The Cercadillo Project

OK, so I know that I owe you all about four months of blogging, but let me start with the last Saturday, August 25.     Several of our benches have been invaded by termites, and since some were old when we received them (Thanks for sharing, TIME Ministries!), and because we sometimes need more seating space than we currently have, it seemed a good time to make some new ones.

Ryan and David, our wonder interns from Hannibal-LaGrange University,  built ten new benches before leaving us.  However, they didn’t have a chance to paint them. (More about the guys in another post.)

Carolina and RoseAngel from  the college-aged group of La IBI came out to help paint and to continue building relationships with our youth girls. (More about La IBI and specifically about the college-aged group in another post.)  Also, Yanet and Mildred from La IBI joined in the painting fun . . .

. . . as well as David, the taxi driver.   (For those of you who know her, that’s Pucca in front of David.)

By the end of the afternoon we had ten new, freshly-painted benches and some fun memories.  “Why red?” you might ask.  We live in the Caribbean.  Why not?

Oh, and I purposely used this picture with the Toyota 4-Runner in it to again say how VERY thankful I am to everyone who helped purchase it.   What a great vehicle!  I should do commercials for Toyota.  But maybe for now I should just try to get the blog updated.  If the internet holds out I hope to post more in the next few days.   So stay tuned, it’s been an incredible spring and summer!

“Yolanda had an egg!  Yolanda had our first egg!” the village women yelled today.  The first egg!  We’ve been waiting since early December for this moment!

Yolanda proudly said, “This is my egg from my chickens that I fed!  Thank you, God!”

Nine of the eleven families who started raising chickens are continuing to do so, therefore there was an increased excitement in the group, wondering whose chickens will lay next.There have been many discussions about how the ladies will prepare their first egg.  By the way, Yolanda was going to fry hers. 🙂

(Check out the December blog entry for more details of this project.)

As you may remember, we moved our mission base early this year.  One of the many wonderful benefits of the new house is the number of fruit trees in the yard – bananas, plantains, orange, lime and mango.  Today I was able to take the first crop of bananas to share with my women.  Sooooo fun!

Sorry I didn’t get a pic of the stalk before we cut it down and started sharing bananas with anyone who came near the house in the last few days.  Good news – more bananas are ripening as we speak, and the little trees just keep sprouting up, so there is still a chance to post a picture or two in the future.  🙂

A funny thing about the bananas – I really cannot take ANY credit for them.  Before I moved into this house they had already been planted.  God watered them.  The sun ripened them.  We just watched them grow and harvested them when it seemed it was the right time.  It’s very similar with folks in Cercadillo.  I love watching them grow!