Tuesday, August 3rd Another day in El Salvador. An even earlier wake up time, although again we slept quite well and awoke over an hour before we needed to, a decent breakfast and we were on our way to the Los Angeles community to finish the houses. This time, the women went to places by themselves and just us guys (and one more adventurous young lady) worked on houses in the community. Soon after lunch, we'd finished the last of the ten houses, so we were taken on a preliminary tour of the Los Angeles 2 community we'd work at tomorrow. This community was even more impoverished looking, and from the looks of things had a lot less families living there. Unfortunately, being the newer of the communities, all that has been done for them so ... read more

Sunday, 1 August: We awaken at 6am or so, without an alarm clock, having slept quite well after our long day of travel. By 7am we were having a delicious breakfast at our hotel, including not only excellent local coffee, but scrambed eggs with salsa ranchero, pancakes, fresh fruit (Cantaloupe, Mango, and watermelon), and believe it or not refried black beans. Actually, the beans went quite well with the eggs. After breakfast, we loaded up our two regular minibuses and headed to Los Angeles, the refugee camp near Santa Ana. While wading thru the anxious attention-loving kids, we were divided up into 5 groups and put with five groups of locals (some were hired and some were volunteers), to each build a house... by the end of the day tomorrow! Keep in mind, these houses are ... read more

Well, its just about time to leave... 7 hours and we're on our way to the airport, Jeep loaded to the gills! Hopefully, a map of the trip will show here and everyone can get a better idea of where we're going. We'll be flying from Pensacola to Atlanta, then from there to San Salvador in El Salvador. We'll be there for 7 days doing mission work for the Hillcrest Baptist Church. My wife and I will be Spanish interpreters and I'll be helping to build houses for a refugee camp. Next Saturday, when everyone else returns to Pensacola, we fly from San Salvador to Lima, Peru. From there we travel by bus (21 hours!) to Puno on Lake Titicaca, where we are scheduled to take an overnight tour to the islands, staying with a native ... read more

Sunday, June 28 (St. Louis West KOA to Hot Springs KOA): Well, another day of mostly travel. We left St. Louis a bit after 8am, stopped at a TA Travel Center for a very good lunch at their Country Pride Restaurant, then continued on to Hot Springs, Arkansas. This KOA is a bit different, in that it is laid out on a series of hills. Very nice though, with a big office/store, a pool, game room, two laundry rooms, and a separate mini golf area. After checking in, we decided to head into Hot Springs to find a good place to eat dinner. The road we entered town on was Grand Ave., straight from the KOA, and until we got near the center of town and Central Ave., it seemed like a ghost town. Granted, it ... read more

Friday, June 26 (Amish Communities Tour): We started our day by heading towards the American Countryside Market near Elkhart that Manoli wanted to visit. It was quite busy and contained not only a number of interesting shops, but some folks set up out front as a sort of flea market. We didn’t find anything exciting enough to buy, but we did try a breakfast pretzel stuffed with eggs, ham, and cheese. Yum! Next, we decided to check out two different furniture makers that were supposed to have tours where you could watch them make fine hardwood furniture. The first one, Schmidt’s, was pretty empty and the receptionist seemed to have never heard anything about tours, so we moved on. The second furniture place, Lambright Woodworking, wasn’t buy either, and although they were quite friendly to us ... read more