The Facility - CISNA

The 2nd and 3rd pics are of the interior of the boys 'houses'. They live in what used to be a detention center with bars on the windows and ceiling. For some reason there seems to be a very serious shortage of toilet paper in this country. In fact, I have yet to see any TP in the entire facility. Very curious.............The 4th pic is of the girl's area. None of the guys have been up there but our girls have stories to share when they get home......... the top floor holds girls convicted of some type of crime.

Random Pics from Stan Clark

Stan took these and this is the first opportunity I've had to upload them. They include a picture of the disaster that occured when another group brought a pinata...... the boys enjoyed it and went bananas.

Stan is with Diego...... another one of our favorites.

There's a picture of me about to cry........ we're in the handicraft room for all the little boys that have been sexually abused. I had been trying to talk to the little guy but he was not interested at all. They say it takes a long time to earn these boy's trust.

One of the picture's is from the roof of the hotel and one is of the basketball court at the orphanage.

Inflatable Pandemonium !!!

I have never uploaded a video to a blog so this is a first.......... hopefully it will work. This should give everyone a better idea of what kind of pandemonium the inflatables caused.

Update

My wife asked me if everyone is doing ok....... Hannah´s tummy was a little sensitive yesterday..... I don´t know how she´s doing today. (UPDATE: she is doing a lot better today !!) I fell off a curb yesterday ( it would be more exciting to say that I had a skateboard accident but no one would believe it) and twisted my ankle pretty good. However, we have nurse Sandy Garrett with us and she is administering medication and bags of ice. No one has any serious health issues that I know of.

Last nite the main power cable to the hotel ´broke´ and about half of us were without power for about 3 hours. The line was laying in the street sparking - it was quite a show. We got the juice back on at about midnite. The Salvadoran version of OG&E did a great job of fixing it in a real hurry - cynical Craigo was amazed.................if we were in Mexico, it would have taken at least a week.

Our Orphan Helper´s bus has brake issues so we are sleeping late today and waiting for the repairs to take place. It seems that in El Salvador, brakes are one of the most important items on a vehicle :-) Our driver Jose has been using them a lot. Every ride is kinda like going to Frontier City.

The weather has been fabulous........ cool in the evening and morning and not too bad during the day.

more later.............................cb

PS !! as a reminder- clicking on the pictures will display them in a lot larger format

The Kids................

The little kid with Chad "Chido" Simpson is Santos........ he is probably the youngest little guy here........he says he is 8 but I am sure it's more like 4.

The boy in the yellow shirt is Salvador - my favorite. If he would fit in my luggage, Lucas and Les would have a new brother. He has parents..... apparently they dropped him off here 15 months ago and he hasn't seen them since. He was crying yesterday when he told me this. I got to hug on him for a while then Lucas and I bought him a coke. But it absolutely kills me........... the sad reality is that EACH little guy here has a similarly horrible story to tell. Our hearts are truly broken for these kids. I have felt a lot of intense emotions while on mission trips over the years but this is different.........this is a new kind of hurt. The depth of despair that we are seeing here has changed all of us.

The boy in the blue shirt is Jorge............ Jorge is trouble. He is one of the older boys here and is pretty hard. We are trying to reach out to all of them but it's really hard with the older ones. Most of them bored, ready to leave and be anywhere but where they are. Hopefully our soccer tournament on Saturday will make some sort of impact. So, if you're gonna pray, then pray for the little guys who are abandoned and sad and for the older guys who will eventually leave this place and do who-knows-what.

The Inflatables were a HUGE Hit !!

Ben had 2 inflatables delivered and the kids went absolutely nuts. We had a hard time with crowd control. Matt Hull and Jonathan Adamson spent 2 hours in the 'cage' trying to keep the rowdy boys from killing each other. It was 4 hours of pandemonium!

Afterwards, after everyone caught their breath, we went to each of the 4 'houses' and made salvation bracelets, shared the salvation story, and ate pizza........ then we went to a 'pupusaria' and ate pupusas........good stuff.

Trey "Frijole" Russell - SkaterDude Extraordinaire - Wows the Kiddos

Trey wowed everyone with his ample skater skills and even had the boys trying some advanced jumps. Only 3 kids had broken bones and one ended up with a concussion......................... ( not really !) They did take turns on his skateboard and a few of the kids have potential, according to "Frijole"

More Tuesday Photos

OK- so i forgot what day it really was !! These are pics from Tuesday

Playing with the Kiddos

We spent the day at the center today........ it was fun playing with the kiddos but a little sad at the same time. We watched a group of kids coloring and later found out that they had been sexually abused. We did our VBS stuff later then the guys and the girls separated to hang with children of the same gender. The girls said they spent most of their time dancing ! The guys and boys spent our time playing baseball, soccer and wrestling around. It was fun and we're all looking forward to going back tomorrow. The overall experience was satisfying but personally for me, I have to admit that my heart was a little broken at time. More photos next post.......

.........cb

We Made It !!

OK - We made it to El Salvador with ZERO problems...... no one got left at the airport in Houston...... amazing. Here are a few photos to prove that we are still alive and enjoying the 100% humidity. The hotel is very cool with gardens and beautiful flowers - smells kinda like Hawaii. The Orphan Helpers guys picked us up at the airport after we breezed thru customs and we rode in their big school bus to the hotel. We're up late trying to get all the crafts ready to go for tomorrow. Breakfast at 6:30 and we leave the hotel at 8am. BTW, we are on Mountain Time here. Click on these photos for a larger view. More pics tomorrow !