Buenas dias! We started off our morning with another delicious buffet breakfast provided by the hotel and just went around the table discussing our “happies and crappies” of the trip so far. Everyone listed several “happies” such as working with the kids, going on the prayer walks, or ministering to the church community after the church service. No one really had any “crappies” other than toilets not working properly, so if that is the worst thing that we can come up with, then we are very blessed!

After breakfast we split up into two groups again, with one group going to work on finishing some of the roofs that had been started yesterday. They were able to finish 2 more roofs, completing 4 roofs total. Some of the team played with the children that lived at those houses-kicking around a ball in the yard and a few of them decided to have a hot chili pepper eating contest. Needless to say, there was no winner in this contest and they had to go buy bags of milk to drink to get rid of the burning in their mouths. Haha!

The other half of the team went back to the local church and planned to paint the entire inside  of the church and the front of the outside and a gate. We had to sand the old paint off and then mix water with the new paint because they don’t use paint thinner in El Salvador. We painted the outside trim and columns inside the church a teal color and then when we went to paint the building white, we found out the paint was bad and had to wait for Rayner to go to the next town to buy new paint and more painting supplies. In El Salvador, they do not have a lot of paint and we had bought out all of their supplies earlier, so he had to travel to another town to find more. Simple things, such as just running to the store for an extra gallon of paint is not something that can be done here as easily as it can in the U.S, so we ended up having to wait about 3 hours! This is when you realize how blessed you are to have easy access to things that you would normally take for granted. Once we got the paint and supplies, we were able to get almost the entire outside front of the church done and the front wall of the inside before it started to get dark. Then, we all went to dinner and had wonderful Papusas, which is a tortilla with beans and cheese or meat inside. They were so delicious!

The women on our team were invited to a bible study that is held every Wednesday night by the local women of the church. Kristy, Michelle, Jennifer, and I were able to attend along with 2 of the Tico women. We spoke to them about how they are called to be God’s daughters and that they need to look to him as a loving father who wants a close relationship with them. We were able to pray with one of the women for healing for her son who had a kidney problem. They were so happy to have us come that they even provided us with a snack of rice pudding. They are excellent cooks! They thanked us for coming and told us how much they loved us. We went there intending to help minister and pray for them, but I feel that most of us would say that we walked away feeling like God was using them to minister to us more than we were to them! The local women have a very strong faith and will be wonderful in helping support the church and help it grow.

The next day, on Thursday, after breakfast, we started out the day with a team meeting to discuss the plans for the day and prayed for each other to continue to have energy and pour into the community. We started off by going to the church to finish up the rest of the painting. The church looks so nice and bright now! We then were invited by the youth of the church to go down to a river and spend time with them. The hike down was much steeper than anyone anticipated and the street was covered in rocks, which made it quite a challenge!

Many of us went swimming in the river with some of the youth and took pictures from the bridge that was over the river. Many of the team decided to face their fears and jump into the water from the bridge, just like the locals and some jumped off a smaller cliff. We all had a lot of fun splashing each other and bonding together and encouraging each other to face our fears. Some of us then took a truck back up to have lunch at one of the church member’s houses and the rest of us decided to take on the challenge of climbing back up the steep mountain. With several prayers and words of encouragement to each other we were able to successfully accomplish the hike back up. Everyone on the team was able to face their fears and succeed in the challenges that they were wanting to overcome today. It’s wonderful to see how God can help give you courage to overcome challenges and have a community of believers to encourage you along the way.

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