Monday, March 29th

The word "humbled" cant even begin to describe our experience today.  We spent the entire day in El Barrio de Independencia, which is basically an extremly poor and unpovershired area on the side of a mountain.  The YMCA has a tiny community center there (its actually more like a shack), and they have volunteers who cook food for the locals and help out in other ways as well.  In this area, the poorest people live up on the very top of the mountain (this is different than the US, where wealthier individuals typically have the nice houses on the top of the mountain).  It very difficult to navigate the steps up and down the mountain, especially when carrying food from the market and/or infants and babies, which explains why the people who have a bit more money have houses at the bottom of the mountain.   Also, it seems as if "squatter's rights" applies to most of the area.  Once again, we will give you some bullets of the day:

-we mixed concrete & moved rocks to help build a wall (previously damaged by a rock slide) that will be an expansion for the community center.  The hope is that by expanding they will be able to serve more people.

-we helped women carry items (sack of potatoes, other market items, babies/infants/toddlers) from the bottom of the mountain to their house.  Typically, they lived on the VERY TOP of the mountain!  While they were shocked and astonished we wanted to carry these things for them, they were every so thankful.  Usually, they have to make numerous "pit stops" and rest before they can get all the way up the hill.

-we interacted and had fellowship with the locals adults & children, practicing our Spanish.  Doing this, we learned that even if our Spanish was not quite correct, a smile, a wave and a hug goes a long way!

-during lunch we struck up a fun game of futbol with some of the children.  The "field" we played on was concrete, tons of trash littered every corner, and we had to navigate through a bunch of dog poop and a dead bird.  It puts a lot into perspective when we complain back home if our fields aren't perfectly smooth with green grass.

-Finished the day with a big contrast to where we started.  We went to the local mall, only a few miles away from El Barrio.  Although the stores were a bit different, we felt like we could have been at home in the Triangle.  It was very tough to see all the "well off" people when we had just left an area where the people live in shacks and dont have running water.

We finished the day as usual, with a devotion and some processing of our day.  It is very apparent that our experience today as already had a huge impact on everyone, and we are all very thankful that we can love and serve the people here.  We head back to El Barrio tomorrow (to the delight of all the locals!) to finish up our work project and to love on the people as much as we can.  And since we are all very tired and sore(and havent had a shower in a few days..we are really growing close!)...off to bed!