A Day of Three Outreaches

Tuesday, Day Three


The sky had just lightened to a pale blue behind the palm trees when a white bus pulled up in front of our dorms. The time was 6:30 AM, and Lana and I had signed up to accompany the daycare bus on its rounds this morning to pick up kids from the surrounding communities. Thus I found myself riding up and down through a series of dusty village streets in the early morning, watching out the window as little niños y niñas ran out to the bus from behind their backyard fences. More and more of them filed in each time we stopped, until the bus was fairly filled with youngsters.

A strong influence of Catholicism
is evident in culture.

My ridiculously limited Spanish vocabulary hindered conversing much with them, but at least we could play together! Using whatever supplies I found in my bag--namely a piece of paper and a couple of Band-Aids--we managed to make a puppet and play "clinic" until ending up talking on "telefonos" with our hands. (Imitating a ringtone and saying "hola" and "adios" fortunately for me doesn't require much knowledge of the language.) Once at the daycare, I stayed long enough to style a few hairdos for the niños, and then it was time for me to head off to morning Sala. Speaking of which, here's how a typical day for a volunteer here goes:

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7:00AM--breakfast

8:00AM--Sala (room where chapel service is held), involving worship and a message in both English and Spanish

9:00AM--Stay in the Sala for announcements and the reading of work assignments. If you haven't already been assigned for a job, raise your hand as soon as you hear one you want to do! There's lots of areas to work in, including sorting or picking macadamias, helping in the kitchen, working in the warehouse, nursery or kitchen, gardening, construction, cleaning, doing odd jobs, going on a garbage run...the list goes on! If you're like me and enjoy a chance to change the routine and try something new, you may try to volunteer for several different jobs over the course of the week.

Working in the Print Shop

11:00AM Break! Snag a snack from the Tiendita (tuck stand) or browse in the gift shop.

11:20--Back to work...

1:00--Lunch! Hope there's refried beans...

1:15-2:00--Free time

2:00--5:00 Report for duty again; often you can try a different job in the afternoon.

5:00--Dinner


6:00--Scheduled evening events, free time, visiting in the staff lounge.

Variations in this routine may include signing up for special outings (like our bus trip), Child Evangelism, and evening outreaches.

This time for morning work I ended up in the print shop, caught amidst a happy, bantering group of people working like whirlwinds to assemble newsletters, stuff them into envelopes and seal them up for mailing. Later in the afternoon I went out on Child Evangelism, which involves trucking out to a nearby village to help with crowd control for a Sunday School class, and then handing out milk and peanut butter to the kids. Lana, Elisia and I all ended up going to villages in different directions, me being in a van with one English stranger who spoke no Spanish and one Spanish stranger who spoke no English. Talk about adventure.

Finally in the evening the whole YWAM team piled into vans and drove into the night towards the little camp we went to on Friday last year. Once there, we walked door-to-door giving blankets, cleaning supplies and a month's worth of food staples to every family. We then held a glow-in-the-dark jump rope tournament with the kids by the light of the many glow sticks someone had given them! At last everyone gathered around to hear a short message based on Matthew 11:28-29; then we were able to pray for people afterwards.

A look inside one of the (vacant) row houses at the ranch.
(I'm standing near the door of this family-sized home as I snap this picture of the opposite wall.)