November 12 2008

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Wednesday Nov 12 2008

We started the day at 10:30, went to a few homes in the morning, Sam’s truck was acting up and we began to get concerned about our days worth of work accomplished. With many challenges throughout the day we managed to make to 5:00 but had to be rescued. This car is unbelievable, I think I have shared some of its attributes already, but the seats that are bolted down only make the trips exciting. After we tightened up all 5 lug nuts on the back wheel we once again got back on the road, until it just died. The cause was the fact that the fuel fill pipe is behind the back wheel. The night before we had an amazing rain storm so of course every puddle we went through, just added more water to the fuel tank.

We packed it in for the day but managed to get a decent number of kids letters completed. The poverty is overwhelming, these people have nothing, I mean nothing. The luxuries are what they wear and eat, and believe me not many of us could stomach the food, never mind eat it after seeing how it was prepared. Interestingly enough they are a seemingly happy people, laughter and smiles everywhere … its amazing!

Denise and the kids gave me a bunch of gifts to hand out. The kids just go crazy over them. A bunch of dollar store stuffed animals mean an awful lot to them. We stopped at a group of young girls playing in the sand; they were writing symbols and pictures in the sand … almost like checkers or something. Anyway we stopped and gave them head scarves and hats, man were they excited. All week I’ve been giving out soccer balls that SportChek gave me a really good deal on. These kids play with balls that are well beyond their days of usefulness, they have cloths and strings tied around them to hold them together. So I instruct our driver Sam to stop every once in a while and I toss them a new ball … well, the look of gratitude and appreciation is amazing. We went back to one area where I gave a ball away and I asked the kids why they weren’t using their new ball, they said they will only use it on Saturdays and Sundays! Today we drove by and they were using the new ball … my guess is they realized the difference, and decided to stick with the new ball.

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