Tamarindo Days

This has been a good week! Progress is being made at the schoolhouse and relationships are being built in the community of Tamarindo, where Makarios will have a strong presence this year and those that follow. The walls are getting taller around the schoolhouse and I can finally visualize what the school will look like! Yesterday the kids and Leticia, Anne and I used chalk to write on the schoolhouse walls (which are just bare block right now) prayers and blessings on the school. This basically turned into everyone writing their names on the walls with a few scattered hearts and crosses here and there, but it was neat all the same!

Although we were out in Tamarindo on Wednesday from just before 9 a.m. until around 6 p.m., which is a very long day, the time passed quickly because I really enjoyed interacting with the kids and the workers. I got to watch rain pour down, I mixed cement, I played with kids and I talked with adults.

This area is not quite as poor as Pancho Mateo, and the difference in the way the kids act is really amazing. They don’t fight as much and they’re still pretty blunt but somewhat less mean. While the kids in Pancho Mateo are jumping all over you and tearing your clothes and calling you bad if you don’t give them gifts, the kids in Tamarindo taught Anne and I every clapping game in existence and some versions of “Ring Around the Rosie” and we really had a blast with them. Even the boys, who were either playing with their handmade tops or with various balls, made sure that Anne and I got to toss the ball around (even though I am terrible at it!) and they spun the tops and would fight over who got to hand it to us to spin. Just the fact that they were so welcoming really blessed me.

With some Tamarindo kids

I met this sweet girl, Amanda, who asked me if she could borrow my Bible. It turns out that she and another girl had seen Leticia’s bracelet that says “1 John 3:18” on it – “Dear children, let us love not in words or tongue, but in action and in truth” and they wanted to look it up and see what the verse said. So the girls opened the Bible I had brought, found the verse, read it aloud, then immediately closed the Bible and said it from memory. I was amazed! I ended up giving her my Bible because although she could even sing me a song of a Bible verse she knew, she didn’t have a Bible of her own.

Unfortunately, I had a headache on Wednesday that continued through Thursday, so I only spent half the day out in the villages and the other half back at the house sleeping the pain off. We crossed the river into Pancho Mateo where Anne and I took a few kids to the cancha to color from a coloring book Leticia had brought. It was difficult for me because I wasn’t feeling well and the kids were climbing all over me but also insulting me and yelling at me to give them more crayons, more papers. One girl gave me her coloring page as a gift and another girl took it from me and ripped it to shreds. It broke my heart! I hate to get frustrated with these kids whom I really do love, but it’s hard at times when they don’t seem to appreciate you one bit! I know this isn’t the truth; I brought home at least five pages colored and signed by several different girls today. It’s little things like those precious pages that I need to cling to, and not the fact that one of the kids who usually loves me called me bad today because I didn’t let him keep the crayons!

We have had a lot of new people coming through this week but no groups, so it’s been nice to have some low-key days. We have taken to playing a lot of cards (I love the game Nertz so be forewarned that we will be playing it at home!) and have eaten well—grilled chicken and deep-fried fish along with various desserts. We never eat desserts with groups!

A family group from Westlake Bible Church just arrived today, and I got to welcome them at the airport and then we went to Cabarete for dinner. This week will look different (every week does!) but I'm excited for it!