backpacks and blessings

Last Tuesday our team of 9 (Chepe was in the states - he just got back this morning super early) had the opportunity to serve a small rural community in the barios of El Salvador, Victoria. Layo's uncle, Adonai, is involved in organizing community service events with various members from his church and asked our team if we would be willing to join them for a day of handing out 'mochillas' - backpacks - filled with school supplies to kids at 4 different schools. Our team has been wanting to participate in some kind of community outreach, so we jumped at the chance to serve and see a different part of the country.

Our day started at about 5:30am when we met a small group of adults at a nearby church in Escalon and started the looong trek to Victoria. The city is in the boonies and took us about 2 hours to get to. The group treated us to a tipico Salvadoranian breakfast (eggs, bread, beans, fried platanos con crema, queso fresca, y chocolate). With enough food in us to get us through 2 days of work, we headed to the first school where a younger guy with a tiny red backpack and waterbottle perfomed a short skit that captivated the kids and even scored some laughs... It was a bit hard to hear and all in Spanish, so I can't give an accurate description, but it seemed a better fit than any skit we were thinking of doing.

Okay - back up a step - Adonai called Kristen the night before and asked if we could come up with some kind of skit for the kids to do tomorrow... we had all dispersed for the night and so told him we'd figure something out...probably in the car. So we talked about ideas and came to the conclusion that the easiest one for us to do would be one Kristen thought of... only problem was, all she remembered was there was a chair that said "no tocar" in it. (don't touch). But after we saw this guy do his thing with the kids, we figured we were golden and not going to need to throw something together.

wrong. of course. so myself and brandon had the performance of our lives with a chair, a cardboard sign that said "no tocar" and Brandon toting a "Jesucristo" nametag. I mean, I'm not one to boast, but I thought it was a pretty compelling performance. Sadly, the kids just did not know what to do with us. Or the skit. Guess skits aren't the Salvadoranian way, but we tried our best given a ten minute warning and lots of confused faces.

The best part of course was being with the kids. I don't know how those little guys capture your heart so quickly and just make you want to spend your whole day just loving on them...We didn't stay long at each school as all of them were pretty far from each other, but Brandon and I did get to teach some english on the fly at one classroom. That was after one of the cars ran out of gas and we went on ahead down a dry riverbed.. Brandon is great with winging it, and I'm always willing to go with the flow - so we ended up jumping and waving flags and running around together. Poor kids probably thought we were insane.

Victoria is a pretty impoverished city. A lack of natural resources makes for some dry land and very little opportunity to make a living. The kids were quite malnourished and our hearts broke when 5 year old sized frames told us they were 9. Nevertheless, they were beautiful and smiles broke out right and left as we handed out the backpacks. We're hoping to stay in touch with Adonai to get involved in other community service activities, and possibly invite students from Matias to any future events.