"Oh yeah!"

Día numero tres

Hello all!  My name is Jared Baxter.  I am a senior at BC majoring in Biology and Spanish and minoring in Chemistry.  I am graduating in May with a few others that are on this trip.  This is my second year going on the El Salvador mission trip.  After my experience last year with the trip, there was no way I could not return.  It truly is an experience that cannot be fully explained if you do not physically experience it. 

Today was our first day working on our perspective projects in the community.  Three of the groups are building houses and the fourth group is building a latrine.  The houses are for families of sponsored children while the latrine will be used for producing compost in the community. 

Today, the group I am in got all four walls up, the door frame built, and the roof beams installed as well.  It is a very humbling experience.  One of the first comments I heard from my group today was "It should NOT be this hard to hammer in a nail".  It truly is much harder to hammer in these nails into this wood.  I do not know if it is a combination of multiple things or if the change in latitude.  I'm leaning more towards the combination of multiple factors like the nails and wood.  Either way, the nails bend very easily and the wood tends to split as well.  This really entertains the Unbound worker that is helping us with the house, the family whom which we are building the house for, and the other friends that tend to hang around the house.  They started collecting some of the really messed up nails and they would show each other when someone new came to the site and they would bust out in laughter.  This was all meant in good humor, the people are truly the most welcoming and nice people that I think I have ever met.  The good thing is that smiles and laughter are universal; UNBOUNDed by language barriers. 

The sponsored child at my house is named Daniella and she lives with her father and her grandmother.  She is 6 years old and had a lot of fun drawing on the framework of the house.  At one point, she used a red colored pencil and drew a self-portrait.  The picture included hair and so I told her that her picture, with red hair, looked like Emily, a red head in our group.  Daniella looked over to Emily and laughed in agreement. 

As the day went on, more and more people showed up to help.  It was very touching that people who would not even be directly benefiting from the house were so eager to help.  It seemed as if they were happy that the work was being done, period, regardless of who was receiving it.  One man in particular, Felix, had a lot of fun fixing our mistakes.  Every time he would finish fixing one of our bent nails, he would exclaim "Oh yeah!" in English.  Our team and the rest of the local people would all share a laugh after that.  It sort of became a running joke throughout the afternoon. 

The day seemed too short... I wanted to get more work done, however we are limited by the hours of day light to ensure safety of our team. 


Looking forward for a good night's sleep and another great day of work. 

Que Dios te bendiga,
Jared