Camp Pancho Mateo

Today has been an abnormally hot and humid day. I mean, we are all pretty used to the heat, but this is just ridiculous. Sweat is dripping down my forehead and I'm just sitting here. To make matters worse, it is about to start raining, which means the group can't do devotionals on the roof and we can't sleep up there!

We had a lot of fun though in Pancho Mateo. The interns and I took public transportation guaguas to Montellano (the village next to Pancho Mateo, basically) and then walked to the village. This can be a long walk but Luz, our housekeeper, lives in Montellano and right across the street from a little shop with awesome juice, Colmado Luis. We got juice and then found a short cut through the river into Pancho Mateo which was very exciting!

In the morning we just hung out and played with kids in Pancho Mateo. It was a great feeling to have a couple kids come up and greet me by name and then drag me into la cancha (the basketball court) and tell their friends, "Rebecca's here! Rebecca's here!" We went to El Campito for lunch, which is pretty far outside of the village, but it's very authentic and Dominican. When we came back, we started the first day of Camp Pancho Mateo, an attempt to have a little bit of structured play and Bible teaching. It was hard! We wanted to have a kind of "bird" theme--we used the verse from Matthew 6: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more evaluable than they?" and simplified it, then described it and played games involving it, such as a "verse scramble" and we made birds out of paper bags. It was difficult for me to correctly explain what I wanted to about the verse, but I think we got the message across in general. The paper bag craft was fun but it was frustrating to see some of these kids, completely ungrateful and demanding more and more from us: they didn't have enough feathers, or their bird's eyes were crooked, just normal kid stuff. It's hard when you put a lot of work into something not to get frustrated, but I know that they don't understand and all I can do is love them. Overall, I think our first day turned out to be a success!

I'm more worn out than normal! This is going to be a tiring, but wonderful summer! Pray again for health and for us to not grow tired and weary and to realize that we are simply serving the Lord and that's what matters.