Camp!

Last week we planned "camp" for the girls here at the house. And when I say we, I mean Kati planned most of it with input from Allison and I helped with crowd control. Regardless of our attempt at planning, Friday hardly looked anything like Monday, and the girls' enthusiasm fluctuated constantly. But we had a fun week! Kati is an architect-turned-math teacher so she had some ideas for the school work part of the day. She is very organized and did a great job planning our activities!
Our schedule was something like this:
9 a.m. (not sharp!) Songs!
-Hilary was here for Monday's camp and she knew so many songs from being a camp counselor! We sang the same ones all week, but they were quite fun!
9:30ish
-Bible story time. Joshua and Jericho, the fiery furnace, Esther, and the parable of the sower made up our stories for the week.
Around 10 a.m.
-Activities. It was hard to get the girls excited about this until they saw someone doing it and how fun it could be. We did numerous relays and even played baseball one morning.
10:30 or 11
-Schoolwork. This may have been the hardest and most frustrating part at times, but the girls actually wanted to do it, so that made it a little easier.
12:00
-Finally lunch break. By this time, I had asked Kati several times what time it was and counted the minutes till lunch.
The afternoon
-Art, swimming, coloring, playing. If the girls had planned camp, we would have done art all day. They love creating things and coloring.

Bible story time

Making art

Relay race carrying an egg in a spoon

Minute-to-win-it with cheese crackers

Illustrating the story of Esther

Pipe cleaner flowers from the parable of the sower turned into many different things, including glasses

Water balloons!

It was exhausting at times to try to keep 8 girls enthusiastic about everything we were doing, and sometimes language was a barrier, and heat was a killer, but it was also a lot of fun. The girls are excited to go to real camp next week while we are moving, so I guess their experience with us was ok.

Beach Day! Tuesday morning we went to the a beach about 20 minutes west from the house. I drove so that Allison could stay home and do some packing. The road to the beach also goes into Guatemala, so there were police checkpoints (neon cones set up on the dotted line with several policemen standing around, randomly--I think--pulling people over, checking licenses, etc.). For some reason, two gringas in the front seat of a big van with a bunch of Honduran girls in the back looks a little suspicious. So we were waved over, and my heart started beating rather quickly. What was going to happen?! I get scared when a policeman pulls me over in the states but in a foreign country where corruption is somewhat more rampant....

Thankfully, I had my license and passport, and we found the papers for the van. Also, a God thing for sure, neither Hilary or Kati had their passports with them so it was pretty obvious we were not going to attempt to cross the border or anything. He let us go finally, and we passed by a couple hours later without an incident. For all of you praying for our protection, thank you. God is truly watching over us, and I am so thankful for your prayers!