still great. Following dinner, we headed back to Usulutan and met as a group before bed. Tomorrow will be our first day at the orphanage which will be an awesome experience to see the orphans again as well as get our first sight of the new site where we will be working. Peace out!
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