Day three of our trip...what a day! We traveled about an hour an a half to the orphanage. When we got there most of the girls were in school and would be finishing around lunch time. However there were about 10 girls that were not in school and we were able to spend time hanging out with them. We started out by playing soccer and painting nails with the 10 girls. Then when school was about to let out we started getting ready to serve them lunch. We had hot dogs, chips, cookies, juice boxes and some stuff called ceviche that is used as a coleslaw of sorts to top the hot dogs. The hotel that we stayed at made the ceviche and cooked all of the hot dogs for us. Just in case you are wondering the hotel and it's staff are pretty awesome! Back to the orphanage...we started feeding everyone and we found that they gave us a wrong number of people. We ended up running out of food. All of the kids were able to be fed but a few of the orphanage workers and our team were not. It was a pretty sad telling the workers that we ran out of food.
After lunch we sang some songs, did the Bible lesson and then a craft. The craft was a backpack-like bag that the girls could decorate.
After the craft we played some more soccer and painted nails.
I went and played soccer for a while and then quit and went to the nail painting area to try and cool down a little bit. I painted a couple of girls nails and then one of the girls kept telling me how pretty and long my nails were and asked if she could paint them. She was so sweet, and was trying so hard to make them look perfect. I was so very blessed by that experience. I then went back to painting nails and met a girl who I hadn't seen until that point. She was still in her school uniform so I am guessing she got out of school later than most of the other girls. (The girls who had been let out at lunch immediately changed into regular clothes.) I started painting her nails and was so surprised to learn that she spoke a little English. So far none of the girls had been able to say anything in English. We spoke for a while and I learned her name--Elizabeth, her age and few other things about her. I immediately noticed what a sweet spirit she had. I was so enjoying our conversation that I was sad when her nails were finished and she went to go change out of her school uniform.
I went to go play some more games outside with the other girls. After a little bit I went to go look for Jason and noticed that he was talking with Elizabeth. I didn't want to interrupt their conversation so I went back to playing games. Jason and Elizabeth got to talk for a while. She was very patient with Jason's poor Spanish and she said she "liked English very much, but wasn't very good at it." She was being modest because she was pretty good at it!
After a few minutes it was time to break the pinata that we had brought. Let me tell you watching those girls is a time of complete joy. They get so excited about candy!! As soon as the pinata broke the girls dog piled each other scrambling for the candy. It was hilarious! It took a couple of minutes to get all the girls off of each other and be able to distribute the candy a bit more evenly.
We then went to the main area to fill up the girls backpacks with the supplies that we brought. Jason asked me if it would be weird for us to find a way to help out a 17 year old girl. I immediately asked him who he was talking about and was so happy to hear it was Elizabeth...the same girl that I hadn't been able to stop thinking about. We were only able to talk for a second and realize we were both completely on the same page. Let me just say that so far in our marriage this is how God has spoken to us--always separately at first and then we come together and realize we are having the same thoughts. So after handing out supplies I went over and asked for her whole name. I realized that if we were going to do anything we would need that. I was so happy when she wrote down her email address as well. For some reason I didn't even think about them having access to the internet. Since then, we've had some trouble getting in touch with her, but are still trying and asking God to help us to care for her if it's in His plan.
We then got in the bus and headed back to the city. We ate, had our devotional at the hotel and went to bed for some much needed rest.
