Kids schedule, The toilet and Dangerous things EVERYWHERE

 This my bore you, but here's a recap of my day:

1:30am wake up with my forearm killing me. Must have been bit by a spider. So I rub peppermint oil all over it (my wife says that the bugs don’t like peppermint, so she sent some with me). 

Itch it like crazy, then try not to itch it till Morning. 

Wake, setups and push-ups as I attempt to memorize Romans 5:8 in Spanish. 

Walk next door to the house that has 30 children (5-12 years old).

5 adults share each of their prayer requests and then we pray. 

7:30 wake up kids. Several are already awake, just waiting to be released from their beds. 

Boys are on one end of the large building, girls on the other. 

Now, the part I love the most, all the kids gather in the family room, the leader will sometimes give a brief encouraging Christ centered message and other times go straight into song. As the music gently plays, the children all stand and sing praise music. 

You can feel the emotion in the air

The kids do this every morning and every night before bed. I think that’s a great way to start and end your day. 

After 15 minutes of this, the chore chart is checked and some kids go back to their sleeping area to sweep, mop, clean toilets and sinks.

Then breakfast, today was hard bread (very hard) with jelly and peanut butter if you liked. There was also warmed up milk. Usually it is not this simple, but sometimes you get what you get.

When I’m here, I eat everything that is offered. I’m appreciative of what I get knowing that it was probably donated and the cooks are doing their best to use it and not waste it. 

The kids then have chores sweeping and mopping the kitchen, doing dishes and cleaning the courtyard. Each child knows their place and knows what is expected of them. There is an unspoken authority in all the adults. The children know who is in charge and do what they are told. Can you imagine what is needed to keep this household functioning? You mustn’t ever allow a rebel or the whole family will suffer, I suspect.

The house I'm working feels like a large family (with 30 kids, ma, pa, 4 uncles, 4 aunts and a cook or two). 

The orphanage operates 10 separate homes with 100 or so children spread out between them. It's led by a local church where the lead pastor also takes the responsibility of leading the orphanage. 

Everyone here doesn't simply go to church on Sunday, they live and breathe God in all day long. 

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Today I put up some hard metal screens to keep the mosquitos out with a couple other people that live and work at the orphanage. 

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Believe it or not, the instructions for installing the new guts in the toilets were all in Spanish! Luckily they had pictures to aid in the installation. Hopefully they're installed correctly!

A wise man once told me, there are two things you need to know about plumbing:

1. Water always runs downhill
2. Never, ever lick your fingers

That was great advice that I hope to never forget. 

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I've been coming to this orphanage for 10 years, but there's one thing that always strikes me as strange...

99% of the fans here don't have the protective cover on the front. I'm sure that they've just been moved around enough that they've broken off. In the USA, we would consider this as dangerous and throw them away. However here, nothing gets thrown away. Why would you throw away something that is perfectly good? We might say, a child could get hurt. Well guess what? No child gets hurt! They all know that it would hurt them so they stay away and respect it. In some respects, Mexican children are much smarter than ours in the USA.

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From 2-7pm the kids go to school. Don't they look great?