Transitioning into Summer

 

On May 28th, I had my final Nurture Group session with the girls. It was so fun to spend that time with them each Friday and I will miss it!

One of the CVE girls is my employee as she takes the kitchen slop to the pigs a few times each week. She was really struggling for a few weeks, but I'm thankful that after a "crisis," she decided that she did want to continue with the job and has had a great attitude and has been fulfilling her responsibilities. At this time, I have three CVE girls working under me. It is a good opportunity for them to learn job skills, how to be responsible, and follow through. It has also been a real learning experience for me as I learn to be the boss/leader, train them, call them out when they aren't following through, etc.

I'm exciting to be sewing Expo projects with Kate Ramsier (summer volunteer) and three CVE kids this summer. We are planning to make small quilts or quilted pillows, so one day last week, Kate and I went through all the fabric scraps and tried to come up with nice combinations. 

The rest of the summer volunteers arrive this Thursday and I have been planning menus and other kitchen items for the summer. Also, our kitchen helper, Amalia, is retiring a week from today, so I will be more hands-on in the kitchen this summer. It is a time of transition! Please pray with us that we can find and hire another local staff member to help in the CVE kitchen alongside Bertha, our cook. We have been putting a lot of thought into what would be the best arrangement for the kitchen and appreciate your prayers!

Finding Old Friends

A couple weeks ago, I was telling my coworker about my classmates from the fifth grade in San Ignacio. I had briefly thought before about looking for them on Facebook, but never had. So right there during my lunch break, I decided to start looking and quickly found all of the girls in the photo above plus several more even though I only knew their first names! 

A few weeks before that, I had seen a young lady at a store that I thought looked like Fabiola (the girl directly to my left in the photo above). I found out that it was her! So fun to reconnect a bit. So many of them are married and have children. How the time flies!

We took all the remaining frozen bananas from the freezer at CVE and Amalia made some delicious chocolate chip banana bread! Yum!

I happened to have a lot of tomatoes in the fridge on Tuesday and decided to make some roasted tomato salsa. I like using foil because then I don't have to scrape all that roasted juice off the pans!

The Friday after Miguel's family left, I must have been missing the action at my house because I invited this cutie over for a spontaneous playdate. It was a Friday afternoon and I was returning to CVE in an hour for a dinner, so why not? We had a blast playing with pick up sticks and singing into the fan. We'll have to do it again sometime!

Yesterday after Wednesday night church, Denver was showing Mani and José old videos of them goofing off. I had to capture the moment. I think their stair step ages impressed me, thirties, twenties, teens, preteen, and toddler. So thankful for the men who choose to invest in the lives of these boys and for the boys who choose to come to church and be a part of our lives. Please keep praying for them!

On Sunday, Juantan gave a sermon on masculinity according to the Bible. In a community with so many absent fathers and plenty of opportunity for young men to get involved in gangs and the drug trade, men of God are a treasure. I get really passionate about this! Please join me in praying that God will raise up men in this community that will be servants, leaders, protectors, seekers of wisdom, and who will glorify him! And that they can connect and be the iron that sharpens iron for one another.

God bless!