Today was a bit more relaxing of a day as we wind down our trip! A lot of our group opted to go on a longer hike this morning, they left around 5:45am and didn’t get back to the convent until nearly 8:30am. I decided to stay back and so I was the only one of our group that went to Mass this morning. Fr. Mark joked that he lost his group but for my sake still gave the homily in English for me! The Gospel today talks about making sure that your yes means yes and your no means no. Fr. Mark talked about how in our society so many people have a fear of commitment but we should look to the examples of Elisha who left everything to follow Elijah today in the first reading, Mary who said yes to being the Mother of God and the disciples who left everything behind to follow Christ.

Below are some pictures that dad took from the hike:

Since most of the group was still out for their hike we had a smaller crowd for breakfast this morning and the rest ate when they got back. After breakfast we drove over to Parramos and broke up into 6 groups to put roofs on various houses. The house I was at we put a new roof on their kitchen. The house was very nice. They had a really big yard where they had a big garden, three huge avocado trees and several ducks!

After we finished our roof project we had lot of time before we had to meet back up with the bus so we walked through the farmers market with our group. Elvis (our interpreter) bought us some lychee fruit to try. To eat it you tear off the outer skin and eat the inside (avoiding the seed) – it had kind of a grape like texture and is pretty sweet. we also had time to get ice cream (I got a coffee flavored one, and it was amazing!)

When we got back to the convent we had about and hour before lunch time. There was a little girl here whose mom works for the sisters and she pulled a bunch of the boys together and made them play with her, and they went right along with it. It was precious!

Lunch today was fish, potatoes, broccoli and watermelon. After lunch we had about 2 hours so I spent a lot of that time reading. Around 2:15 a woman who wasn’t able to come to the convent the day before came and myself and a few others went through the clothing donations to help her find clothes for herself and her brothers and sisters. During the time we didn’t realize it but everyone left to go play soccer. So once we finished Chipeto (one of the interpreters) drove us over to the soccer field to meet up with the rest of the group. They played soccer for about 2 hours!

After the soccer game we walked back to the convent and had a chance to shower before dinner. For dinner tonight we ordered Domino’s pizza and the sisters all joined us. They all introduced themselves and shared a bit about their community. Then Fr. Mark shared a bit about Fr. Stanley Rother (I’ll share more of is story tomorrow as it pertains to the place we are going). Then we sang Happy Birthday to Andrew (one of the teens) who turned 17 today. All of the sisters and Guatemalans sang to him and it was probably the longest happy birthday song I have ever heard, it was awesome! After we all got cake and we started watching Encanto (one of my favorites) because the sisters had never seen it and specifically requested it. It was fun hearing them all giggle throughout the movie.

After the movie was over we helped get the dining room cleaned up and then the boys played basketball with the sisters for a little bit. It is raining again as I lay in bed (it has been extremely rainy the entire time we have been here, way more than last year!) Tomorrow is a very early morning as we head to the lake so it seems everyone has gone to bed early!

Good night!