Day 30: Crazy Like Sunday Morning
or: Who Would Win in a Fight? A Lizard King or a Lizard Wizard?
Today was a really good day. Like, today didn't need to be as good as it was.
We woke up and walked to the CDI. We had, like, 27 kids come. We had a 28-passenger buseta, driven by none other than Erik, the cool, graphic-designing, people-over-business guy in the church here. Sadly, I didn't get to ride with him, lol. We loaded up a bag with 30 sack lunches, loaded up the bus, loaded ourselves into an Uber, and headed to the Museo de Oro.
We got all the kids through the entrance, and hands washed, and organized. Most of them got in free (being under 12). There's extra charges for foreigners though, so our entrance fee was pretty steep.
I was impressed by how well the kids did today! The adults were: Georgen, Reychel, Bryan, and our team. We mostly floated the peripherals of the crowd, herding like sheepdogs, lol. It was crazy and chaotic. But, the kids did a good job (mostly) of listening and not running and not being too loud. Our tour guides were fun. We started on the lowest floor (the museum was underground and connected to a bank (the museum was also filled with a ton of gold)). Our Floor 1 tour guide did a pretty good job with the kids. Our Floor 2 guide was a rockstar. He had obviously worked with big groups of kids before. We went up to Floor 3, and the tour guide said something into his radio, and our Floor 2 guide came up and stayed with us the rest of the time. Maybe he really liked us, maybe we scared Floor 3...who knows.
After the museum tour, we went outside to eat lunch. The kids ate and then we all played on a giant stone area that was the "roof" of the museum (a.k.a. street level). We played ninja and raced and played a version of red light/green light.
Our buseta came and we loaded the kids up and they headed home. We waited for our Ubers, and then headed to the CDI. The kids had left already (or maybe the bus went straight to their neighborhood), so we walked over to KFC and had lunch. It was a good team bonding time.
We went to the grocery store on the way home and got supplies for the week. We are "in charge" of H@ngout this week, but Lagos and Ana Raquel have done a good job of coaching us on communicating with the students. We may do a brief testimony-sharing time this week, focused on God's love.
We got home, unloaded the groceries, chilled for a bit. Then we had a really good planning session with the team. We're changing up the Bible-reading time at the CDI to be more discipleship oriented, based on how the centers are run in Honduras. We want to work through different themes and values of the faith with the kids and get them memorizing verses and acting out the beliefs. Tomorrow and Tuesday (with different groups of kids), I'm going to share about Love (God is Love, God loves us, we love God, we love others). We're going to memorize and work through some of 1 Corinthians 13 over the next 3 weeks; focused on "what is Love?" Then, the hope is to get them started working through each of the aspects of Love (Patience, Kindness, etc.) over the next months. It'll require someone to champion it, but if we organize it before we go, it could be pretty simple and build some good momentum for them.
I got to have a good conversation with a friend today about vulnerability, honesty, and patience. And I got to share with him a little bit of Alexis and my story of going from friends to dating. It was a slow process, with lots of good honesty and patience. Honesty on both of our part, and patience mostly on hers. But, it was a really encouraging conversation and it was a blessing to me.
It got me thinking about how grateful I am for how things have looked over the last year, and especially the last couple of months.
I spent some time reading. I started 'Til We Have Faces; which may be a mistake, because it's 2 AM right now and I may go read more after I post this.
Our team watched Ocean's 11 together. Unsure if the motivation for a heist movie subconsciously came from our time in a super-secure museum filled with gold or not. But the movie was fun, and more good team bonding.
I went for a run when the rain slowed down. I was supposed to run 4 miles today. I hadn't successfully run 4 miles yet, and next week I'm supposed to upgrade to 5 miles (which is the longest planned mileage for this summer). I decided to see what would happen if I went for 5 miles tonight. Kind of a "shoot for the moon, but expect to fail" mindset. I figured, even when I didn't survive, I might be able to get 4 miles. I had fried chicken and ice cream and pizza today, so failure seemed likely.
But it worked! I ran 5 miles, only stopping to tie my shoe. I'm really pleased. I feel like I internalized a Truth about running, and I'm going to share it with y'all. (as of here, everything i'm writing is a little tongue-in-cheek, i'm serious, but not serious about the fact that i am serious) I used to be a Runner, you know? I was actually pretty good at it. Low-key, sometimes when I meet someone who runs or ran, I try to figure out what their mile time was so I can compare myself to them ("That sounds... h e a l t h y , Sam"). No self-respecting college team wanted me, but I did get an offer from a tiny Christian school to come run for them, lol (casual flex). So, I've thought a lot about running and read a lot of books about it (some even really good). I used to compare every single aspect of my faith and relationship with God to running. Sometimes, I watch running shoe commercials for fun. And, I stopped running for a long time, and now I'm having to rebuild
I say all that so you'll know, that I'm sharing this Running Wisdom from a pretty credible place: If you want to successfully run farther; run farther without stopping.
Lol, those of you that know me, probably saw from the amount of buildup I gave that, that it was going to be disappointing :D It actually is kind of true though for me. As soon as I take a walk break, my body says, "oh cool, we're done." and doesn't want to start back up. So, today, I just didn't stop. I'll probably regret it tomorrow though.
I got home and talked to Alexis for a little while about the quiet time she had today and some other stuff. It was quite lovely.
And, now I'm here. I got the Wordle in 6 (rough). I need to spend some time doing admin work soon. Maybe tomorrow.
PRAYER!
-for us to walk in step with the Spirit
-for good team dynamics
-for our Balkans team! They leave soon!
-for us to model and explain well the love of God to the CDI kids
-for H@ngout to go smoothly
-for Lagos and Ana Raquel as they travel
-for God to speak to you this week
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Hola