Semillas de Amor: Christmas in October

By Ben Haynes

An eventful week filled with pleasant surprises. Tuesday Semillas de Amor received another intern Colby Thomas, and I couldn't be more pleased. He seems like an awesome kid who will contribute a ton with an infectious smile. The highlight at the foundation this week was Wednesday. The Banko Almiento donated a bunch of clothes to the foundation and the greatest sort of chaos ensued. There were more people at the foundation than I have ever seen. Many of the mothers came out in support, and were incredible grateful to receive some much needed clothing for their children. It was Christmas in October.

Columbia: Week 5

By Ben Haynes

Just another wonderful week in Colombia. This week I am going to highlight Solmaira. She is a girl who has been coming to the foundation since the beginning. She is 18 years old and a very special case indeed. She loves the foundation and is incredibly dedicated. She has been a huge help so far. She shows up everyday and helps collect plates and cups for all of the kids. She stays and cleans once everyone has gone home for the day. Also she participates in all of the lessons, and encourages others to do the same. I am incredibly blessed to have met her. She makes the foundation a better place to be every day. In the photo she is the one rocking the sunglasses.

Semilla de Amor: Official soccer & dance team

By Stacey Bell

August 1

We have had an AMAZING week!! The kids were so excited for the big event on Wednesday. Semillas De Amor now has an official soccer and dance team! I can’t believe how hard they have worked, cooperated, and committed to being a part of something. We have been practicing for several weeks now. The boys have improved so much! They went from not knowing how to practice shooting on the goal together to doing warm ups, drills, running, passing games and more. They were reminded of their goal each day at practice, to be ready to play in a game. And they were! They worked together and supported each other. The other interns helped the girls learn how to stay on beat, do gymnastics, and work together.

The day of the event was a lot of fun for everyone. We met at 8 in the morning to get rides to the school we were playing against, and all the kids were early!! There were about 6 mothers of the kids that came to help, they were awesome! It was great to get to know them. We got to the school and handed out their yellow dance outfits and blue soccer jerseys, it was like Christmas. All the kids looked so good. We played the game, and there were so many kids there to watch. The other team scored first, we scored next. At halftime the girls performed their dance and it was adorable. We had music and everything. During the rest of the game the girls cheered on the sideline. The other team scored again, we scored again and by the end of the game it was tied. So we had a penalty kick shoot out. 4 players from each team shot on goal. Each team had only made one goal and it was down to our last shooter and.. We made it and won!! A 1st place trophy was given to our team, and a 2nd place given to the other team. We had a celebration afterwards with lunch, drinks, and treats. I can’t begin to explain how fun it was to help these kids work hard, commit, and follow through. Specifically the boys, I am so proud of them!!! They had so much fun playing as a team. Semillas De Amor!!

Columbia: Food Bank

By Bethany Weiler.

July 21

Uris, the director of the Foundation, really uses her resources when it comes to cooking food for the children. Once a week, she travels to Cartagena where the Banco de Alimentos, or Food Bank, is located in order to buy food in bulk at a decent price. The priest who owns the food bank, Father Pardon, has asked us to volunteer twice a week there before we go and feed the children lunch. So we go and do whatever they ask us to do. It is our hope that if we do the work now, we will be able to form a better relationship with the food bank so that they will remember the Foundation and perhaps be able to give back in some future way. We may not be able to experience the effects of it now, but I feel that we are doing some foundational work that will benefit not only the Center, but future interns as well.

Columbia: Lessons in health

By Stacie Bell

July 18
Last Tuesday we had an awesome FAMA lesson and activity with the kids. At the beginning of the lesson we talked about why it is important to stay healthy by being physically active. For the past few weeks we have had soccer and dance practice, so we used that as a good example of staying fit. We talked about how the heart works, how it pumps oxygen to your muscles, and we taught the kids how to take their heart rate. We had them take their resting heart rate, and we wrote it on a poster by their names. Then we set up an obstacle course for them and took their heart rate after they had run through the course a couple times. It was great! They understood the increased heart rate after they ran. Here we are writing down their heart rates.

Columbia: Meet Yoymer

By Stephanie Stewart

July 18
This is Yoymer. He's 4 years old and absolutely adorable. He has quite the attitude, but overall is a good kid. The other day we were having the kids pick up trash around their neighborhood. Yoymer was so cute and would always yell my name and wave me over to where him and his sister were picking up trash. I loved seeing how excited he was to participate in this activity, and how proud he was of himself. 

Colombia: May 28 update from Brock

By Brock

May 28 

I would say that it was a successful week. We are now finding out more of what our roles are personally and figuring out how we can help them. So we started by telling the children to bring their homework. About 10 children were there when we did homework the first time and then we helped them another day as well. They need it. 

This week will be very productive at the foundation with the kids. We are going to teach them using the fama method one day and help them with homework, teach them english and play soccer with them.  We have painted everyroom but the center room accross from the kitchen, and we installed a toilet. We are all doing good health wise. Financial is another story. We have been paying a lot for mototaxis and buses. Oh and we also started profiling the children this week. its been good. well. that is it for now. here are some pictures.  Have a good week!

Columbia: Bethany, week 3

By Bethany Weiler

July 15

This past week was difficult because some of the older children were not behaving themselves appropriately. However, the younger children were very helpful and most of them listened and followed directions well. After lunch one day, we decided to have a trash pick-up activity that we have been planning for a while now but haven’t been able to carry out. It was fun to see the kids really get into the activity and they began some healthy competition to see who could pick up the most trash. We gave them a great deal of encouragement and found that they were eager to get attention from us. The more we noticed and complimented them, the better they behaved and the more trash they picked up. It was a reminder to me that these children not only need a center and school supplies, but they need positive love and attention as well. Whether we are looking for the good in them or the bad, we will find it. Abraham Lincoln said as much. I have found time and again that children (and people in general) live up to the expectations of others. If I treat these children like they are poor and ignorant, that is likely what they will become. But if I look for the good in them and help them to see it in themselves, they will live up to that higher expectation.

Columbia: Week 2 post from McCall

By McCall Plummer

July 18
This past week we sat down with the kids and facilitated a discussion on the effects of smoking.  It was well received and most of the children participated, but I was particularly impressed with the comments that Jose made.  He was the first to suggest that smoking heavily can lead to serious health problems including cancer. Also, he along with many others told us about the people in their life that struggle with this addiction.  It was exciting to see a kid like Jose engaged in the conversation.  It makes it all worth it! 

Colombia: May 26 update from interns

By: Armando Burrola
May 26

This week we were able to get the kids to bring their homework and we helped them for about an hour on a couple of days. It was really successful and the kids got a lot of help on their English and math homework. We also played soccer with the kids twice and they were really excited about it. We were able to do construction for a couple of days and we did some more painting and helped cookie prepare mix to cement the wall. This was a good week :)

From Lindsay:
I feel like we had our best week so far. After lunches this week we were able to meet with the children and play soccer a couple of times. After that we were able to help them with their homework. The first day we only had a few children come prepared with homework, but after that first day we've had more and more children come really excited for us to help them. We have also been working on profiles for the kids we have around 30 kids so far but we have A LOT more to do. We hope to have them finished by the end of this week. 

Colombia: May 15 update from Armando

By: Armando

May 15 

This last week was pretty good. Except for the fact that we all got pretty sick. We continued to paint the walls in the kitchen and on to the bathroom and we retouched some areas that needed it. We got all the tile in a room and got the doors installed. Some more cement was brought in and we helped mix it while they were putting some on the walls. We're getting along  great with the kids and getting a hang of things.  The only bummer was the intense headache I got Saturday and Sunday and then Lindsay got it bad too. But we're all doing lots better.

Colombia: May 5 update from interns

By: Lindsay Brown

May 5
So it was our first week here in Turbaco. The people we have met in this short amount of time are already so loving and giving to us and each other. This week Armando and I did some painting at the center. We worked mainly in the kitchen area. This week we plan on finishing the painting in the kitchen, and doing some touching up. We just received the tile for the center, so we hope to start on that this week too. We will also start working with the kids after lunch with their homework. Its only been a week, but I'm very excited to get everything going.

Progress on painting in the kitchen

From Armando:
One week later, I'm loving it already. We honestly feel like we're already part of the family. Uris an Oswaldo  are some of the nicest, most humble and hardworking people I've ever met. And the kids are so cute and lovable.  The first couple of days was mostly getting settled in and figuring things out. Our first day in the center was spent painting part of the kitchen walls and helping to serve food while getting to know some of the kids. They are awesome and energetic  although a bit rowdy at times. We had a day where it rained alot and uris told us it wouldn't be safe to go that day. And another one of the days was a holiday so there wasn't any school.  Thursday we went back to the center and helped serve food. We also helped deliver school supplies and the kids were really excited.  Tomorrow we will go to the food bank and prepare for the week!

Work day in Colombia

Our project director, Chris Jensen gives the following report:

June 13
Today was awesome! I am so excited for how close we are to finishing the center! Today was a tough day becuase we had lots of little short jobs for people to do, but it was great. Today we mixed cement by hand (not easy, but my favorite), we painted walls, help lay tile and put up cement plaster on the walls. Some of the participants got to play with the kids during lunchtime and they had a blast. As always we had the best home cooked rice, chicken and sausage a la Uris. It was an overall great day!   

Colombia: Week 1

June 30
By McCall Plummer

Our first week in Colombia has been amazing.  We have had many experiences that we will never forget after only being here one week.  On Wednesday, we taught a lesson using the FAMA technique on trash.  Our goal was to raise awareness that throwing your garbage in the street effects the environment and health of individuals in the community.  It was well received for the most part, but I noticed that Dayer really came to understand the meaning of our lesson.   He had some great insights that really added to the process.  He mentioned that throwing garbage everywhere creates bad air quality, and that it ruins the beauty of the outdoors.  It was exciting to see him reach these ideas and take something away from our discussion.  Hopefully, he will be as receptive in the weeks to come.

 

Recent update on the latest Colombian Expedition!

The Colombia expedition could not have gone better! It was amazing! Everyone worked so hard and under tough conditions. The Heyland family dug a 6 and half foot hole for the septic tank, Natalie and the other girls all helped mix cement, put up cinder block walls, the McGhies were amazing! Everyone did great, no real injuries, everyone was safe and had a great time with the people and this beautiful country. The island excursion was fun and very well needed, we saw dolphins (the girls got to swim with them), we all played in the warm crystal clear water, and went snorkeling and some went kayaking (for free!). 

Here are photos of everyone working on the building at Semillas de Amor:

We went to Barranquilla with the Alpes ward to see the land where the temple is going to be built and to have a devotional.  The interns are getting to Peru in the next few days and things are going well with getting them to the right places. This had been a exciting, difficult, and adventurous 5 weeks!

Thanks to all the families and individuals who made this expedition such a success!