Monkeys, patience, and gardening.

Life recently has been very busy, but there have been lots of happy moments in the midst of the chaos. Days have been full from the time I wake up till the time I go to sleep. Last week was our last week before regular school started, and that meant that we were still all functioning as teachers in addition to our other responsibilities.

Every day I would wake up, have worship, and then head to the garden to work. We had the little boys helping us in the garden nearly every day and it was their job to collect cut grass from all over campus and bring it to the garden to use as mulch and ground cover.  One day we decided to have some of them weed with me and the others work on the grass with Hope. At first, the little boys were so excited and proud of their important job of pulling weeds. When I told them it was time for a break if they wanted they said, “no teacher! We are working for the food! We are going to keep working!” and they valiantly kept on weeding with much gusto. However, I quickly found out that it is rather hard to keep even the most valiant little boys on task for much longer than 20 minutes. I am learning more and more each day about how to motivate kids to work, but it is certainly a growing experience for me and a bit of a trial of patience at times.

I taught the littlest kids’ Bible class in the afternoons for two weeks while we were waiting for normal school to begin and that was also a trial of patience. It’s amazing how difficult it is to quiet down 14 children under the age of 10 and somehow get them to focus on coloring, singing, or listening to a story. We even struggled to have them play Bible charades without the majority of them ending up in the tops of trees by the end because climbing was more interesting than practicing their acting skills. One of the days they were the most behaved, however, was when my dad, who was visiting, joined the class to play guitar for us. Something about his height and the exciting presence of a visitor helped them behave a little bit better.

Elizabeth, who was featured in my last blog, left for school last week. The day before she left, she came over and we talked about her being afraid to go to school and not wanting to leave Familia Feliz. That night, I wrote her a card and the next morning gave it to her along with a dress for her to wear at school. When I went to give it to her and say goodbye, she gave me one of her cute stuffed animals as a gift which was very sweet. Then we prayed and she left. I have no way to hear from her, but I’ve been praying that she is doing well and that school has not turned out to be as scary as she was afraid it would be.

On Wednesday morning, my family arrived. It was so wonderful to finally see them! We went all around town to get them the things they needed to be set up for staying here such as sheets and a fan (a thing that is extremely essential since we do not have AC). We then rode around in the Familia Feliz truck for a while as our chauffeur, Hermano Juan, picked up lots of groceries for Familia Feliz. Shopping day looks a little different when you’re shopping for 50-70 people every week. The truck bed is full of giant bags of pasta, lots of veggies, and boxes of margarine.

Thursday was my day off, and my family and I headed off on a day tour to the Pampas region where there are lots of wildlife. It was a two hour drive to the boat portion of the tour. We soon found out that a large part of that two hours was spent suddenly stopping on the side of the highway when a guide spotted a brown speck in the distance that happened to be a sloth or a monkey. We were amazed by the guides’ abilities to see wildlife as we were flying past it on the road. We saw a sloth, cayman (which are kinda like alligators and crocodiles), howler monkeys, storks, a capybara, and other cool wildlife just as we were driving down the highway.

When we arrived at the boat part of our tour, we all climbed into a small, skinny, wooden boat with an outboard motor and headed down a branch of the Amazon. It was a beautiful day and, other than the strong sun that made us look like tomatoes by the end of the day, it was perfect weather for the tour.

As we went along, our guide would make these different whistles and animal calls and at first we just thought he was doing it for fun. However, soon we found out that the animals would answer his calls from the jungle along the river, and he would guide our boat alongside the tree where the animal was. At many of these stops, we saw the cutest little monkeys popping their heads curiously out of the bushes. They were looking for food of course, but refused to come on the boat since we hadn’t brought them bananas. However, I got hungry partway through the tour and started eating a pizza pastry we had brought with us from town. When we stopped at the tree, all the monkeys climbed on board and started trying to eat my food. They climbed all over us with their gentle, soft, tiny feet. They were so nimble and fun to watch. We asked the guide for permission and then let a few of the monkeys have some crumbs of crust. They were so excited, and I had about 10 monkeys climbing all over my lap at one point. My initial reaction when feeding the monkeys was to toss the food to them, because I did not want them to accidentally bite my fingers like a cat or dog might when you give them food from your hand. But when I put a crumb in my fingers, the monkey just politely picked it out of my fingers with his hand and then put it in his mouth. One monkey even climbed onto my mom’s phone and looked straight into the camera for a monkey selfie. It is truly an iconic picture.

Then one naughty monkey reached into the bag that my dad was holding to guard my pizza, stole the entire pizza pastry, and ran away to the tree before we could catch him. I was a little bit hungrier than I would have liked to be for the rest of the tour, but I had a good excuse since a monkey had stolen my food.

We also saw lots of birds and some bigger monkeys, and then came to an open area of the river. There was a long rope and raft that vehicles would drive onto and the people would pull themselves and the vehicle across the river by pulling on the rope. However, soon our guide directed our attention away from that to the pink dolphins that were swimming all around. My mom and I hopped into the water, but the dolphins did not come very close to us because they were a bit afraid of us. I have to admit that I was a little bit afraid of the water since it was so dark and there were Cayman and piranhas in it somewhere. But it was worth it when I felt a dolphin swim right behind me and saw one about 5 feet in front of me in the water. All in all, it was an incredible tour. I’ve always wanted to see monkeys up close and it was really a dream come true.

I have recently started teaching Sabbath school for the 10-12 year olds. I really enjoy it, although I miss going to my Sabbath school with the other student missionaries. It is such good practice for me to have to teach in Spanish. This last week, we were studying the story of Joseph and I had the kids make a portion of his story out of things they found outside, such as sticks or rocks. The little boys’ group used a snail they had found to be one of the animals that Joseph’s brothers were taking care of before they sold Joseph as a slave. One of the girls’ groups did an amazing job and made the palace that Joseph lived in. It was fun to have my family there to help with Sabbath school as well. When my family came, they also brought many generous gifts from people in The States such as activities for the kids, coloring pens, and Bible study tools. Many of those are going to be very helpful for my Sabbath school teaching.

My garden has finally been taking off again. We have done tons of weeding, tons of mulching, and tons of starts in trays before transplanting them to the garden. Right now we have winged beans, sweet potatoes, okra, pumpkins, jack bean, peppers, lots of cucumbers, spinach, basil, corn, melons, and cassava growing in the garden. We have more that is going to be transplanted soon and more seeds that we are going to direct seed soon. There are also Moringa and Jackfruit trees that need to be transplanted to their permanent locations very soon.

It was nice to have my dad’s and mom’s help in the garden. My mom even accompanied me one night while I went to kill the ants that were eating my okra plants. I made the mistake of planting spineless okra. It’s certainly nicer to not get poked, but that also means that the ants do not get poked and hence, really enjoy eating the plants. Thankfully for the larger critters, a fence is finally going up to protect the garden from getting eaten. We are even looking into potentially getting some sort of greenhouse to try to protect from the rain during rainy season so that we can grow things like tomatoes without the rain drowning them.

Now that regular school has begun, I have the big girls working in the morning and the little girls in the afternoon. The first afternoon we had the little girls working, I decided to have go looking for and harvesting bananas and papayas with them. We traipsed all over the edge of campus and through thick rainforest at times. They loved it — it was like a treasure hunt. One purple banana tree was too tall for us to reach, so it was helpful to have my dad there to get it down for us. Then we came to a papaya tree that we have allowed to grow way out of our reach. The little girls said they could try to climb it, but that I would need to give them a boost. So I stood on a stool at the bottom of the tree and they used my hands as steps until I couldn’t reach them anymore. After many tries, Dianara and Joselyn got down all the ripe papayas from the tree. We had a lot of fun that day, and they even taught me how to make whistling sounds on a flower that you can find in the jungle.

It has been another trail of patience learning how to motivate the little girls to do anything that’s more boring than looking for fruit. They have even more trouble focusing than the little boys and would much rather ride around in the wheel barrow and eat fruit than weed or collect grass. But I am learning little by little how to motivate them to learn good work ethic and do their best even if it isn’t the most enjoyable job. Prayers for me and those little girls would be appreciated as they will be assigned to me every day in the afternoons for an entire month to help in the garden.

Recently, I have been giving lots of haircuts to the girls. It all began when Hope wanted me to cut her hair. I had only cut my own and a little bit of my sister’s before. However, somehow she was still fine with me cutting hers. I did, and when the other girls saw it, Luz wanted me to cut her hair and so did Edith. It has been so fun getting to practice my hair cutting skills and we have a lot of fun during the process.

I have also been enjoying house parenting in the evenings. Although, it is busy to have work in the garden all day, eat supper, and then immediately go to work at the Flores house till bedtime.

It was such a blessing to have my family here to help do things that I have not had time for. Sierra, my sister, made curtains for my room since I did not have anything to cover my window and anyone could come watch me sleep if they wanted to. My dad worked on rat proofing my house better and installing a kitty door for our cats. And my mom bleached and mopped our whole house which was a welcome relief after having cat poop, cat throw up, and half eaten rats and mice on the floor. I had come to feel that my bed was the only remotely clean place because it was zipped up in a mosquito tent. But things feel a bit more livable after my family’s visit. I am so grateful that they were able to visit and am so blessed to be able to call them my family.

I want to close this blog with a little story about Tici. She is in the Flores house and has been featured in my past blog about her birthday sunflower gift. This story happened one evening when I was watching the Flores house. Tici is quite a thoughtful little girl and loves to write cards for the teachers and kids, and she had been making lots of them recently. She asked me if she could run over to deliver a card to her brothers in their house, so I said she could. When she came back, it was time for everyone to go to bed, but she asked if she could run to the school and deliver a card to the director. Knowing that we needed to get them in bed soon, and that we could not make it a normal thing to allow lots of card-delivering after dark when it was bedtime, I said that she could do it in the morning instead. She was understandably disappointed, and sat in the kitchen area for a long time and then went to her bed. I could tell that she was a bit bothered at me for saying no, and was not sure if she would want me to pray with her like usual before bed. Kelsey went and talked to her and prayed with her, and as I was about to leave the house for the night, I decided to go offer to pray with her just in case she wanted to. I walked into her room and knelt down beside her bed and asked her if I could pray with her. She did not respond. Finally, I gave up and told her I loved her and left. But she did not return the sentiment like she usually does and seemed to doubt that it could still be true that I loved her when I wouldn’t let her go deliver a card across campus even though it was time to sleep.

As I left, I was thinking about how she has no idea how much I love her. She has no idea that I would not still be there helping in her house if I didn’t love the girls there. She has no idea that I came to Familia Feliz because I already loved the kids here. And she has no idea that I had a good reason and thought process for why I told her she needed to deliver the card in the morning instead of that night. And it made me think of how often I act that way with God. When He says no to something that I really really want, it’s easy to question if he loves me. Even if evidence of His care for me is so abundant in other parts of life, it’s easy to forget that and get mad at Him because He won’t give me what I want. However if I would only learn to trust His judgment, accept that His “no” has good reasons behind it, and look at the abundant evidence of His love for me, I would be so much happier and have so much more peace. We have absolutely no idea of the magnitude of God’s love and sacrifice for us. If we only understood His love and sacrifice, we would be so overwhelmed with His care for us that even His “no’s” would not discourage us because we could trust that He has our best interest at heart.

The very next night, I prayed with Tici and all the other girls like I always do. After I finished praying with all of the girls, Tici called me back over and said, “Teacher, I love you soo much.” And I said, “I love you too Tici.” and gave her a big hug.

I am glad that this story has a happy resolution, but it made me think a lot about God’s love for us. Oh what joy it would bring to our life if we remembered every day how much God loves us and how much He sacrificed for us! It would truly transform the world if everyone was able to understand how much God values them. It is beautiful as I am starting to understand more of God’s love and patience as I am working with kids whether it’s with hyper little boys, distractible little girls, or with a tender-hearted girl who loves giving cards to people. I pray that you will be able to comprehend a little more of just how much God loves you this week, even in the times when it’s hard to understand His reasons for saying “yes” or “no” to us.