Semana Santa—(Semana Ocho)

Well this past week is what is called Semana Santa here, which means “Holy Week” as it is the week of Palm Sunday and the days leading up to Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the grave.

This past week has been quite different from the previous weeks, but I guess that I should expect it by now as no two weeks are the same, however this one was much less stressful!

We had school as normal Monday and Tuesday this week, but took Wednesday through Friday off for a little Spring Break for us and the kids. The schools around here get two weeks off: the week of Semana Santa and the one after it. Thus, Wednesday, our first day of Spring Break we took the kids on a little picnic. Some of the girls helped us make sandwiches to bring with us and the some of the boys went out with us to get Dixie, Jenny’s donkey, as we were bringing her along. We loaded up Dixie with all of our food supplies and a couple blankets and set out on our walk to a little grassy spot with all the kids (that were around.) We each carried out water bottles and took turns riding on Dixie. It was a long, hot walk, but we made it and enjoyed our picnic lunch. On the way back, I was able to experience another first…a ride on Dixie. It was a very enjoyable ride and I can now cross “ride a donkey” off my bucket list. :) Check out our pictures of the whole adventure below! (Picnic and donkey ride)

Later Wednesday afternoon, we were able to get a vehicle from the ministry and head into the city (Guadalajara) for a few days. We’ve enjoyed the last few days reading, sitting pool side, soaking up some sun, eating free buffet breakfasts, walking around a bit, and working out on an outdoor (rooftop) track and in an exercise room.

Our mini spring break has been wonderful, but I’m excited to get back to teaching my students again. It was nice to have a little break, but when I saw the kids at church this morning in their Easter best and received lots of little hugs, I realized just how much I’ve missed them in only a couple days!

This Easter was a bit different as I wasn’t home to be a part of our church’s Easter Drama or at least watch it, but in some ways I think it’s been a good thing. Not having the play or production right in front of me has really challenged me this week to remember on my own the sacrifice that Jesus made for me and how He rose from the grave three days later. I’ve been running through my mind scenes from the dramas from Palm Sunday through the resurrection all week and I’m still amazed and so very grateful for Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. So blessed to have a Savior who would die for me.

I hope you all have had a Happy Easter celebrating our risen Savior!

One of my favorite songs right now is called “The Death of Death” by Charlie Hall. I first heard it at the Passion 2013 Conference I attended in January and ever since have loved it. If you haven’t heard it, you should listen to it! Here are the lyrics:

We can’t come to the Father without the Son
We can’t turn His wrath without shed blood
We brought nothing to the table that satisfied
We were naked and poor, deaf, and blind

Man has sinned, but God has saved
You rose and overcame the grave

At the death of death, where love and justice kiss
We were born to sin and only You forgive
In Your final breath grace and mercy win
At the death of death You died and rose again

We weren’t just drowning, we were dead to the bone
You gave us hearts of flesh and took away the stone
The Word made flesh and love defined
You didn’t spare Yourself the Immortal One died

Picnic time!

They were so excited for my first ride on Dixie!

One of my little friends joined me for part of the ride :)

Una Semana Loca—Semana Siete

We’ve had a bit of a crazy week. Lots has been going on with so many people here, birthdays, and a few of last minute things. I’ll try to give the week in review for you all.

Sunday, I rode to church with the team of seven college students from New York that are here and afterwards we explored the city a bit. We ate lunch at El Pollo Pepe and then headed further downtown to the market. I managed to NOT buy anything while we were there, but was able to just enjoy  getting to know the people from the team and also see what the market had to offer. In case you’re wondering what they had it was three stories packed full of shops, food, and gifts.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday were pretty chill days. Nothing too crazy happened and things at school went well. I am enjoying this schedule that we have and am hoping that it is really one that we will be able to keep for the rest of the school year…with limited interruptions.

Thursday, our 4^th-6^th graders went into the city with Jenny and Amber to take a practice test. It was a good, challenging opportunity for them to practice for the end of the year test. Though the test was challenging for them, they almost forgot about it by the time they got back to the house. I think their time out to lunch at Burger King with Jenny and Amber helped them forget J

While Amber and Jenny were in the city with our four oldest, I stayed back with the rest of the kids to have a semi normal morning of school. I had a couple of the team members help me supervise the older group of kids and I worked with the 5 youngest all morning. It cool to see how well the kids did with the schedule even though things changed a bit and they had substitute teachers (since they’ve never had them before).

We also had Kid’s Club on Thursday afternoon! The team that is here helped a lot with Kid’s club. We had a Kid’s Club back in February when the big team from LA was here. It is essentially a VBS. All the kids from the village are invited here and we do crafts, play games, sing songs, have a little Bible lesson, and then feed them. This time we had about 80 kids again, but most of the team members speak Spanish, so it was fun to watch them run the activities and share the gospel though their testimonies and a few fun skits that kept the kids engaged. I’ll post some pictures of it below.

This was also the week for birthdays. We celebrated three birthdays this week! That might seem a little crazy, but with so many people living under one roof, another birthday is never far away! One of our kids turned 10, our youngest turned 1, and one of our two new students turned 8. It was fun to celebrate with them all and to see how God brought them each here and is working in their lives.

Next week will be a bit different as we will have a shorter school week and be doing some other activities on the days without school. We are still working out the details and plans, but I’m sure you’ll hear all about it next week when I make my next post! J

Thank you for your continued prayers for me and the ministry as a whole here. It is so cool to see what God is doing and how He is using this fairly new ministry (4 years) for His glory. 

Playing Games...a little spider in the web

Crafting at Kid's Club

A skit

So many plates of snacks...80 to be exact and we had to make even more!

Yes, this is the one year old's cake and YES, it is covered with Cheerio's.  

Enjoying her Cheerio cake!

We celebrated this student's birthday during snack on Friday.

Semana Seis

Not a whole lot of news this week, which may be considered a good thing.

We had a pretty “normal” week of school aside from Thursday. Our “normal” tends to change from week to week. I don’t think I’ve had two weeks in a row that were the same, but it keeps me on my toes! :)

Monday, we took a new school picture with our additional two students because we all wear our red shirts on Mondays! (Check out the picture at the end of this post!) After school we took the kids to Cocula (a nearby town) where we and all of our students had to get our pictures taken to make official school IDs.

Thursday, we didn’t have school as a team of ladies (and some men) from the city (Guadalajara) came in to hang out with the kids. Once a month this group comes to visit and they teach the kids about different countries, do some crafts, They taught them about Norway, played with them, did crafts with them, as well as a little cooking! The food was delicious and even I learned a lot about Norway that I never knew as I sat in on most of the presentation. After they left we had the kids come up and do a few more activities that the ladies left for them. One project was to make a little poster where each kid drew a picture of something they learned about Norway. It turned out super cute! (Amber and I even added what we learned!)

A team arrived yesterday evening and they will be here all week. There are 7 of them and they will just be working on some construction, helping with the kids, and other little projects throughout their time. The kids were very excited about their coming as the leader was an intern who was here for a couple weeks this past summer.

Prayers for my youngest student (3 year old) would be greatly appreciated! This week he got sick and had a few seizures. His fever was incredibly high! He’s doing better now, but prayers that doctors would be able to figure out what is causing the seizures would be greatly appreciated!

This week we are making some more changes to our school schedule…yet again. If you think of it, prayers that our transition to this new schedule would go smoothly and that the kids would not be overwhelmed would also be appreciated as the schedule has changed SEVERAL times in the past month and a half.

Enjoy the pictures below…Some are from the day the group from the city came. (Disclaimer: Most of the pictures were not taken by me)

Newest school picture...sorry it's a bit blurry

After the Norway presentation

There was flour everywhere!

Delicious!

Viking!

Viking!

Project that shows what we learned from the presentation.

Semana Cinco y Nuevos Estudiantes

It’s been a bit of a crazy week here, but definitely a good one!

We’ve got two new students—the boys I mentioned in my last post. Thank you for your prayers as they seemed to have been answered clearly and we are confided that God wants them here.

They started on Monday and came with their applications all filled out and ready to start the day. It was a bit of a surprise to us, but it clearly wasn’t a surprise to God. He had everything worked out perfectly! That morning’s devotion happened to describe their lives perfectly. First day of school, absent father, busy/preoccupied mother and then talked about how our Heavenly Father is always there for us. Gave me the chills just to hear about it!! Why there was a devotion about the first day of school in the middle of January (in the book we read out of) that also included other factors that these boys are currently experiencing can only be explained by one thing. The incredible work of God!

The boys have set great examples all week for our students even, which I hope continues throughout the rest of the year. Our kids welcomed them well and they already seem pretty comfortable here. They are very grateful and thankful for everything…yes, even homework! They’ve been reading Bible stories that we give them and sometimes even read more than are assigned because they like them so much! Today, I was reading a book with the younger one (2^nd grader) and we came to a story about Abraham Lincoln. Because he came from the United States, I asked him if he recognized the name. He responded by saying, “Yeah, Abraham is in the Bible!” :) Not the answer I expected, but one I would consider even better. Turns out he read about Abraham in his Bible for homework the night before. So cool!

We had school Monday through Thursday on our regular schedule. A trip was supposed to happen on Friday, so we didn’t plan for school. Thursday night, the trip was cancelled, so we ended up just working with small groups/individuals on subjects that will be covered on the accreditation tests. I worked mostly with one 4^th grader as I’ve been teaching him Math as well as Civics and Ethics. It’s been a learning process for me studying all that Spanish in order to teach it all in Spanish, but it’s been a great way for me to practice. IT was nice to have this extra time with him since we only have 30 minutes together every day after school for direct instruction and one-on-one help.

A couple times this week I was able to go to Tortas, the little restaurant in Agua Caliente, with some of the older Acosta kids. It was fun just hanging out with them and getting to know them a little bit better. It was fun to have the oldest daughter, Arlene, here with some of her friends from school during their spring break. Sadly, they left for the airport early this morning and headed back to Chicago. The kids were all very excited to see her and I think everyone was able to spend some quality time with her, which is wonderful!

This is the restaurant known as "Tortas" ...I told you it was small!

This morning we were surprised by some of the kids with breakfast in our room. They were very excited to bring it over to us and it was delicious! I was just headed over to the house for a run on the elliptical, so I saved most of it for after my run to avoid throwing it all up. I even got a little reading in on the roof soaking up the sun before heading over to the school to finish my planning for the week. I was able to get most of it done yesterday after school

Breakfast: eggs, tortillas, spicy salsa, banana, & pineapple

.

Un Mes

Today makes it official… I’ve been here a month! CRAZY!! Time is flying by!

This week was actually pretty chaotic at school. The “normal” week we had last week cannot even be compared to this week…

Sunday evening we moved into the room with all of the girls (young and old) as we were booted out of our room for a bit as a lot of family came into town from the people whose home we live above. However, many of the kids have been sick, so we moved out of the room Monday and slept in the classroom that night and the rest of the week. We feel kind of like nomads…no place to call a home and not a lot of privacy (if any). We slept in the classroom all week long. It made me laugh as I thought about all of the kids who think their teachers live at school as we truly were living and sleeping at school. We managed for the week, but I would not recommend it to any teacher. :)

Monday, two boys showed up for school after we had already started. They are related to one of the workers here and were in town. We scrambled a bit that day to get things for them to do, but worked it out. However, Wednesday, there was a meeting and the boys’ mother and grandpa to discuss if they would continue coming to school here and what that would look like. We have been praying about it a lot, but haven’t heard a definitive yes or no from them based on the application and regulations about our school that they were given. We are unsure if they will be coming, but we should know for sure Monday.

Tuesday, I started teaching 4^th grade math in Spanish. We have one student who has been declared a 4^th grader for the testing at the end of the school year (because of our accreditation) and so I have started to do the 4^th grade math with him during what used to be homework time.

Wednesday, I picked up teaching 4^th grade civics and ethics as well (also in Spanish). I’m getting lots of Spanish practice in and studying myself quite a bit every night to keep up! I think that it will be good for me to start practicing and using my Spanish some more and actually getting to teach in it! Hopefully this weekend, I will get ahead on the lessons for next week so I don’t spend every night before on the next day’s lesson :)

Thursday, there were no additions or changes really. I continued my normal subjects during the day and “after school” taught math, civics and ethics. There was a BIG surprise for the family and all the kids Thursday as the Acosta’s oldest daughter made a surprise visit and brought along a few friends from college with her. It’s their spring break and their mission trip was cancelled due to travel restrictions, but they were all able to come here. The whole family was surprised as only the adults knew the group was coming. It was so fun to see the kids’ reactions to seeing their sister and they are loving having her here! We also celebrated a birthday of one of the boys today, which was pretty fun. A bit of horse cake was served to everyone after the birthday songs had all been sung :)

Friday, was again a day pretty similar to Wednesday. Same routine and subjects to be taught, which gave me a hint of normalcy. However, who knows what will change next week if we add more students.

We’ve got a bit of planning to do today for next week as we prepare to figure out how/if we will be changing our schedule. I'm also going to try and get ahead on my 4th grade Math, Civics and Ethics work (in Spanish)!

We would greatly appreciate prayers for this opportunity we might have to share the gospel with our potential new students. We’ve talked on several occasions lately about how we can be the light of the world when we go into the city or when people visit us (like for kid’s club) and now we might have the opportunity to be the light of the world in our classroom for the rest of the school year. How amazing would that be?! We are very excited to see where God is going to take this ministry and how He is going to use us.

Our home for the past week

Also, we will no longer be nomads. We just got our room back a little bit ago and worked on getting moved out of the school and back into our room. It feels wonderful to be back “home!”