A bit late...

Hi everyone! I wrote the following before christmas, so sorry if its a bit late, but i finally got to the internet. Things are going well right now. Just got back from a much needed vacation with the family! I promise to get pics up as soon as I get them from dad. Hope all is well!

This week has been a really good one so far, and I’m even more excited about the things still yet to come. Father Lucian, the director of our program came in to help us celebrate Christmas here, and we certainly have been celebrating. There still have been several special masses with him celebrating with the people. We finished our last convivio with a final mass in the church on Friday, followed by lots of food. All of the groups of the church were invited, and all of the groups involved brought food, meaning we ate a lot of amazing typical food. There were talamlitos, enchiladas, catrachas, rosquillas con mile, etc,etc. Of course, it was only right that we bring something as well, being a represented group from the church, so Friday I spent the day making 400 cookies. At first I was very excited (I love coking), but by the end I was just tired, and well had a stomach ache (you have to test your cooking to make sure it’s not poisonous!). It was a really nice celebration, and at the end of the night all of the cookies were gone, so I was happy they at least found good homes.
We also have been working on a play for the children of the women in our domestic violence support group, and we had the play Sunday during children’s mass, and also Monday for the moms that couldn’t make it on Sunday. The kids did a great job and they were really thrilled to get all the attention that they don’t usually get. The moms were happy to see their kids excel as well, so I think it was really win win for everyone. A lot of the families that are in the group aren’t well off to say the least, and its very easy to get stereotyped as the poor dirty kid here. When these kids do finally get positive attention and the praise they deserve, I think it reinforces a lot of things including their self esteem and their sense of belonging. I think that we will continue to work with this group of kids, and hopefully it can continue to teach them we do care about them and that they are talented and worth the time and energy.
We finished our food drive for the libra de amor, and ended up with over 60 pounds of food to distribute over eleven houses. We divided it all up and put it in bags on Monday, then started bringing it around. Our first stops were two elderly women that lived alone, were widowed and infirmed, and I think they were very deserving. It’s hard to distinguish who is more deserving than the others, all the people here certainly could use some assistance, food, and love, but we worked with Luis, a member of the community, and Ramon, a delegate of the word in one of the communities in town to find families and people. We then went to a few houses that had lots of children that needed some love and food, then to some other elderly people. Here, if elderly people don’t have family to help them, they certainly can’t work, and its just not a good situation. It made all of us very happy to bring something, even as basic as food, to these people, and we were also glad to get into different parts of town, and work with people we hadn’t met previously. I was also really glad we had some Hondurans to go with us, because we, as a group, don’t give out handouts, and we don’t want to do things for people they can’t do for themselves. By bringing the Hondurans, we got more people involved, gave a face to the projects that wasn’t white, and hopefully inspired these Honduras to continue the project after we have left.
Today we are going up to one of the aldeas to celebrate Christmas eve, then mass and some more visiting.