We're Home!

Yes, I'm sure most all of you know that we have returned home to Southern California. We are in the process of settling back into California life and trying to find work. Since I am a teacher, it has been very hard to find a job. Lauren is unable to take any summer classes for her masters program since they are all filled up. Maybe God is telling us to slow down? Not sure what the next step is going to be for us, but we'll keep it in prayer and follow God's leading.

For now, its back to the grind of daily life. Thank you all for your love and support!



LeLu

Just a Couple of Days More

I think that for this final blog, you can simply look at the pictures that I have uploaded and put it all together for yourself. What we would really like is for you to use one (or two) pictures and leave a comment telling us know what you think was going on. There are quite a few pictures that are questionable at best...there is always something interesting going on here at Emmanuel!



The past week has gone by pretty quickly and we look forward to arriving home shortly! We'll be arriving at LAX at 9:30pm on Saturday and we will spend Sunday with my parents, Rachel, and Steve. Monday we'll be driving all over the place meeting with different people and inquiring about jobs. When we first get back we'll have a busy schedule, but things will slow down until we actually find work...which hopefully comes quickly because as a newlywed couple, it's nice to have your own place and people won't let you live in an apartment unless you have a job....or unless you're on welfare--there's an idea!





Thanks to everyone for all of your support and love throughout the course of our trip! We appreciated all of your e-mails and comments on our blog. We'll be sure to post a blog to let you all know that we have arrived home safely and we'll probably post pictures from our journey home (which will take us about 10 hours). I'm sure there will be plenty of funny pictures to come.





God has definitely kept us safe throughout the course of our trip! I can think of a few times that we could have found ourselves in a shady set of circumstances, but He kept His covering over us. I'm glad I didn't have Malaria and that the diarrhea eventually passed after a few days. Things could have gone so wrong on this trip, but instead they went so right and He gets all the glory for it!

Packages, Babies and Dirty Horses

As mentioned in our previous ,short blog, Emmanuel received their much anticipated March container a couple of days ago. It was nice to finally receive the packages that our family sent us back in February. The container always has some sort of stuffed animal that greets those that open the back door--this time it was a Christmas teddy bear. When all the dust settled after a day or so, Lauren and I had a total of six packages! We couldn't believe all of the cool stuff we had waiting for us in those boxes--Dried fruit, tuna, protein powder, olive oil, canned veggies, towels, popcorn, chocolate, etc. Although we're only here for two more weeks, it'll be nice to have things to help remind us of home. We've already had some chocolate, Special-K, oatmeal (with craisins and walnuts), protein powder, tuna, and green beans--of course, they weren't all mixed together.



On Wednesday we decided to give the horses a bath since its been extremely hot here the past couple of weeks. We thought they would like the opportunity to cool off and feel really clean for once. As it turned out, they didn't really care about being clean because once we turned them out most of them immediately rolled around in the dirt and hay becoming even more dirty than they were before we washed them. Horses like having a coat of dirt on them because it helps to detour flies and ticks...I would roll around in the dirt too if that was my only defense against those annoying bugs. I had two ticks (at different times) crawling on my arm during horse lessons today...maybe I should have rolled around in the dirt too.


Next week is "Semana Santa" here in Central America...otherwise known as Easter week in the U.S. This upcoming week is bigger than any other week throughout the entire year. Everyone goes home during this time, so many of the major cities are virtually empty. Lauren and I decided to do our weekly grocery shopping yesterday (Friday) since we did not want to deal with the major crowds in Guaimaca this weekend. We were told that more people die during Semana Santa than any other time of the year--because of drunk drivers, murders, etc. With the economy in a pretty bad state as it is, we didn't want to chance it with only two weeks until we come home. There is no school during Semana Santa, so Lauren and I will be doing whatever needs to be done around Emmanuel during that time--including working on the blog and website, in the school on projects, helping in the dental clinic, etc.


For those of you that might be wondering, "I know Leo and Lauren are volunteering at an orphanage, but where are all the kids?"--don't you worry, we found some! Last night the staff got together with the junior staff and had pizza around 5:15. Jenny, one of the junior staff members that takes care of the toddler house, was in need of someone to watch the toddlers while she went to the shindig. Lauren was more than happy to take care of the little guys since we are commonly working with the horses throughout the week. Although I thought I wasn't allowed to be there after a certain time, I walked Lauren over anyway. On our way over, we could see one of the wild fires buring on the hill right behind the dental clinic and new male volunteer house. The sky was filled with smoke, but it didn't seem to pose a threat because no one was concerned with trying to put it out.



When we arrived at the toddler house, they were all playing outside, but needed to go in to take a shower. They all stripped off their clothes and were running around. It's funny to see one little kid running around naked, but when you see 21 running around naked, it becomes hillarious. What makes it even funnier is when some of them are running up to you yelling, "Profesor Leo! Profesor Leo!" since a few of them are in my class. Lauren helped dry them and clothe them after they all showered together in the two showers available for them. All the girls were in one shower while all the boys were in the other. If you know Lauren and me at all, you know that Lauren really likes little boys and I really like little girls. Erika, a 4-year old, came up to me and wanted me to pick her up and who was I to say no? So the rest of our time there, if you wanted to find Erika, all you had to do was look for the tall white guy in a bright yellow Pipeline shirt. She was sooo cute! Lauren found a little chubby boy named Mimo who is three years old (but looks like he's 1 1/2). She was attached to him most of the time we were there. After showers, they were allowed to play in the park by the "toddler house" for about half an hour. After that they all went into the living room and were watching "High School Musical" dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles. When that movie was too scratched to work, they started watching "The Hulk"--all family friendly movies of course. Lauren was burried on the couch with about six kids sitting on her lap. I was sitting in a chair and only had about three kids on me at any one time. With no fan running, it got hot really fast in there. We were probably in there for about an hour before Jenny came back to resume her duty. Lauren and I helped put them all in their beds and said goodnight. Lauren gave them all a kiss on the head...I was jealous. They were adorable.



Today Lauren and I have horse lessons, and we're branching out into lesson two...tacking, leading, and grooming. I can't believe that we are moving on to the next lesson already. We taught both lesson one and lesson two to the same group (third grade) and it went pretty well. The kids were able to put a halter on the horse, lead it in the hall and into the pasture, and groom it. It was nice not having to groom the horses ourselves...I guess this is what it feels like to be rich and have servants. I suppose that for the rest of the time we're here, we won't have to groom the horses by ourselves! since we have little kids to do it for us. It'll teach them how to care for the animals instead of how to throw rocks at them...its a good life lesson. The kids did a good job getting all of the poo out of the hooves and making the horse's coats look clean. For the record, we didn't see any horses rolling in the dirt after the kids groomed them.




This afternoon, Lauren and I went to the toddler house to hang out with them some more. Take a look at the video below to see how things really are when you put them all in the living room:

As you can see, things tend to get a little crazy in that place when you put a bunch of little kids on a couch together. The girl on the right in the blue shirt in our above video is little Jessica whom we spoke of towards the beginning of our blog. She was the girl that was helping me paint one of the signs that was used in the school. We recently learned that one of our volunteers from Denmark (an physical therapist) has been working with Jessica on a regular basis using sensory integration therapy. She is doing much better now than she was even a couple of months ago. She is always playing with other children, smiling, laughing, making eye contact, and just enjoying her time being a kid. It's awesome to see what a little one-on-one time can do to help someone with a not-so-good upbringing.



Tonight we plan on going over to Robert and Karelia's house for dinner. They are making soup (which should go great with this super hot weather we've been having) and rolls and have asked us to bring some sort of "snack food" (i.e. chips, popcorn, etc.) I'm sure Terrez and Candice will be there to hang out as well. We only have two more Saturdays to hang out before we leave! We have tonight and next Saturday and then we're out of here! We'll have to start making time when we get back to hang out with our American (and Mexican--Greg) friends to replace our new-found friends here. Who were our friends again? I don't remember their names...


Amendment

The soup we ate tonight at Robert and Karelia's was cow stomach soup! They wouldn't tell us what it was until after we finished though...how considerate. The soup was served over rice and contained coconut milk, mini green bananas, plantains, carrots, potatoes, and cilantro. It was actually pretty good. To go along with the soup were some of Roberts famous honey rolls. It was a very filling dinner...although I don't see why it wouldn't have been since we ate a cows stomach!

Emmanuel Blog

Hello All! For those of you who would like to see the "blog" that Lauren and I have slowly been working on for the past month or so. You can just click on the image bellow and it'll take you directly there!




We promise to upload a new blog as soon as possible. We'll probably do it sometime this weekend as we always have interesting things to say about our time here. We've now been spending a lot of time updating Emmanuel's original website as well so that has been keeping us pretty busy. We've added a link to the new blog as well as completely changed the link in the left column for "The Farm." The photo bar at the top was completely redone by Lauren and myself a couple of days ago.

Just a quick note--we received the packages sent by our families tonight and were very excited to see all of the goodies contained within! We had some canned vegetables, towels, Special-K cereal, tuna, protein powder (here comes my muscle back!), popcorn, candy, movies, etc. We are so happy to have received them before we leave in a couple of weeks. Thank you everyone who sent a package, and thank you for those of you who were going to send a package before we said not to due to the time issue.

Alright, that is all for now. A new blog to come this weekend! Here is a picture I took a couple of days ago for those of you who like horses. This is Pharaoh. He is pretty well mannered, but can be a butthead too. I like to think he was making a funny face when I was taking pictures of him...





LeLu