Ray and Becky Canatella stopped by for the night as they were making their way to Louisianna for the Thanksgiving holiday, so I suggested we take advantage of the good weather and go to the Renaissance Festival. I’ve been there a few times and Ray has been once, but Becky had never been to the festival. So we 3 grown-ups and 1 child headed north to spend a nice day back in medieval times.

With some free-time on my hands, I decided to put it to good use and go on my very first mission trip. Lakewood Church listed several mission journeys for 2014 and I decided to give El Salvador and digging a water-well a try. I was a bit aprehensive about going on a mission because I didn’t really know what to expect. But in the end it turned out to be a fantastic experience and definitely something I want to continue doing for years to come.

As for this trip, it began with some preparation including meeting everyone on the team and doing a Garage Sale to raise some money. I’ve done garage sales before and brought in about $50 bucks, so I wasn’t thinking we’d make a whole lot of money with this. Boy, was I wrong! We hauled in more than $2,000!! A garage sale is a very good idea! We also held a ‘packing party’ which meant filling lots of plastic tubs up with lots of plastic products. It was a good way to work and get to know each other for our upcoming journey.

Finally, the big day arrives and we all meet at the airport early in the morning. No issues. No hassles. Everything moves along just fine and we enjoy a smooth airplane ride to El Salvador. We had an added bonus of meeting the El Salvador Futbol team on their way home! They had been playing in Dallas. Friendly guys! They were treated like rock stars on the plane and in the airport. When we arrived in El Salvador, we met up with our hosts at the airport and loaded up the van.

Off we went to the our sleeping quarters not knowing what we’d find…would it be a hut in the jungle?… Sleeping under a tree in a tent?… what?…. but it turned out to be great!! It was Hotel Rancho Estero y Mar (Swamp and Sea) and was FANTASTIC!

The next morning we drove to our worksight which seemed like a long drive, but in reality it was just a short distance from the hotel. However, there wasn’t a direct road from our hotel to the small town where we’d be working, so we had to drive and drive and drive. I didn’t mind, I enjoyed seeing the towns and people and scenery along the way. We also stopped at a gas station each day and loaded up on ice and snacks.

We did a ‘walkabout’ and visited several homes and families in the neighborhood. Most of the houses were extremely poor… shacks, really… by our standards. It was kind of amazing to see how they lived. No one had running water or indoor plumbing. Everyone walked or drove great distances to get bottled water. Or a few lucky families had deep, deep wells from which they could draw water. Everyone cooked outside on wood stoves very much like going camping!

We started working on our first day, and it turned out to be not too terribly difficult. At least not difficult in my opinion. Still, it was dirty, muddy, and sweaty. I stayed wet and covered in dirt for the next 4 days! We had groups of guys from the nearby villages come and watch us every day too. A few of them would even jump in and help. Everyone on our team from Lakewood Church got to work and operate the drill.

While some of us were working with the drill, others were working with kids in the school. I have to say, this was the most delightful part of the whole week. The kids were so excited to have us there and eager to talk and play with us. They brought a lot of joy to the work scene every day! Several of them even tried talking in English with us. A few girls even practiced a traditional dance routine which they performed on the final day. The kids seemed to be interested in every single thing we did, every moment of the day.

The hygiene team spent several hours every day teaching the kids basics of hygiene. Some of it was pretty funny, especially the glitter poop. They kids loved it. They loved getting our packets of toothbrushes and toothpaste, too, which we assembled before we came to El Salvador at our packing party.

When we had some free time, myself and a few of the girls went on a little kayak adventure that was part of the Hotel Rancho Estero y Mar.

On the final day, we put the finishing touches on the well, and then it was picture-time with ALL the kids!

The next morning, we got up early-early on our final day and made our way to the airport. The flight gave us a good view of several volcanos as we were leaving, but other than that it was a regular boring 3 hour trip back in Houston. It felt good to be home!

Update:

I brought home a souvenier…the chicken flu! On the flight back to Houston I actually began to feel a bit sick, but I thought it was probably just exhaustion from the trip. But over the next couple of days I became quite sick. I had a high temperature, nausea, and body aches like I’ve never experienced before. Oddly, though, I didn’t have any congestion at all. No coughing either. I suspected this was the Chikungunya flu… or ‘Chicken Flu”… they had warned us about during our stay in El Salvador. The Central American countries were having an outbreak of chicken-flu, so I figured it was likely I caught the bug. I decided to go to St. Joseph’s Hospital in the Heights of Houston and get myself checked out. Sure enough, it was the flu. But the doctor didn’t confirm whether it was that specific strain of flu called “Chikungunya”. All I know is that I had three main symptoms – severe joint aches, high temperature, and no congestion. The doctor prescribed some antibiotics and sent me home. Within a few days I was okay again. Not fun! I am just really glad I didn’t get sick while I was IN El Salvador. That would’ve been a disaster and a miserable experience.

• The Debilitating Outbreak Sweeping the Americas
• Chikungunya Is On the Move
• It is Coming to the USA!

Our pretty Toyota Tacoma got its first ouchy. 🙁

But insurance covered all the repairs with no hassles from the insurance company. I was able to choose a body shop that was within walking distance of the our house, so that made life a little easier too.

I’ve dealt with enough car repair shops in my lifetime to know when they say, “Sure, just drop it off and we’ll get it taken care of” that really means they’ll start ordering parts… and then wait for parts to arrive… and then apologize when the parts are on backorder… and then 2 or 3 weeks will go by while you are struggling to deal with a lack of transportation. This time I made it clear I will drop off the truck when the parts ARRIVE. 1 week later the parts did arrive and I dropped off the truck, but then it turned out they had ordered the wrong parts!! So I still had to wait until the following week for new parts to arrive and repairs to be made. All in all, the truck was at the shop for about 9 days.

The moment I picked up the truck from the shop a rainbow appeared. 🙂 God was smiling down and saying, “Hey, that’s a really nice truck!”

School is back in session. This year Ivy is in 1st grade and has a man-teacher. His name is Mr. San Juan from Barcelona, Spain.

It was a private birthday party for our friend (and realtor) Shawn Manderschied. He was having his birthday party at a rollerskating rink on the east side of town, so we decided to give it a try. I used to skate all the time when I was a teenager, but quit doing that for many years now. I wasn’t sure if I could still make my way around the rink! Turns out, it is sort of like riding a bike… you never forget.

We put skates on Ivy too, but we weren’t sure if she could do it or even if she’d like it or not. Turns out she loved it and did very well for her first time on the rink. By the end of the night she was standing on her own and scooting around by herself.

Fun night! Happy birthday, shawn. Thanks for the invite! 🙂

Once each year, downtown Houston has an Open House on all of their theaters and stuff downtown. I thought it was pretty interesting, although Ivy complained and thought it was boring… at least until she got to dress up.

They do this every year! It’s free and it is worth a visit, imho.

Theater District Open House

Took a few days to visit family and hang out in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Last year, I put Ivy into several Vacation Bible Schools and she liked every one of them. So we did the VBS tour again this year and even added 1 week of summer camp. Just like last year, it was a hoot! I volunteered for one of VBS and became the popcorn maker guy in charge of equippment too (ordered here). There was always plenty of opportunities to volunteer from preparing snacks to full stage-productions including dancers and video and costumed characters and much more. Maybe next year I’ll get to wear a costume. 🙂

These were the themes at several of the VBS’.

When I was a teenager, I did 1 week of summer camp and absolutely LOVED it! So I wanted to expose Ivy to summer camp as well. This wasn’t an stay-overnight-in-a-cabin type camp, but rather a day camp in downtown Houston. So that seemed like a good way to expose her to camps and see if she liked it. She loved it! So we’ll probably do Pine Cove camps each summer … and maybe more throughout the year. Pine Cove has camps for the whole family and each session is jam-packed full of activities from day to night. Check out their Pine Cove website for more information:

 

Okay, so it’s hot outside and I have a kid I need to entertain during this summer break. What to do? Maybe go to the library? As it turns out, the Heights Library wass having some kind of snake demonstration today, so I figured that might kill some time and we could even hang out and read a book or two while we were there.

Much to my amazement, there were about 250 women and children also checking out the snake demonstration. The room was wall-to-wall people! I felt a little out of place since I was pretty much the only guy in there (except for the speaker/snake-handler guy doing the talking), but soon found out that worked to my advantage. The snake handler asked for 2 grown-up volunteers from the audience to hold snakes for him. None of the moms were willing to sacrifice themselves. I raised my hand and quickly was chosen. Another teenage girl also raised her hand and volunteered.

So we spent the next hour handling lots of different snakes including pythons. Ivy was a bit afraid of the snakes at first, but by the end of the show she was adorning herself with baby pythons too. It was a fun morning! What a nice surprise from the Heights Neighborhood Library.

Ray Canatella dropped in for a visit for a few days!