Recently a team comprised of 3 families from Louisvile, KY partnered with our USA organization, Orphanos, www.orphanos.org, to come and serve at Pan de Vida. Two of the families had come the year before with a team and led DVBS and resurfaced the football field. In preparation for this year, they knew they wanted a project that would allow them the ability to work together as families but also be at a level that could include their children. Also being big supporters in literacy education, they felt led to do things to help with our on site school so the idea of classroom projects was developed.
Over the several months of planning, they were able to collect and purchase lots of school supplies and educational teaching tools. One family loaded up their car and drove all the way to Mexico to bring it to us. Unfortunately, due to a loss in the family, they had to cut their trip short and return to the USA but we are very grateful for all the hard work they put into preparing and delivering the supplies to Pan de Vida. The other 2 families flew in and then dove into doing makeovers to the classrooms. One teammate did carpentry work and made racks and varnished them for each classroom that the children could use for hanging coats and miscellaneous items.
Since school was still in session, they had a great system of taking one empty room and getting it cleaned, painted, decorated and put back together in 1 day so the kids could then rotate into it and free up another room and repeat. They had theme stickers for different rooms that were being applied. One day, a classroom took more time than expected and didn't get the stickers done and planned to do it later.
However, the kids immediately came inquiring about them and the team explained that they had the stickers and would be sure to apply them. Well as soon as it was recess the kids didn't even go for their snack, they wanted the stickers. So they had fun lifting each child giving them to apply them themselves.
Also, Bonnie, one of the team members, had different craft lessons that she would do daily. One day she did the chemistry project of making "flubber." Not only were the kids surprised at how you could take such basic ingredients and make something so unique, they were even more amazed at how the green and yellow stripes of a ziploc bag turns to blue when you close it. So not only did they have the flubber to experiment with, they had bags to play with as well. They also learned some culture based around the Kentucky Derby and made stick horses.
Also while the team was here, Janel who turned 6 had a birthday party and her guests consisted of all the girls in the "chiquitas" dorm. They were invited to a sleepover American style. They played games, had cake, beaded jewelry, watched movies and the next morning were treated like princesses to a big breakfast with everything from eggs, bacon and pancakes. The parents said the most humbling part of the experience to them was that each one of the girls from Pan de Vida brought a gift. They were not expecting this and knew they could not afford to buy anything and learned that the gift they gave turned out to be their favorite toy or stuffed animal. They didn't come with something they no longer wanted or needed, they came with what they liked the best with hopes that Janel would like it as much.
The icing on the cake was that they were able to see the Pan de Vida girl's football team compete on the home football field. The previous year they had put lots of back breaking labour and sweat into cleaning rocks, grooming and laying sod. This year they saw the fruit of their hard work. Again, Pan de Vida has been so blessed by the partnership of The Westlakes, Bartees and Keister families and their ministry in serving Jesus at Pan de Vida.
