Hola! My name is Chanel and I'm a freshman. Coming on this mission trip was quite the adventure! I've been on mission trips before, but nothing like this. I've never been out of the country and have taken minimum Spanish. From flying, to being immersed into a Spanish speaking country has been a learning experience. This country is filled with so much beauty not just the landscape, but the people of El Salvador also. The thing i was most excited about was meeting the families for whom we would be serving. At the house that I'm working at we're building a house for Danielle and her grandmother. The little girl lives with her father right now and hasn't been around a lot. 

Michelle and Tiana who have been around the house :)

Our days have been pretty filled. In the mornings we start off with morning prayer, breakfast, and heading out to the neighborhood. It only takes about ten minutes to get there. We then work all morning and  head back for lunch and a little bit of down time. Then in the afternoon we head back out for about 3 more hours to finish up our work. When we get back to the Unbound compound we have some rec. time and usually play volleyball before dinner. After dinner we have meetings, debrief time to talk/reflect about our day, and then mass and night prayer. So It's been a really good past few days and I know we all feel very blessed to have this opporitunity to serve here and learn about this country. 

This is a picture of all of us on the truck heading back to the compound. With all the kids heading home from school! :)

Adios y Buenos Noches!

~Chanel Woiderski

¡Las fotos!

¡Hola! My name is Kathryn and I'm a sophomore studying theology, Spanish and mass communications at BC. Being in El Sal is still surreal for me, and it's truly humbling to be here and serve Christ in the people here. They live in homes with one or two rooms, dirt floors and tin roofs and yet they are some of the most joyful people I've met. One local woman came to the house we are building and was just brimming with joy and excitement at our being there. She's not even a part of the Unbound program, but said she prayed for God's blessings on us daily. "Giving is receiving," she said. How right she was. Please continue to keep all of us in your prayers, and enjoy these photos from today!

Peter, Tara and Becca working on a window out in the street.

Me with my 5-year-old "novio," Ezekiel. It was such a wonderful experience being able to talk to and play with him all day in Spanish, and he taught me a lot. At one point he even half-jokingly asked me to be his girlfriend. He's such a sweetie.

 Becca, Megan and Marty. They are inside the area where we're building the house.

Tara and Ezekiel. We all had fun playing with this cutie.

"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

I Forgot a Title...

Today was Chanel's 21st birthday! We thought it was fitting to celebrate with 2 cakes and a nice El Salvadorean brewski.

Some girls were dehydrated so they decided Peter's hair was a worthy filtration system. Yumm...

 "Look what I can do!"

 Many hands make light work... but really though it was heavy.

Unripe Mangos are Sour

Dia numero dos

Today was an immensely productive day in El Salvador. I mean, the sun was out (I got sun burnt, and so did Natalie) and we planted trees and re-painted the new playground. This morning started well with mass at around 8AM, which was a challenge for some people, we were and are, pretty tired. I tend to look at the exhaustion associated with this trip in a positive light, we are just starting the Lenten season and I believe that the suffering that comes with mission work and service helps to mold us into better Christian models. I digress. This morning after mass we gathered again to discuss the days itinerary. We were to be split up into three groups and were to be assigned three separate projects. The first was planting lime trees, the second was painting the new playground and the third was working on developing flower displays near the recreational area near the entrance to the compound. (I accidentally omitted the third task that some of us had been assigned). I had been assigned, rather I volunteered, to work planting the lime trees. The majority of the men on the trip also opted to plant trees however some decided to help paint parts of the playground, which was also a valiant cause. As we began digging the holes for the trees, which were to be 2ft deep and 1 and 1 half foot wide, we discovered that the soil was rather easy to dig up however, when we approached deeper depths of earth we soon found out that the soil turned to clay, which slowed the digging process. Whats funny is the first reading for today's liturgy mentioned the creation of man from clay, I understand there is very little spiritual correlation between the clay we dug up and the creation of man, but I just thought it was a happy coincidence. We planted 12 lime trees today and after a hard days work, shifted our efforts to aiding the other group in their artistic endeavors. By the time we had finished they had almost completed their task so those of us who were already down moved to cleaning up some of the garbage that had been tossed by the side of the road just outside the compound walls. We worked for about 45 minutes that proceeded to call it a day. Safe to say, we had an excellent first day working in El Salvador. The members of Unbound proved to be amazing hosts yet again, and as we continue to become acquainted with them, we are discovering a plethora of humorous jokes that will continue to be "inside jokes", so sadly, I can't share them here.

After we halted our work, we all decided that the best decision would be to partake in a friendly, yet competitive, match of volleyball. A volleyball net had been set up earlier after our lunch and many more of the mission workers wanted to play the second go round after work and before dinner. Safe to say, my team dominated, but others will disagree. Where we lacked organization and say, a real team, we made up for in spirit and mental prowess. We scored entirely different types of "points" and we gained victory on a unique scale. We had fun. Dinner followed our game of volleyball and as we proceeded to fill our bellies with warm, scrumptious lasagna, darkness enveloped us and we encountered our first thunder storm. I have to say, thunder storms make the most magnificent backgrounds to warm dinners and friendly conversation. I enjoy watched God unleash his almighty power via millions of volts of pure electricity. Its pretty neat. El Salvador really is a gorgeous country and I am truly blessed to have the opportunity to call it my home for these next few days. As dinner ended most of us went off to shower and get cleaned up before the movie. We had decided the previous night that we would all watch a film entitled, "Innocent Voices". Its a film about the El Salvadorean revolution and how one small boy endured hardship and intense suffering. His tale is told through his eyes, and while there are some humorous parts in the movie the vast majority of the movie is focused on the conflict between the Army and the Rebels. The movie certainly made an impact and provided all of us with a small window of insight into some of the experiences shared by the Salvadorean peoples. I really enjoyed it.

As I wrap up this short note describing some of our share experiences, I would like to point out that we are all so fortunate to live lives in the United States. We are also so very blessed to have the ability to aid those who require greater aid then ourselves. I hope that this experience gives me a different set of eyes; eyes that allow me to appreciate the simpler things such as a warm bed, decent clothes and a full belly. So many people forgo simple commodities on a daily basis, most of them things that we take for granted. I just hope that we can make an impact and continue to do so on a daily, even after we leave. Just in these first few days, God has taught each and every one of us a lesson. My lesson has been in patience and gratitude. I cannot speak for the others, but I see it in their eyes and in their words; they have been affected as well. I cannot wait till tomorrow to help out in the outlying community. I look forward to what God has in store for this mission trip and those on it. God bless those who support us everyday. God bless El Salvador.

-Peter Reimer (assisted by Natalie Roberts)

El Sal Day Numero Uno

      At 2:45 this morning, all 35 of us met in the abbey and loaded up the bus to head to MCI airport. Most of us were operating on an hour or less of sleep. One bus ride, two planes, and a van trip later, (during the majority of which I was making up for lost sleep) we arrived at the Santa Ana office for Unbound in El Salvador. We spent our afternoon basking in the 80 degree weather, enjoying the gorgeous tropical scenery and mountainous landscape, and playing on the center's playground which featured recycled tires made into swings. We met Yassenia, Henry, Jorge, and Mama who work full time at the center here. Additionally, two dogs named Tacho and Oso run wild around the Center's enclosure and are always looking to lick faces and get head pats.
     Dinner was some chicken, soup, and salad made by Mama and her kitchen help. I sat with Jorge at dinner and he gave some background to Anna Mol, Megan, Meredith, and me. Unbound is an international group that matches up sponsors with under-priveleged children and families. The organization was founded by Roberto Hentzen, a native of Kansas, and is headquartered in Kansas City. Jorge serves as a translator for the organization, enabling sponsors and children to keep in touch and understand the letters they receive from one another. The organization goes through over 100,000 letters a year.
    After dinner, Henry gathered our group and gave us some ground rules and info about the country and people. Tomorrow is the day of the El Salvador presidential election. For this reason we are planning on staying and working at the center tomorrow rather than going out into the communities, because Americans moving into a poor community to do work on election day runs the risk of being perceived as a political move. It is against the law in El Salvador to buy alcohol in a store on the day before, day of, and the day following a presidential election. Fortunately, our hosts purchased some beers ahead of time and made them available to us.
    Henry told us about the poverty of the people in the communities we will be visiting. 75% of the families consist of single mothers and children. If a woman can get a job in a textile factory, she will earn $200 a month for working 6 days a week. High taxes (including a 13% sales tax on all goods), rent for a home (about $50 a month), bus fare to get to work ($12 a month), and lunch money ($35 a month) cuts off about half of this. Most of the people do not pay for running water, and end up purchasing water in barrels from trucks. This ends up costing about $30 a month.
     We are all eager to get to work tomorrow morning after Mass and breakfast. We're excited to see what God has in store, and how we will learn from and contribute to these people on this adventure here in Tropical Paradise. But now, I need to get some sleep. Good night!

- Peter Harrison
    

About the Blog

Hello, all!

My name is Becca Zander and I am a senior at Benedictine College. This weekend, a group of 34 students and one priest from Benedictine have an amazing opportunity to travel to El Salvador to spend a week building houses. We thought it would be a great idea to create a blog so we could share our experiences, pictures, and stories with our friends and family back home. We will be updating it as much as possible throughout the week, so check back in every few days starting Saturday when we arrive in El Salvador.  Feel free to share the blog and leave comments on the pictures and entries.

Our trip is run through an organization called Unbound. They currently provide assistance to over 20 different countries and serve around 300,000 children, youth, and elderly. If you would like to know more, you can visit their website at www.unbound.org.

Please pray for our trip, safe travels, those that we will be serving, the Unbound staff, all of our benefactors, and for good health. Thank you and God Bless!

Through Him,
Becca