Relaxation, Infuriation, and Life

Wow, it’s the beginning of May and life seems to be flying by!  These past few weeks have been relaxingly busy for us, which has probably contributed to the flying of time… allow me to explain.

We have been looking for a way for the whole family to get away and do one final big “family vacation” before I leave for college in August, so last month we went to El Salvador.  We only went for 4 days, 3 nights, but it was a lot of fun!  The hotel we stayed on was RIGHT on the beach; we could actually see it from our hotel rooms!  So, would you like to guess what we did most of the time?  Yup, we watched movies and worked on research papers… NOT!!  We were often on the beach from the time we were done with breakfast until supper.  The place was beautiful and it was just fun to get away and be together as a family.  And believe it or not, we didn’t even burn too bad!  J

Sunset

Lots of TINY little hermit crabs!!

Hermanas!

One of the pools...  there were 4!

Not a bad view...  :)

Lots of space to walk around

Our roles at Casa Bernabe are slowly starting to take shape a little more.  My dad has the clinic fairly well set up and has seen many of the kids at some point or another.  This past week he also had a missionary eye doctor at the clinic seeing all the kids at the home and in the school, that’s over 160 kids!  They figured that about 80 of the kids got glasses, which is awesome!  We’ll see how long it is until they’re broken…  ;) 

Waiting room

Very compliant patients! 

My mom and I have also started “teaching” a group of 8 preschoolers (or younger), 3 mornings a week.  The goal is to help get them prepared for school so that they’re not being thrown into a classroom with no idea what’s going on.  This will hopefully help both them and the teachers in the long run!  The first few days have been slightly chaotic, but with each class we are seeing improvement, hooray!!! 

While life has been great, that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t had its moments of infuriation.  One specific time was meeting Melvin and Norma for the first time.  Melvin is 14 months old and he isn’t much bigger than a 6-9 month old.  Norma is 2 months old and weighs about 4.5lbs.  The two babies are siblings and arrived at the orphanage around 10:30 one night, dirty and obviously in bad shape.  These two are some of the most precious children I have ever met (ok, they’re ALL precious!!), and I will never understand how anyone could even possibly neglect them so much.  Suffice it to say that I was a little ticked at hearing their story, but SO thankful they are now safe!!

So tiny and precious...

Just look at that face!!

So life keeps plugging away, and we keep taking it as it comes.  I can’t deny it, sometimes it’s a little weird to wake up in the morning and wonder, “What in the world am I going to do today?”, but the days always seem to fill up without too much of an issue!  No two days are the same, no two days bring the same emotions, and every day is full of new opportunities to glorify God in all that we do, so that’s just what we’ll keep doing!!  J