HRTWAM MEETS CROWN

Friends at the Orphange

Rubber Band Games

Wow, attending this camp is like drinking water from a fire hose. Things are going incredibly fast. I'm in the Bocuare Jungle lodge singing a few feet from the 20 teens that are in a circle with adults and young adult shaparones and translators as they do a wrap up discussion of our visit to the orphanage today. This year, two of the teens in this circle are from the orphanage also, so it is even more interesting. The discussion is interesting as are all of these wrap up discussions which are done at the end of each day. Here's a quick update on what has been happening on the CROWN project.

On Thursday evening, I finished what I felt was a really good first draft of a plan that would work for the orphanage. Mark and Linda had left for San Jose early that morning to pick up arriving HRTWAM kids. I was dancing around and actually had to drink a little wine to celebrate. I sent the final documents to Marcia but had to pray that she would have time to get to the camp, help out with all the introductions and then still have time to translate before sundown. On Friday evening, about a half hour before sundown, Marcia and Joel were finishing up orientation with everyone. With 15 minutes before sunset, Marcia finished translating the final document and we submitted the curriculum, the schedule and two althernative proposals to the SOS Village in Limon. I also CCed the educational director from San Jose in on this email.

Cake and Ice Cream

The huge wooden container that Captain Mark built arrived by truck on Monday night at the HRTWAM camp. We had 18 boxes of books for the orphange in there.  In the pouring rain we moved boxes into the Jungle lodge. Many of the boxes got wet but the books were all okay.

On Tuesday, Joel communicated with the orphange to mention that we had books and wondered if the curriculum had been evaluated.

Today, Wednesday, we arrived at the orphange in the early afternoon. We facilitated games first, then singing and dancing before feasting on cake and ice cream. Bethany Cook and Deanne Howell came up with a number of very cool games to engage the kids for a couple hours. Bill Sterling, Michael Kerr and I were with the balloon races which included a balloon pop at the end. Interestingly, sitting on a balloon and popping it and then running across a finish line was very popular. A couple of teens that were bilingual were in charge of monitoring several parts of the stations. The kids had a blast.
Thanks for your prayers! At the end of our stay, we delivered 6 boxes of books to the ophanage. We found out that the green light for getting the curriculum approved must come from the San Jose office. Luckily I CCed the main office in San Jose when we sent the original curriculum email on Friday.