Panaderia de Lola

We've been trying to work with Lola to start a small baking business in her home. She has hit hard times in the last few years and really has no way to support her family, but she herself brought up the idea of baking.

We originally thought the business would be running by now, but I'm learning that my expectations for how long things should take are never fulfilled, so I need to change those expectations. Anyway, it took a long time to get her stove fixed and hooked up, but it's finally connected.

Today we spent a good portion of the day at her house planning the business with her. We've decided to start by first making banana bread and chocolate (hot water) cake. We also helped her to make a display box out of cardboard. As we made the box, it was so fun to hear her and her family come up with ideas for how they will market what they bake. It sounds like the sign on the box (shown below) is going to become their logo-- they want to print little logos to put in every package they sell and eventually want to make a wooden sign with the logo out by the road with an arrow pointing to their house.

Luis Emilio, Lola's youngest son (shown with her in the very top picture), recently had an accident. He got kicked by a donkey and broke several bones in his face. He is still recovering and has tried to go back to work, but can't do the work because he gets dizzy when he does hard physical labor. He is getting really excited about this baking business, though, and is thinking he'd like to stay home with Lola and help her get the business going. It's really encouraging to see her family supporting her in this way.

Meri's new cabinets

Meri got cabinets in her new house. I think it makes it look a lot more like a house. She'd been putting away money every time Ramon gave her some to pay for the cabinets.

Tire gardens

Fighting off chickens has always been a big challenge in our garden. They do a lot of damage, so we've resorted to only planting things that chickens don't like (cilantro, radishes). I'd been communicating with a missionary in Haiti asking him what he does to control chickens, and he gave me the idea of constructing raised structres and planting in them, so that the chickens can't reach them. He uses old tires to hold the soil, so we decided to try the same thing with the club.

We divided in four groups to construct the 'tire gardens'. The main challenge was making a structure that was tall, yet stable, and strong enough to hold the weight of the soil once it was in the tire. We have two tire gardens that I think will pass the test (Willy is shown with one above in which he's trying to put wood across the bottom to hold the soil in) and below is a picture of one of which I won't be surprised when it falls.

Chicken Coop Church II

The chicken coop church is looking much less like a chicken coop and more like a building. In the last few weeks kids in the club have been really busy nailing up boards and moving dirt to fill in the floor. Check out the slanted wood near the top. They are even putting in a little stage with Malta Morena bottles all along the front (picture below). Very creative in my opinion.

Teaching English

I don't know if I've mentioned this before on the blog... anyway, I teach English to 6th-8th graders at the public school every Wednesday morning. I teach in Piedra Blanca, a village about a half mile from Los Higos where all the LH kids go. I don't think I'm really the best teacher in the world, but I'm glad for the chance to be in the school. I'm thankful for the opportunity to partner with the school and know what is going on there and get an idea of how the Los Higos kids are doing in school.

The picture above shows Curtis and David, two of the students who are working in Los Higos as a part of their semester abroad, are teaching 6th graders about days of the week and months. (When I asked David about wearing what looked like a school uniform he said he was being 'incarnational').

chicken coop church

The church in Los Higos is growing and just doesn't fit in the pink house anymore. It is also beginning to reach out to the community in new ways, which requires space. So, we recently moved an old chicken coop, left from a former project in the community, down to the garden.

The coop is actually bigger than the pink house, and I think will be left somewhat open on a side or two to allow overflow (I think). We're hoping that this will work well to hold church services and can also be used by the club and the new literacy classes that the church is beginning to offer.

I especially like the idea of having church services outside. I really like the idea of worshipping the Lord in an area where we can see His creation.

Hike

Today was so fun! The sun finally came out after about a week of hiding. The club was supposed to work in the garden today, but it was too muddy, so we went for a hike.

Franklin has been wanting to take us to a waterfall all week anyway, so we went with the whole club. It was much farther away than I expected, or rather it took, us longer to get there than expected, but it was worth it. We went down through a yuca field and crossed a crick, walked back up a big hill, ate grapefruits, went down a very steep hill (I decided to just slide down on my rear), walked through a crick for about 15 minutes, and then up another crick and there was the waterfall.

The waterfall was more a series of rocks on a steep hillside that the crick ran through, but at one spot the water probably dropped 6 feet. The kids really enjoyed climbing up the rocks to the top. The top picture kind of shows the height of the falls and the picture below shows David, a semester student working with Andre.

After a while of getting wet and climbing we stopped and prayed together- each kid thanking God for the thing they most enjoyed during our excursion.

When we finally got back to Los Higos, Tiva had prepared sogu (like 'so good') for us. Sogu is a plant that we had growing in the garden, that has edible roots. Tiva and the girls in the club had ground it into a flour and dried it a few weeks ago and today she prepared something like a hot chocolate drink with it.