Child of the week - Eliamar

This week's featured child is Eliamar. This is her first year in our school and she is 4 years old. Eliamar is very smart and will be moving up into the other class next year as she has already learned all her letters and numbers. I can't take the credit for her fast learning because Eliamar has a wonderful devoted mother who helps her at home. Eliamar's mother, Mecho, started noticing a difference in her daughter after coming to our school. So she has started coming to the church here in Mata Gorda and is also a part of the Bible study that has started this week.

On Tuesday I had the first women's Bible study with the moms from the school. I had been really nervous about this since it is something that I had been wanting to do for a while, but was very unsure of myself. I have never felt like my gifts involve leading Bible studies or anything of that sort, but I really felt like God was calling me to do this. I decided on a book to read through together called "Lies Women Believe and the Truth that Sets THem Free". The first study we just laid a foundation for the book by looking at how we can counteract lies with God's truth. It went quite well. Six women showed up and I think that a few more will come next week.

Praise God for this opportunity to get to spend more time with the moms of my kids and share with them from God's word.

new stove

This past week we bought a new stove for the kitchen at the school. We had been trying to save up money for quite a while to buy a new one. The old stove the we had was very small and the flame was very low, which made it hard to cook lunch for all the kids since it was almost impossible to fit more than one pot on the stove at once, and cooking for such large quantities made the process go very slow.

We had someone donate some money which gave us enough to purchase a new stove. Here is a picture of Juana, the woman who does most of the cooking at the school. She and the other moms were very excited when they saw the new stove.

April Trip Home and Fundraising

At the end of April I had the opportunity to take 2 weeks off to come home and visit my family, as well as do a little fundraising. The week started off wonderfully visiting with my sister and family in San Francisco and celebrating my niece, Lyla's, 1st birthday.

I then headed up to Santa Rosa to visit my dear friends Marissa and Erik.

After that I came home to Mariposa for a few days and got to share at my home church, Ponderosa Basin Chapel, and well as spending a day sharing with the High School Spanish classes. It was fun to get to see the high schoolers excited about learning about my experiences living in a Spanish speaking country.
I then headed down to San Luis Obispo to visit my brother and grandma and share at my college home church, Calvary SLO. I then took the 7 hour Amtrak back to SF, splurged on a taxi to the airport with my 2 50lb. suitcases full of treats, shopping, and gifts and spent the night in the airport in order to catch my 6 am flight back to the DR.

It was a wonderful trip full of loving family and friends and great times sharing at my two supporting churches. Now it is back to school and summer teams that began this week.