Caleb & Della: El Salvador 2011

El Salvador Day 1, July 11, 2011 Monday

We met at the church at 8:30 and Clifton, Leanna, Mom and Dad all came to see us off. We ate at Chick-Fil-A for lunch. Della and I sat next to Nandish and David for lunch. I made an origami crab on the way to Atlanta airport. We got to the Atlanta airport around 2:00 PM and waited in a line till 6:30 ish. Our flight out was delayed from 6:45 to 8:45. I met a guy named Luke who was on his way to Nicaragua with his fiancée. Luke was said he was studying to be a preacher. Luke tried to make an origami dolphin with me. We ate Quiznos for dinner and I got a smoothie from smoothie king. I then watched as a lady sprung a leak in her Starbucks bag and left a trail of coffee for about 50 ft. Then a drunken guy, seeing the damsel in distress, quickly jumped up and made a big scene over her and got her a new free coffee. We had about a 1 hour layover in Fort Lauderdale Florida so I got a coke and taught Russ how to play Carcassonne. We arrived at El Salvador about 2:00 AM and took a 2.5 hour bus ride to the hotel we stayed at. Della got a little motion sick. I roomed with Mike and Christopher. The Lord blessed our Travel.

Central Group

Origami crab I made

Della and Me

El Salvador Day 2, July 12, 2011 Tuesday

I woke up at 7:00 AM so we got about 3 hours of sleep. I then helped Bob punch out travel insurance cards. I found out they were missing 2 VBS supply bags and the bag containing all the medical supplies. Breakfast was wonderful. The water melon juice was fantastic. After breakfast and some panic I found out that the two VBS bags were just misplaced so we were only missing the medical bag. We got to the church / construction site around 11:00 AM and found the frame of the church had already been completed. We thought we were going to have to haul bags of concrete today but found out that was not needed. The Evangelism team (The team I was on) rode in the back of the truck to a member’s house which had been serving as the old church building. We got to meet our translators for the bible study. My translator’s name was Herson and Della’s was Fernando. Herson spoke English very well. Herson introduced me to a guy named Franklin who was attending the local college to be a Computer Engineer. After speaking with him a while I realized that there might be an opportunity for me to help the education system there as a CPE teacher. We passed a store called the pupusaria and I joked that is what you get if you have the squirts after eating pupusas. When we got back to the construction site we set up tables and the locals served us pupusas and they tasted really good. All the local girls lined up to get their picture taken with Mike because he was tall and they joked that he was Michael Jordan. Rodney laughed and asked me if I had ever had girls lining up to have their picture taken with me and I told him that I had a girl ask me out once and I married her. We arrived back at the hotel at 8:30. During the devotional tonight Ed gave a talk about how important it was to drink the Entire water bottle.

Ciudad Real

Construction at Ciudad Real

Sonya Bible

Grey Marsee

El Salvador Day 3, July 13, 2011 Wednesday

Breakfast was at 7:00 AM. Today was the first routine work day. We arrived at the construction site at 8:00 AM and only two translators showed up. Rodney decided to send Della and Nandish out with Fernando and Gay and David out with Palo. The rest of us, Rodney, Grey and Sean sat and waited for our turn to go out in the afternoon. I made an origami Pterodactyl while Grey told a bunch of lawyer jokes. The construction had nearly too many people so we all felt like we would be more in the way than a help. The VBS group showed up around 12:00 and ate lunch with us. Hector had been out all morning acquiring construction supplies and the construction group had nearly run out of things to do. After lunch Della and I got to go out with Fernando. Nandish, David and Palo formed the other group. Rodney and the rest handed out flyers advertising the crusade. Della, Fernando and I got to go through the bible study with 5 people and one asked a bunch of questions. I wonder what they talked about. I really need to learn Spanish. It felt so impersonal not being able to speak to the people. We finished around 4:00 and managed to snag some really sweet rice milk with cinnamon. The bus arrived at 5:00 and we left and stopped at the store and waited in the bus for Gay to buy food for lunch tomorrow then we continued to dinner. We ate Pollo Campero which is a fried chicken place. They gave us muffins for desert. We then headed out to the church were Mario was a minister and Hector gave a lesson in Spanish. About 6:45 Hector finished and Mario invited us to walk through town to the park to sing. There was some loud music nearby but they quit after a while. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and Hector strongly encouraged us to be better at being on time and also how important it was that we stay on the move and not sit around. I got to bed around 10:00.

Ciudad Real

El Salvador Day 4, July 14, 2011 Thursday

I got an upset stomach. I ended up missing teaching the devotional because of the squirts. I got some Imodium and got it under control. We got to the construction site around 8:00 and Della, Sean, Fernando, and I went out to do studies. We had the opportunity to study with 5 people before lunch. One of the people we met while were out were members and invited us to have lunch with her family. Then we got a call from Palo requesting Fernando to help him with a trouble study he was having. It was a man who believed that his Hebrew translation was correct in saying that the Trinity was not one. After some arguing David strongly encouraged us to move on. Fernando handled the situation very well. Lunch was fantastic! I met Alejandro who was 10 years old the son of Warren the minister there. Alejandro picked up the origami fast and I could tell he was smart. On the way back to the construction site after lunch we found out that the ant killer, bible stealer (Marisol) was sick. Della, Sean, Fernando and I set out for more bible studies. We met a girl named Christina that told us that her family was Christian and that she was not. She told us that she had a dream last night about Jesus and that it was amazing that here were to tell her about Jesus. She let us study with her and Della really longed to be able to talk with her. Maybe we will get to someday. Then we met a really sweet old lady who had a hurt hand. She invited us in at patiently and listened while we studied with her. We went the study a total of 12 times today and we got back to the church at 4:30 and I started working on an origami from with Alejandro. The special for the day was tamales and I missed it )=. I really love eating the local food and hate that I missed it today. Herson came today but he had a miscommunication and went to the wrong church. When he did arrive he went out with Gray and a school interrupted their day to let them come in and act out the story of the prodigal son. We went to pizza hut for dinner. After dinner we went back to the construction site and Hector taught the first night of the crusade. It was convicting watching him and others kneel on the dirt while they prayed. We got back to the hotel at 9:30 and I led the devotional since I missed in the morning. Della shared about the experience with Christina and then Grey shared about one of the girls there telling us that she had cancer that if she operated she wouldn’t be able to have kids. It really moved Grey.

Rodney Keeton

Ed Ditto

Nandish, Palo, David

Me, Della, Fernando

El Salvador Day 5, July 15, 2011 Friday

Felt better today. After breakfast and devotional we went to the construction site. Della, Fernando and I went out to do studies. We got to study with an armed guard and we saw a cool beehive. At 11:50 we got back to the church and I got to finish the origami frog with Alejandro. We then were given access to a gated neighborhood and Della, Herson and I went out. Herson really loved talking with the people there. One person asked something that Herson knew a verse for so he pulled his bible out from his bag with a huge grin on his face because he was so excited to use the word of God. That was amazing. At the last person’s house Herson spent 40 minutes studying with them. We met a family while were out and the father said he owned 3 houses and would rent a 3 bedroom house in the gated part of the neighborhood for 100 bucks a month. We got back to the construction site at 4:50 and I got the very last local desert treat. We then headed to dinner and we ate Mister Doughnut’s which served pupusas. I got to spend some time talking to Herson and he told me how teachers made pretty well comparatively there and that it was a competitive field. I got to speak to Tony who was the head of the construction effort about how much I liked Tarantulas. I think I might have convinced him to get one. After Hector finished the second night of the crusade we went to the grocery store again and I got to go in and push the cart for Gay. Got back to the hotel around 10:00 and I got to play Carcassonne with Christopher.

Me and Alejandro

El Salvador Day 6, July 16, 2011 Saturday

Wow, I am really getting tired. Breakfast was good and devotional went well. There was a big foot race that slowed traffic causing us to run a little behind. When we got the construction site Della and I got to go out with a guy named Osvaldo to do studies for the morning. One of the hoses we went to there was a man reading the story from John about the paralytic and said he wanted to be healed. At a house a couple of doors down we waited while a man gathered scrap metal to sell and then he listened to the study. After the study was finished he asked us to come in and pray for his wife who he said had lost feeling in half her body. She looked to be on her death bed. After lunch Della and I went with a young local girl and guy to do studies. It was the first time for both of them and I could tell they were nervous. We studied with about 8 people and then got back to the construction site about 4:15 and I got some sweet bread. I tried to save a piece for David and Nandish but they missed it because they were late coming back due to people asking them to study with them. We ate dinner at Pollo Campero again and while we were eating a member of our team turned and puked all over the floor. Della lost her appetite. We were about 5 minutes late arriving for the crusade. When we got back to the hotel Nandish gave an impersonation of Hector saying we were late which was really funny.

Palo, Herson, Me, Della

El Salvador Day 7, July 17, 2011 Sunday

The entire service was in English today with Hector translating. Mike and I stayed up late last night talking and I was really tired from the week so I had trouble staying awake during church service. Della and I gave Fernando the parallel bible. After lunch Della and I and some others put on fish masks and we went and advertised riding in the back of the truck for the VBS. VBS was cool and all together with all the churches and schools Kendal said they had gotten to work with 800 kids. We then went back to the hotel to rest an hour and I played Carcassonne with Christopher, Jeff, Mike, and Russ. We then went to the mall for dinner and it was amazingly good. It was so good that I convinced Grey to go get the same dish I had after eating so he ate two dinners. Most of the shops were closed because of it being Sunday but I could tell it was a really nice mall. After dinner it was raining so much we couldn’t get back to the bus so was stood and sang in the mall while we waited for the rain to let up. For devotional I shared a few personal stories and everyone clapped to tell me that they had appreciated the work I had done for the devotionals. We recognized several people for their service and Central had a separate meeting afterwards. We talked about a lot of things. Rodney shared how there was an opportunity to come back in the future. Laruen the teen intern shared how she had worked with some of the younger guys to help get their minds on the trip. Several people complained about the bad times for the airplane rides and how we could be more effective with our time if we had just paid a little more. The rain came down hard and the pool flooded a little and the water seeped into some of the hotel rooms.

El Salvador Day 8, Monday and Tuesday July 18 - 19

Today was the day to relax. We ate breakfast at 8:00 and about 100 people came to the hotel with Compassion International. We played another game of Carcassonne and then went to a water park. The park was packed with amazing plant life. The park had a small wave pool and some pretty cool slides. Russ busted his foot pretty good on one so he was a cripple for the rest of the trip. I got to eat empanadas for lunch at the park. We stayed at the park till 4:30 and then went to a new big mall in San Salvador. The mall was huge whit hundreds of stores. We stayed with Russ and Marisol and were able to find a patch for Russ to put on his bag, a hammock, and some gifts. We left the mall at 8:30 and went to the airport. We waited in a lot of lines and got really sleepy. Our flight out from El Salvador was at 12:30 AM. We arrived in Atlanta about 9:00 AM. Jon and Pat picked us up and drove us back to central. We got home at 2:00 PM and mom was there to greet us.