Our team started the morning with pancakes before heading to church. The church that volunteers usually attend recently closed down so it was decided that we would attend our driver’s church. Unfortunately, it meant arriving 1.5 hours in to the service but we were able to hear the sermon and meet many of the church members who thanked us for our work at For His Children.
After church, we headed to the mall to purchase items needed for various children and the services and resources we are providing. The team also got a chance to do some personal shopping. One cultural experience was seeing a ton of people sitting in rows of chairs in the center of the mall watching the World Cup on the big screen TV. The cook and our host do grocery shopping for the remainder of our week. Due to the amount of shopping by our team and the cook, the team lost a whole row of seats in the van, which meant it was sardines for trip back. There were 14 people even though you can only see 12.
We were able to get back to work with the children in the afternoon to work on assessments and group activities.
Katie and Michaell spent time working with three kids for assessments. There was evaluating of the iPad communication system for one individual. There may also have been some play with Snapchat filters as a reward.
Angie and Kris spent time with the infants doing tummy time. They then spent time with the toddlers working on body parts, colors, and sorting. Later they spent time with a few of the older children assessing doing puzzles, choice making, writing, and letter recognition.
Megan, Barbara, and Noelia continued to do their assessments and working with the Tias to show some different options for tummy time with some of the infants.
Harvey and Pam continued working through assessments. They taught J a new word in English “boom” and how to play with a ball against a wall. R loved getting lots of input from a R sandwich with her between a peanut ball and a mat.
Bessie spent time with both groups of kids. The older kids explored several different instruments and Bessie observed reactions to instruments to make suggestions for future use of the instruments. The younger kids did got to play the guitar, egg shakers, do the rainbow song, Pescadito (Slippery Fish), and explore the ocean drum.
After work with the kids, it was time for an outing for pizza. This is the first time in a long time that our Nicaraguan translators were able to be travel out at night and it was one of their highlights of the day. (Nicaragua could use many prayers.)
Jackie Chan fighting bad guys in Deutschland as we watch from a pizza parlor located in Ecuador.
Photo credits to Katie Jackson, Kris Thomas, and Lindsey Taylor.
