Ah, what a day! Fide started us off with a devotion from Deuteronomy 28, and a breakfast of "Gold" and bananas. We all agreed that we liked the blessings part of the devotion than the curses, but it was cool to see how the Father promises blessings to us. But we noticed how you couldn't just listen to his word and then turn away, but you also had to follow it, passionately. At 8, Big Rafe picked us up again to take us to the school in town. He stayed with us today and observed the two special needs classes with us. It is so crazy to see these teachers in charge of classes of at least 18 students, all with disabilities. Morgan and I decided that the first and second grade disabilities classes were the ones we were going to focus on. It is so cool though, because they teach the kids life skills like sewing, baking, and a computer class, as well as the usual schoolwork. It enjoyed hanging out with all of the kids during their recess. I talked to a few boys about Barcelona soccer, and then a little boy came up with Big Rafe. He was deaf and we tried to sign back and forth, somewhat unsuccessfully. We learned how to say "amigos!" But Big Rafe and I are determined to learn more of their sign language, for sure. It is different from American Sign Language though. When we got back to the mission house, we helped Roberto paint another one of the guys' rooms. We introduced Rober to country music. haha. After a lunch of "pot roast" and rice, which I had two helpings of, naturally, we put the second coat on the bedroom. After we painted a third coat, Little Rafe, the translator, came to the mission house to talk to Morgan and me. He wanted us to come out to the English Academy tonight and grade his students' oral exams. We of course agreed, and told him we would be there at 6. A dinner of tacos filled us up for sure. The Nica tacos are more like our "taquitos" but better. Big Rafe's kids came in right before we left for the academy so we played with them for a while. A little miscommunication caused us to have to walk to the academy from the mission house, but it wasn't that bad since it was all downhill. When we got to the academy, Morgan listened to all nine of their oral exams, while I graded their written exams. They ranged in ages from 15-0ver 40, and they all have been taking this first stage of English for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the past 4 months. I noticed while I graded their written exams that they struggled with the same things in English, that I struggle with in Spanish. Like they all forgot to put the adjective in front of the noun, because in Spanish it goes after the noun, which I always confused as well. We had to walk back to the mission house from the English Academy with Little Rafe, uphill. When we arrived back home, we heard that Big Rafe had been looking for us for an hour, because we thought we'd be home at 8 and not 9. But everything worked out, and "la policia" were thankfully not called. Ha, Morgan and I were dripping when we got back to the kitchen from the uphill climb. But things got better after we finished off the ice cream, and had a chat via skype with the Westbrook twins. Well I am out for bed, but I love and miss you all. We are going back to the school tomorrow afternoon to see the afternoon kids. We still haven't met them. Hopefully we'll also go to some of the communities tomorrow too!
Thanks for the continued prayers,
Spence