Big week

So, we've got a big week coming up. First of all, it's my last week of school!!! whoohooo!!! which means that we pretty much just celebrate all week...on Tuesday they are taking all of the teachers out to eat at a nice Argentinian steakhouse, Wednesday have are having a going away party for my kindergarten class (they are moving up to the "big school" next year!) and that will be at the country club...i mean it's a tough job sometimes but someone has to do it =) Then, Thursday, my kids will be having their graduation ceremony...it's a pretty big deal and takes a lot of practice because they have to sing the Salvadorean national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, recite Psalm 23 in english, one kid will give about a 7 minute speech, and they will sing and dance to the Veggie Tales version of "I Am a Promise". Pretty impressive for a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds.
Another big thing this week is that i will be playing in my first concert with my jazz quintet on wednesday! im pretty nervous about it, was hoping to have a few more weeks of practice before we played. we will be playing in La Luna, a cafe/house of art and music. As you can tell, we are gonna be pretty busy this week (and we are expected houseguests this week!) but we will try to get up pictures and videos from graduation and my concert asap.
Have a good week!

Meet Pastor Jose Luis and his wife Sylvia, and their kids: Elizabeth, Jose Luis Jr, Sylvia Jr, Estefani, Naum, Gerson Daniel (named after my brother), and little Ashley (guess who she is named after?)...thats right, 7 kids between the ages of 1 and 12, and the parents are in their early 30's. Whew! My brother met them when he lived here, and they became good friends. Now, they are living in a little mountain community right outside of town, and our churches work together a lot. THey are such an amazing family of faith...the kind that sits down at the table to give thanks to God even when there is no food to give thanks for. And when the parents start to doubt, even their 4 year old son encourages them to keep praying because he has faith that God will provide. You would imagine that their house would be a zoo, with all of those kids living in a two bedroom house, but no...they are the best behaved kids i've ever met. We went to visit them this week to do some planning..this summer a mission group is coming down from Quaker Gap (the church I grew up in) and we will be working in Jose Luis's community, doing service projects and VBS. I wanted you all to meet them via the Blog because they are so special to us, and an awesome example of a family truly committed to serving God, despite the sacrifices that come with that.

In other news, it is extremely hot here this week...like the kind of days that you take 3 cold showers and you still just cant cool off. But in good news, we bought our plane tickets this week to go to the states!!!! God really pulled a miracle on us...we ended up getting the tickets almost at half price because of an error on the Delta webpage. We'll be home on June 15th, just in time to have lunch with Dad for father's day! we will be in NC until July 7th, so we hope to see you!

Feliz Dia de la Madre!!

In honor of mother's day, I wanted to share this incredible video with yall, featuring two of the best mommies ever!
Caution: this video includes live footage of my parent's doing the previously mentioned "butter churn"....but what's worse is that they are passing it along to the next generation, Brooke's innocent baby Aaron. Check out Aaron getting his first lesson (it's OK Aaron...I would cry too...)





We love you Mom, even when you're churnin' butter!! Happy Mother's Day!!!

Yet another shameless attempt to get you to come visit El Salvador...

So, how many of you remember Scuba Steve from the Adam Sandler movie "Big Daddy"?

Hehe don't be fooled...it's not really Scuba Steve...it's Elvis all geared up to go swimming in the lake this past weekend! So, if you come to El Salvador, we promise to take you to Lake Coatepeque (say that 5 time fast!)...it's a lake inside of a volcano. There's a little hippie hostal there where we like to go to relax, swim, kayak, pretend like we're catching fish, etc. It's a really funny hostal because supposedly they offer spanish classes, Mayan pottery classes, guitar and marimba classes, scuba lessons, but no one ever seems motivated enough to do anything but just lay around and read in the sun. We went this weekend with Kenya, Elvis's younger sister, and his mom (pictured below!) As some of you have guessed, yes, one purpose of this blog is to entice you to come visit us =) Is it working yet??

Happy Labor Day!

Yesterday in El Salvador was Labor Day. What does that mean for us? No work and no class!!!! whooohoo!!! The great thing about it being a holiday on Thursday is that they went ahead and gave us Friday off, too. Four day weekend! A couple of weeks ago, we started a women's prayer group here at the house. It's been great...last week we had 14 girls and 2 babies! (This is awesome since there are only 15 girls in the whole church...we are so outnumbered by the guys!) So this week we decided to have a breakfast since no one had to work. We had a feast- beans (yes, we eat beans for breakfast here), plantains, avocado, cheese, cream, bread, fruit salad, etc etc! We took leftover panes con frijoles to the boys, who were a block away, playing soccer all morning. Have you ever seen a documentary on shark feeding frenzies on the Discovery channel? Well yeah, it was pretty much like that.

Another great thing about yesterday is that our friends Laura and Kory, and 2 of their kids, Ben and Josh, came in yesterday afternoon! They are missionaries in Guatemala, and I have stayed at their house so much in the past that it is really fun to finally have them here in our house! They are here for a conference and will be with us all weekend (I'll hopefully get a picture up of them soon!). We have a lot of fun because even though they are Americans, they definitely are not southerners. So we joke around a lot about funny things that I say, and this weekend I'm going to introduce them to homemade" 'minner cheese"... for those of you that are not fluent in redneck, that's "pimiento cheese." This is my absolute favorite food I think, I mean it just tastes like home. The recipe is a secret family recipe, but I'm going to share it because it's just not right to keep something this delicious a secret:

- One small box of Velveeta cheese

-1 jar of pimientos, drained

-2 tbls. of vinegar

-2 tbls. of sugar

-2 tbls. of mayonnaise

Grate the cheese and mash in all the other stuff with your hands.

In other news, last night I had my first rehearsal in a jazz quintet! Well they used to be a quartet, and they play in hotels, restaurants, etc, but now that they invited me, we are a quintet- flute (that's me!), trombone, piano, bass, drums. It was so much fun! I was so impressed with their skills. We practiced in a sound proof room that was about 4 ft x 4 ft so that was interesting. We are playing some classic jazz songs from Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, etc and some bossa nova (which I love!) like Girl From Ipanema. I think it will be a lot of fun, and a challenge, and hopefully can make a little extra money too.

Here in El Salvador, you would be surprised at how much American stuff there is. I mean, we have all the fast-food restaurants practically (well you have to go to Guatemala to get Taco Bell and I am still praying for Chick-fila to come.) You would not believe how nice the Pizza Hut's are here...I mean the somewhat dark and scary-stuck-in-the-80s Pizza Huts that we had back in the States don't even compare. And over the years, we've been able to get lots of American foods in the grocery store that I know and love. Oh, I remember the first time we saw Oh's cereal in the grocery store (my all time fave)...I literally started crying there in the aisle from joy!! Don't get me wrong, I love Salvadorean food, but you know, sometimes I get a craving for some good ol' Betty Crocker brownies.

Anyways, we definitely had a breakthrough yesterday. We found.....(drumroll please).........International Delight Liquid Coffee Creamer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We had heard rumors that you could get it here at a store that's like Sam's or CostCo, so we borrowed a membership card and went to buy a huge 32 ounce bottle of vanilla creamer. Plus, ridiculously huge box of Frosted Mini Wheats (yummmy) and a year's supply of peanut butter (we like to call it the nectar of the gringos). I know that mom is going to worry that we won't even come home now that we can get so much stuff here, but don't worry, we still have to stock up on grits, Jello instant pudding, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, etc. =)

It was kind of a funny day because in the morning we went to the organic/hippy market that they have on Saturdays here just around the block, where we buy organically grown fruits and veggies, crafts, organic coffee, homemade breads and jams, homemade shampoos, etc etc, and then went to the other end of the spectrum in the afternoon to get gigantic portions of overly-processed food products.

Also, yesterday afternoon we went to the birthday bash of a little girl in my class. They have a reputation of throwing the party of the year, so we weren't going to miss out! And they did not disappoint....it was like a make-up theme, and so they gave us all feather boas as we walked in, they you went and they would put make-up on you and glitter all over and they were fixing the girls' hair into fancy up-dos. I mean, the pinata was even a huge high-heel shoe! They had clowns, a DJ, a chocolate fountain where you could dip strawberries, and the most amazing part....they had hired a Chory's hot-dog stand to make all the hot dogs you can eat...these are our favorite street hot-dogs!! They are ridiculously unhealthy...I mean they fry the hot dogs then put them on a bun with double layers of mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, and a Salvadorean slaw. Apparently, to be able to work for them, you have to be able to make about 25 hot dogs per minute because they are incredibly fast. Another interesting thing about birthday parties in El Salvador is that the host actually gives presents to the guests, even if it is just a bag of candy and stickers. I mean, the birthday boy or girl gets presents too, but for example, yesterday the guests got huge bags full of hair gel, body glitter, fake nails, a make-up box, hairbrushes, etc etc etc. Even I got a set of hairbrushes and mirrors!

My friend Cynthia and I in the entrance to the birthday party house.

The giant high-heel pinata

Me and the birthday girl
So that was our exciting day, now guess what I'm going to do? Go drink a little bit of coffee with my creamer.

Butternut Squash

One of my favorite things about this time of year is that it is mango and avacado season. If you don't have your own tree, you can usually steal bucketfuls from a neighbor without even going noticed. And if your neighbors happen to be stingy, there's always trees in the park, although they are usually picked over. It is very common to see people up in the top of these taaall mango trees with a broomstick, knocking dozens of mangoes down to their friends below who have backpacks ready to catch them. That's a scene that i hope to catch on film for you guys. And if all of those trees are picked over, you can buy mangos for as cheap as like 8 for a quarter, and several avacados for a dollar as well.

However, one of the little known facts about El Salvador is that it is also apparently butternut squash season. I know you are all soo jealous! I mean, butternut squash is typically a fall/winter thing, but I guess since we don't have cold weather here, someone arbitrarily decided that it should be butternut squash season. But hey, this is great for us because Marty introduced our tastebuds to an amazing butternut squash/curry/coconut milk soup last year, and now we can make our own for around 50 cents/pound. So, we've been making that soup, butternut squash muffins, and right now we have in the oven our first butternut/apple/cranberry casserole. Thanks to my excellent rationing skills, we still have Craisins from our Christmas stash. I've always been wary of "casseroles", but hey we're going on a limb, at the risk of sounding like something you would take to a Baptist covered dish luncheon on a Sunday afternoon.

So, since we've had so much butternut squash around, Elvis has gotten creative and started drawing faces on our hour-glass shaped friends. I find it harder to later decapitate our new friends, but it is quite entertaining. Check out his latest "rock star" character....

P.S. In the background you can see the beautiful shelves that Elvis designed and built for me for our anniversary this year =)

In other news, we went to a new cafe tonight, called Rock Cafe, started by some guys that have worked with Youth With A Mission. Apparently there's one in Kent, Ohio too. The cool thing is that everything is completely free!! I wonder how long that will last though, when people like our friend Pepon ate 3 cheesecakes in one sitting.... =) It was good to talk to the people that work there about their vision of how to reach out to people...it seems like we have a lot of the same ideas. So hopefully we can work together, maybe do concerts there or something of the sort.

In even more other news, today I got an hour long, full-body massage for $10. Sweet.

Un dia en la playa

One of the great things about El Salvador is that even though it is smaller than the state of Massachusetts, there are over 50 beaches. They are all on the Pacific Coast, but it is amazing the differences you will find at various beaches. For example, some beaches have black sand and you can find some of the best surfing in the world. Then others have "sand colored" sand as we know it, and hardly any waves at all.

Yesterday we went with our friend Ruby to the only beach here in El Salvador that has coral reef. I mean, it's no Roatan (the island we went to for our honeymoon that felt like you were snorkeling through the movie Finding Nemo), but we love it because at low-tide, there are no more waves and the whole beach becomes a gigantic wading pool among the rocks for as far as you can see, and you can see little colored fish. Plus, the sand isn't sand at all, but miniature versions of perfect shells.

This beach is a little fisherman's village, and they have their little houses built on the water's edge, with their little boats tied up in front of their houses, in the water. Just imagine this life....you go out in your boat, fish all day, come back to your house that is so literally on the beach that the water washes up through your "living room" which is just a roof over the sand, which also serves as a restaurant where you can fry up today's catch for anybody walking by who wants to eat.

Playing catch with a coconut

So really the most exhilerating part of the day was on the way home...we got off on a new highway, and I was really impressed by the streetlamps and reflectors on the road because driving on a highway at night in El Salvador is not usually very fun because of poor lighting and people that cross the road in the dark. So I was going on and on about how nice this highway is, and just as we were getting near our exit, we see the cars in front of us make a big U-turn and we're like...what the heck?!?! Then we realized that we had run out of highway. I mean, it just drops off to dirt and rocks, with no signs whatsover warning you that the highway has ended. I mean, not one traffic cone or anything! So, what did we do? Made a U-turn and drove a mile back down the highway, but keep in mind that we are going AGAINST traffic because you can't get into the other lane to go the right way down the road. Oh, El Salvador.

A weird slug-like animal that Elvis found stuck to a rock that had a hard turtle-like shell, but the shell actually started bending in half when he picked it up!

Butter Churnin' in Kindergarten

So, I always said I would never, ever be two things: a teacher, nor a missionary. Well look at me now! I teach at a bilingual Christian school here in San Salvador...kindergarten in the mornings (Reading, writing, english as a second language, math, phonics, Bible) and then I teach 11th grade Psychology in the afternoons. It really is amazing to see how the kids start off at 3 years old, and by the time they are in my class at 6 years old they are reading and writing in English and Spanish (ps- they write in perfect cursive handwriting, something I definitely did not learn until 3rd grade!). But obviously they can't really carry on a conversation with you, more than "May I go to the bathroom please", or "May I borrow a pencil please", etc. So it's really neat to then go to the 11th grade in the afternoons, and hear the kids speaking perfect English. I mean, I'm not crazy about teaching such a wide range of ages, but it is neat to see how they really learn English over the years.

I wanted you to get to see my little ones and my classroom (Elvis and I painted the mural in the back!), so check out this video of them singing and dancing to "Every Move I Make" . Pay special attention to the incredible "butter churn" move at the end of the video. Let me make a small side note about the "butter churn"....I think the technical name is the "Cabbage Patch", but my amazingly "creative" parents coined the term "butter churn" when they debuted this move at my 7th grade birthday party. Needless to say, I was traumatized, and continued to be when they pulled out the butter churn at every birthday since, when the whole family (grandmothers included) did it when I walked across the stage at my high school graduation, and I think I've blocked it out of my mind, but I'm pretty sure at my wedding too. I cringe everytime. So, when my dad's famous shoulder pumpin' move came along (you know which one i'm talking about), I decided just to go with it and to really talk it up because it is definitely better than the butter churn. I thought that maybe the butter churn would be forgotten, but now it's gone and popped up here in El Salvador too.

Ps- I did NOT invent the dance moves to this song in the video. The butter churn curse has returned. It knows no boundaries.

Ruta 3:16

Our church is called Ruta 3:16, and it is a church consisting of all young people (plus our pastor Wally, another gringo, who is young at heart!). Our goal is to reach out to the youth of El Salvador, especially those who don't feel welcome at traditional church because of the way they dress, the music they listen to, etc. We meet in an old bar, and out of the 40 or so of us that meet weekly, we already have 4 worship bands, all different genres. Elvis and I play in one of them. God has really put a passion for music in the hearts of the young people at our church. Our message is that God is good and He loves you, trying to break the lies that many young people here believe that God is mad at them.


So, our pastor Wally has started another church, also Ruta 3:16, but in a little community outside of town. He met several of the current members when he was doing medical clinincs for people that lived in a lava field...literally acres and acres of blackened lava rocks from a volcano that erupted about a century ago. We're talking about no grass, not even dirt, no water, electricity, just black rocks all around you. They have now moved into a nearby community called Nehemias, and Wally helped them start a church. Just looking from the outside, Ruta 3:16 looks completely different in the city and in Nehemias, but really the same heart is still there. The church in Nehemias is about 95% women and children, result of their husbands moving to the states to search for income, divorce, or not being married in the first place. Wally has helped them get into a partnership with a university in the states which is going to market and sell hammocks that the women from Nehemias make to that they can have some income.




Today, Elvis and I went to Nehemias with Wally to help lead worship for them, and Elvis preached. Last time, he was asked to preach about 15 minutes before the service, but this time they gave him a couple of hours heads-up. That's one of his gifts that I admire so much- being able to preach on such short notice! You can tell it just bubbles up from his heart. Now I could prepare for a month, and run out of things to say in 5 minutes! It's neat how God has gifted us in different ways.



















Sunday school at Nehemias



Wally has asked us to come once a month with him to Nehemias to lead worship, pray with the women, and for Elvis to preach each time also, so we'll will keep you up to date on what's happening there!