My Year with Amigos de Jesús: Cows & Prayers!

Run-through of Today

--After breakfast (beans and eggs, nomnom): I began organizing the bodega. The bodega is essentially a storage shed where all the donated items are stored. Additionally, about once a month it is opened for the kids to purchase necessities such as soap and toothpaste, and also clothes, cleats, bags, etc. They purchase these items through a ticket system so when they go above their typical responsibilities here they can ear tickets and save them to buy what they want from the bodega (necessities first, of course). As a place that functions as both a storage and a store for 130 kids, I'm sure you can imagine how quickly it gets torn apart and unorganized. So I worked on organizing some of that for the first hour or two today.

--I moved over to help in the kitchen as veggies were delivered and then began cutting up vegetables for an upcoming meal.

--The other volunteers and I met with the padrinos and madrinas coordinators (explained more in the next paragraph) and talked about their roles over some drinks and snacks.

--After lunch (chicken, rice, salad, tortillas) and soccer, we met as a volunteer community to begin a conversation about the rules and such that we will need to agree on soon. This included topics surrounding what it means to live simplistically here in terms of technology usage, food outside of the comedor, travel during time off, stipend usage, etc.

--Finally, I got to go work in agro for a few hours and MILK THE COWS (pictures below)! Seriously, I loved agro. I milked one of the cows, fed the baby cow, strained the milk, played with the piggies, gave water to the cows, and helped the kids work on starting a garden. I'm planning to go back to agro on Saturday and Sunday to milk the cows in the morning. :)

--I helped serve dinner tonight in the kitchen with one of the summer camp volunteers. I was handing out the mangos which are a big deal since mango season is ending so we have to get them while we still can! Even knowing that I wasn't prepared for how hard it is to keep track of who already got a mango when all I saw were a bunch of little hands coming through a window. Turns out one kid fooled me twice and ended up with 3 mangos.. oops!

--Played with some of the boys near one of their dorms and they taught me how to do this thing with paper so it makes a loud popping noise. I felt pretty accomplished hah! Then I taught them how to play paper football with the paper triangles. They hadn't played before so I'm excited to keep playing with them tomorrow (even though I got my butt kicked tonight by one of the guys who is around 18).

--Prayer circle (will talk more about this later :))

The Beauty in Community

I've been trying to think of a way to describe Amigos and none seem truly sufficient. Granted, I'm sure I'm in a bit of a honeymoon phase but this place is so incredibly beautiful. This week I've had the opportunity to shadow, help and talk with a number of the adults who work it. It's touching to see how hard they work to make Amigos one giant family. Some of the older boys (Amigos took in their first girl in 2012 so the oldest girl is only 13 or so) live outside of the hogar and the organization seems to work very hard to make what anyone is truly passionate about an option for them to pursue. This includes the directors, staff, volunteers, and padrinos/madrinas. The padrinos and madrinas have one of the hardest jobs here. They essentially stand in as parents for 11 or so children ranging in age from around 4 to teenagers. I don't know where they get their energy but I'm excited to learn from them and about them! In general, I'm very excited to continue learning about how Amigos runs/functions.

Perspective Shift

During our first bit of orientation in Copan, we were given a list of 25 or so items and asked to rank them on what we thought was most important in terms of what it means to "be a friend of Jesus". Some of the options included participating in nightly prayer circle with the kids and praying with your volunteer community. Again, given that my spiritual life is very different from what is seen as "traditional," I put these two last. However, after these last few nights of prayer circle, my perspective has definitely changed. We have prayer circle very night, except Sundays, around 7:45pm. All of the kids, padrinos, madrinas, volunteers, etc. come gather in a circle and hold hands. Everyone then has an opportunity to take turns sharing their special intentions. You know that feeling when something touches or moves you because what they do/say is so beautiful and you literally feel like you have heart strings that are being pulled at in all different directions? That's how I felt tonight at prayer circle. To hear so many of these children share how grateful they are for everyone in their life, their health, and the beauty they can see everyday is just... there's no words. I completely love it.

These Kids!!!

I could go on for a long time about them already but I do want to sleep at some point tonight! But, what keeps going through my mind is how blessed and happy I am to be here and the power that lies in a hug. It's like one giant high every time I walk to the comedor or around Amigos and kids surprise you left and right with hugs and some comment, question, or action that makes you crack up. Also, I don't want to neglect the older guys here as well. Today we had a short break after lunch where I was able to play a soccer type game with the older guys and staff, some of which are around my age. The liveliness and community between them was very reenergizing and I can't wait to get to know them better as well (it's also additional motivation to keep improving my Spanish!).

Agro Pictures: My First Cow Adventure

Disclaimer: I'd have more pictures of kids and not just myself but we are not supposed to bring any technology or items out around them right now. The purpose of this is so they get to know us for who we are and not what we own. I'm looking forward to the point at which I can show you all how precious they are! But, for now, I hope you enjoy this obnoxious sequence of pictures from agro today. Shout out to the wonderfully creepy photographer, my beautiful gringo Sarah, because I didn't know this experience was being captured in so much depth haha