Venezuela - Day 3 & 4

Day Three: We awake to a beautiful morning filled with excitement for what may come today. As we all emerge from our rooms, we see the boys sitting in a circle for their morning devotional. We first creep around trying not to distract them, and finally decide to join them. The children (ages 9-18) start their day with chores (around 7 AM), then they gather in the courtyard to have devotional time. They read from a book titled Tiempo con Dios (Time with God), discuss some thoughts and then close with prayer. A few of our “virtual travelers” sent written prayers that they would like the boys and our team to pray for them. We hope to let the boys know that when they pray, we in Estodos Unidos (United States) feel them. The prayers in English followed by Spanish for today were; “Por Favor oren por mi familiara para que vajan a la Ingelesia a aprender mas de Dios y Jesus. (Please pray for my family members to go to church to learn more about God and Jesus.)” and “Por favor oren para que todos los ninos en elo mundo aprendan a poner las cosas de Diod primero, y no se foquen en las cosas del mundo. (Please pray that all boys around the world learn to focus on Godly things, not earthly things.)” The nine boys living here now will pray these with us each day. We spent the morning after devotional time with them one-on-one until our meeting with Flor, the director of Jonas. Some boys demonstrated learning disabilities to us, knowing addition and subtraction using flashcards with Laurel but unable to write what they know for Dave. Many of the boys are far behind in school and they only have regular school lessons on Saturdays. Teachers will come and volunteer for an hour or two various times of the week, but many boys will not graduate from high school. Soon Flor comes and shoos them off to play football (soccer). Before the boys leave, they pick mangoes from the tree for Laurel since she loved sharing the fresh one Shane had picked at breakfast. Flor meets with us to give an overview of the rehab treatment program and details about how each boy came to be here. One thing they are careful of is gifts. Since boys in the beginning are apt to sell things for drugs, they make sure they do not get too much all at once. Instead, they “earn” gifts each month based on their participation in the treatment. After the meeting, we tour the farmhouse and grounds to gather information about the needs of the program for the mission groups following us. About halfway through the tour, the boys join us and KJ and Dave show off with chin-ups and dips on the gymnast’s bars. The boys join in as we all watch. We see their chicken coop, and the beginning of their vegetable garden and hear their plans to begin composting. We discuss the need for a trash incineration system so that they are not subject to the whims of the municipality that is responsible to pick it up (they have not come for a month). We are having a wonderful time with them. They love to have their pictures taken and to see them after. We join them for lunch and then we have some free time to pass off the donated clothing, toys, medicine, and toiletry items. Flor is very grateful to have this infusion of goods into the cash-strapped program. We have a welcome dinner planned that night at Julio’s house. Julio was the initial director and the impetus for the program. He has since stepped down but wanted to host us all to dinner. They prepare lasagna (with ham and bacon inside!) and garlic bread and a pumpkin torte and lemon meringue pie with a cookie crust. Unfortunately many of us are recovering from 24 hours of Venezuelan’s version of Montezuma’s Revenge. KJ and David got hit the worst but Dave, Denise, Francisco and Mallory as well as some muchachos, Jhonny (a therapist) and Julio’s wife, Hayde got vilely ill. Shane, Lucas and Laurel have escaped as of yet. We are delighted to meet our beds and awake with a plan to spend all the next day with the boys. Day Four: The plan for the day is PLAY! We feel like we haven’t spent enough interrupted time with our muchachos and now we want to focus on them. We set up games like Rummikub, Jenga, Uno Attack and their perennial favorite, dominoes. Francisco and David leave to go get the house some tools for yard work that they really need and David decides to buy them a weed whacker. The rest of us spend hours playing those games and then decide to get out the water balloons to do an egg toss game. This is so much fun with them!! Then the boys get in to the pool and we continue the playtime there while the dominoes game holds strong. We stop for lunch and siesta for the ancients . Teachers come for some children to study for exams, while other boys begin their work with the guides. Pedro has them using the new tools to care for the yard. He wants to teach them all about plants so they can grow food. Later, he allows them to stop early to come and be with us, so we get started on the games we prepared for them from “Minute to Win it”. We will play the tissue pull game, the ping pong balls in the tissue box, cotton balls on the nose, rubber bands and Coke cans, etc…Denise and Mallory were in charge of these and they did it well. The games are a hit and the boys LOVE them!!! We will soon have dinner and maybe no one will tell Shane where it came from…He was not happy to hear we met our chicken lunch yesterday. The mosquitoes and flies abound and we are living as most people in Venezuela do, sans AC and hot water. Tomorrow, we will leave at 4 am to head to the beach with the boys. We will be gone all day so our next post will not be until Thursday. To be continued…… Click on the pictures to see the album and run a slide show.

Venezuela - Day 3 & 4

Video of games with the boys...