First Trinity Builds Houses in El Salvador

Day 7: Friday, February 25

2011-04-22T23:30:00.001-04:00

Today was our last day of work—truly a bittersweet day. It ended with a celebration of our accomplishments and work this week, but I think the entire team, as tired and sore as we may be, wouldn’t really mind being able to stick around and finish things up! And, of course, we will certainly miss the people with whom we have been working!

The work itself was pretty basic, continuing the basic work of laying, tying in, and filling in the solera blocks, and finishing up the work on the floor. The neat thing was that we were far enough along for the electrician to come in and install the insulation for the wiring!

Around 2:30 we stopped work for the farewell ceremony. Before we got started, there was a chance just to enjoy being a part of the community for a bit. Alex let some of the older boys grab some of our floor tampers and parade around in the house for a bit, both letting them help in the construction and showing them how it’s done. We have some great videos of the routines they were working out.

We also got a chance to observe and even help out with the cooking of the celebratory feast. Cappie, Carolyn, and I tried our hand at making pupusas, earning a round of applause from the kids who were watching our every move. Even though it wasn’t that long since lunch, it was all smelling so delicious that it was making me hungry again!

Alex got up in front of the group and said a few words of thanks to everyone who worked on the house, and then invited Saoul and Jose to say something, as well. It was really great to hear them speak, as they talked about how much they enjoyed us and hoped we would return.

Then Alex called up the boys of the neighborhood, and after making them prove they had clean hands, they presented each of us with a certificate, a beautiful magnet, and a pretty cool ball cap.

I also presented the grandmother of the family with a plant from the nursery/hotel at which we were staying all week, explaining the American tradition of housewarming gifts. We had hidden the flowers when we arrived in the morning, but the kids found it. They understood it was a secret, but they made sure that it was kept watered and safe throughout the day. They kept asking when the surprise would happen!

We had also stopped on the way to the worksite this morning, not only to try to find a plumb bob for Don, but to pick up some gifts for the baby and for the young daughter of Jose. Of course, little did we know that we would arrive at the site to find that Heidi had been gone all day yesterday because when she went to her doctor’s appointment, he sent her to the hospital to give birth! We were happy to be able to celebrate with the family, if a little sad not to be able to say goodbye to Heidi.

Finally, it was time to eat! After our group had gotten our food, all the kids in the neighborhood got in line; Alex had given them tickets earlier, and they all got a small plate of food in exchange for their tickets. The adults then got a share, too. We were all happy that Habitat was able to share with the neighborhood like that.

When everyone had eaten, Pr. Tom led the group in blessing the house, with some translation help from Alex. Tonya, the regional architect, said that while we had blessed half the house, they had faith that the as-yet-unbuilt half would still be blessed.

Just before we left, we led the kids in the Hokey Pokey! They probably didn’t get the words, but they understood the concept, and anytime you get to jump around is fun! So we said our goodbyes, took our last 12-minute ride down the bumpiest, roughest “road” in the world, made it back to the paved road, and headed to the hotel.

Of course, as we were turning to head out of town, what passed us headed the way we had come but a big cement truck! Oh, well. Our way burned more calories!

Day 6: Thursday, February 24

2011-04-21T23:30:00.001-04:00

I have to admit. There’s not a whole lot of new material to share today. We had another full day of work today, which meant that we were able to get two full rows completed, and then start the row of trench blocks, called “solera” blocks.

The solera blocks are u-shaped blocks. These go about 7 rows up from the foundation, and they mark the bottom of the windows in the house. They are shaped as they are to form a trench for additional rebar to be laid in horizontally and tied in with the vertical rebar for extra support. This was a big milestone. Not only because we had officially gotten farther than they had planned for the week, but because we can really start to see how we are building a house!

While some of us are laying the bricks, the rest are working on the floor. The interior of the house has to have dirt brought in and packed down very hard as a foundation for the floor. In keeping with the theme of not having the tools to make the job easy, we don’t have a nice machine to vibrate the dirt and pack it down. Instead, we have to cart the dirt in and use sticks stuck into coffee cans filled with cement to pack it down and make the floor as level as possible. It’s somewhat demoralizing to bring in a good 4-5 inches, pack it down and only have built up the floor about a half inch.

But we keep hauling and packing it down. We brought in a good block and half’s worth of plain dirt, and then added another layer of white sand (which packs more tightly) mixed with cement and sprinkled with water to create a harder base. Later, when they are putting in the finishing touches, they will pour a concrete floor, and probably put tile on top of that.

Unfortunately, John got sick tonight just after dinner. But he has the entire team, the Habitat staff, and the hotel staff to look after him, so I’m sure he’ll be fine soon. Hopefully he’ll be able to join us tomorrow, at least for the celebration tomorrow afternoon!

Day 5: Wednesday, February 23

2011-04-20T23:30:00.001-04:00

Today was our first full day of work, and we made the most of it—3 rows of blocks!

We have had some wonderful weather this week, but today seemed much warmer, either due to higher temperatures or higher humidity. The breeze was also down a bit, so we really felt the heat today. At least our site starts and ends the day in shade, so there’s at least some relief!

Alex had a meeting for much of the day, so we were left alone for about four hours, which was no problem for us! Saoul, has learned that we rely on Cappie for translation help, and he will even yell for her himself if he has to explain something more complex than just gestures will allow.

If you are not familiar with El Salvador construction, El Salvador uses concrete block construction instead of the wood frame method that is most common in the United States. This makes the construction require a completely different skill set, and makes it harder for amateurs to build the walls. So the mason on site (and whomever he deems skilled enough to build walls that are straight) is in charge of laying the bricks. The rest of us contribute in a wide variety of other ways--putting the mortar (or mescala) on the bricks for the mason, putting the mortar inside the blocks after they're put onto the wall (that type of mortar is called chispa), cleaning up the site, or working on the ground in and around the house. Add in giving each other a chance to grab some water and a quick rest in the shade, and we are kept hopping!

The kids are still always around, and always willing to help whenever we will let them (we tend to be very hesitant to let them help, mostly due to safety issues of hauling heavy things like bricks around). They turned the math quizzes back on Carolyn—testing her Spanish as much as anything, but she did great! They also started showing off for us, little rhyming games and hand games. We often couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they sure had fun with them!

A little note about the food. We have breakfast every day at the

hotel, ranging from pancakes (with edible flowers) to more typical food like plantains and cheese. We have lunch on the site, which is brought in from a nearby restaurant with which Habitat has a contract. We also have a small snack every morning and every afternoon provided by the family. Dinner is back at the hotel, and is always large and delicious! Rest assured, we are not going hungry! We also are able to stay hydrated. There is a huge bottle of water on site, and we get more at the hotel, so we are able to stay safe, too.

Day 4: Tuesday, February 22

2011-04-19T23:30:00.000-04:00

Today didn’t start with construction, which was perhaps a good thing, considering that we may have started a bit too quickly for our own good yesterday… Instead, we went to visit Villa Esperanza, the Thrivent community with 75 houses that was recently finished. Marti actually volunteered here before much of it was completed, so this was a chance for her to see the result of her hard work.

It was a really neat thing to see. Many of the houses, especially the ones that were completed in earlier stages of the development, had absolutely beautiful gardens. And, of course, so many things were in bloom! One of the homeowners was even generous enough to invite us in to see what the houses looked inside, and to see their backyard. They were growing all sorts of amazing things—pineapple, papayas, cashews, bananas, avocados, and beautiful geraniums!

In addition to the houses, Thrivent helped build a community center and a daycare center. We got to go into the daycare, where we watched them have a toothbrushing lesson before we had playtime! Kids are wonderful—there’s no need for any real language skills when playing with Play Doh!

When we returned to the site, the blocks were being delivered. We helped unload the truck, sorting the blocks by types and putting some of the blocks inside the house to be easily accessible as we build up the wall.

Following lunch, we got to laying the bricks! Don double-checked procedure with Saoul, and then we were able to have two crews working. This led to us being able to lay our entire first course of bricks before the end of the day, well ahead of the goal.

We also had a lot of fun with the kids today. Carolyn started yesterday quizzing the kids on basic math, but today we abandoned actual lessons for playing around with barnyard animal noises. There’s nothing quite like random clucking and crowing sounds throughout the day! Many of the kids have an amazing ability to whistle and then run their fingers over their lips, creating a parakeet-like sound. Carolyn and I are determined to learn how to do it!

Back at the hotel, we were relaxing, some of us were sitting out on a porch talking, when, at about 9:00, an earthquake hit! It was not very strong, but still rather disconcerting, especially for those of us who have never been in an earthquake before!

Day 3: Monday, February 21

2011-04-18T23:30:00.001-04:00

Our first day of work wasn’t exactly easy, but we finished in grand style!

We had expected to be in a neighborhood of houses built by Thrivent, but it turns out that we are building on a single site in the middle of an existing community. For more information on the family for whom we are building and the community, please check out Cappie’s excellent write-up here.

Our house is at one of the earliest phases of construction. The foundation trenches are dug and the rebar installed, but we were in charge of pouring in the concrete to actually function as the foundation.Of course, there aren’t any automatic cement mixers around. Instead, we have shovels! The masons (Saoul, the head mason, assisted by his brother, Jose) gave us the desired recipe for the mixture, and then showed us their preferred method of mixing it. Basically, it involved shoveling into several piles and then back again, ensuring that all the ingredients are fully mixed together.

Then, you create a sort of volcano, add water in the middle, and gradually shovel all the dry ingredients into the middle. If you do it right, you wind up with a little compact pile, with the water all in the middle. Making a mistake results in water going everywhere! But by the end of the day, we had the technique down pat, which will serve us well the rest of the week!

Saoul is, of course, in charge. But with some help from Alex, Don was able to explain his construction experience, and Saoul became comfortable, after a short period of supervision, with letting him work on his own. This will come in extremely handy once we start laying brick!

We worked very well together as a group. In fact, we worked so well that we finished pouring the foundation well in advance of the end of the day. With our transportation not coming for another few hours, we were faced with several hours to kill. But then Pr. Tom noticed that we had used up the vast majority of the water that was designated for us to use during construction. He asked how the barrels would be refilled, and he learned that someone would have to travel a bit down the road to the community spigot, filling smaller water buckets, and then bring them back to the barrels. So we volunteered to take care of it.

Throughout the day (especially after lunch, once school let out), we had been attracting neighborhood children, especially the relatives of “our” family. In many of these families, the children are responsible for collecting the water and bringing it home as one of their daily chores. So we asked them to guide us and show us how it was done.

Thus began the parade of the gringos! Not only did we have the kids with us, but we attracted the attention of the rest of the neighborhood as we went, too. Some of the girls took charge of the spigot, turning the water on and off, and checking to see when our buckets were full. We’d then take the buckets back to the house to fill the barrels. While the rest of us were waiting, either for another of our buckets to fill or for another member of the community to get their water, we’d play with the kids, laughing and joking.

Of course, we also got huge laughs when several of the men decided to take the water back by carrying it on their head. This is a common method for carrying heavy or awkward items, but by women. Men usually carry the buckets over their shoulder. But the head is actually much easier and more comfortable!

Back at the hotel, the adventure was figuring out how to get hot water. Some cabins had a functioning hot water heater/showerhead (the heating coils are in the showerhead, heating the water as it flows), and others, well, not so much. Perhaps you might be able to see why…

Day 2: Sunday, February 20

2011-04-17T23:30:00.001-04:00

This morning we attended church at the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in San Salvador. This is the home church of Bishop Medardo Gomez, the Bishop of the Lutheran Church in ElSalvador. He has an amazing personal story, but more on that in a moment.

We were welcomed extremely warmly. On a personal note, I had a brief chance to catch up withMaria Trinidad, whom I have met on each of my previous trips. She runs both a homeless shelter and a sort of boarding house/hostel connected with the Lutheran Church, and she and her family are amazing.

But we were welcomed warmly by everyone, even by those who could not speak English. Pr. Tom was drafted to robe up andassist in presiding. As he tells it, he didn’t speak Spanish, and the pastor giving him directions didn’t have any English, so figuring out whatto do was pretty interesting… But they must have managed well, because Pr. Tom helped out through Confirmation and

Communion!

Carolyn also had the chance to read the Gospel. It was read in Spanish first, and then Carolyn read it in English, using a bilingual Bible that was provided by Carlos Avalos. Carlos is the Habitat El Salvador director of church relations, and he spent the day with us (at least until we left San Salvador).

At the end of the service, each of us was presented with a small wooden cross necklace and a hug by one of the children of the congregation. One little girl, in particular, was a most excellent hugger!

After the service, we all went back to Bishop Gomez’s office, where he spoke a bit about the work that the El Salvador Lutheran Church is doing. They are focusing a great deal on building communities, and most of their new members are people who are already familiar with Christianity, mostly Catholicism. It’s a small but growing church.

Bishop Gomez was also one of the voices that roundly criticized the government during the civil war in the 1980s. As a result, he had many threats on his life, and for a while had an international escort with him at all times. He was arrested several times, and his war experience sort of culminated with the story of the subversive cross.

After church we went for lunch at the El Arco Café, the place overlooking San Salvador where the group ate last year. We could tell there had been several new developments built (somewhat ruining part of the view), but the flowers were still beautiful and there were lots of clever and fun decorative items around.

From there we headed northwest, to the hotel that will be our home for the rest of the week. I have stayed here before, and it is a beautiful place—trees and flowers EVERYWHERE! We are staying in a series of small cabins, and then we head to the restaurant in the middle for breakfast and dinner. There are small porches in front of every cabin, and lots of open seating in the restaurant area where we can just sit and enjoy being with each other. It can get a little chilly at night since we’re so high up, but that’ll feel good after working in the sun all day!

We also met up with our last team member, Marti. She was vacationing in the time leading up to this, so she was only able to join us starting today. But we are all together now, and ready to go to work tomorrow!

Day 1: Saturday, February 19 (for real this time!)

2011-04-16T23:30:00.002-04:00

Our flight left from DCA at 5:45, so it was a very early morning at the airport! But we all showed up in good time and made it through security in good order. When wearrived in San Salvador, we were greeted by throngs of people waiting to welcome their loved ones home.

We were met by Alex, who would be our guide and help for the week. He has been with Habitat for El Salvador for about a year, and he spends weeks at a time with teams of volunteers, working with them on the build site, translating, and generally acting as community relations for anyone that drops by the site.

From the airport we drove the 45 minutes or so to San Salvador, where we checked into ourhotel for the night, an extremely beautiful hotel called the Hotel Villa Terra. We settled in for a bit, and then a group of us went on a short walk around the neighborhood, just to check things out. We were too far to really get into the heart of downtown, but we enjoyed the ramble just the same.

One of the things we have noticed are the ever-present armed guards, at pretty much every store, and definitely at every hotel. We asked, and Alex told us that it was to guard against thieves and other forms of crime; we speculated that it was a case of a store having to hire a guard so as not to be more vulnerable than its neighbors. We kept being reassured that there wasn’t that much crime, but these pistol-grip shotguns didn’t really ease our minds. Still, every guard we met was super nice!

It’s also incredible to note all the flowers and trees in bloom. It’s mind-boggling to think that it’s the middle of February, and there are things blooming all over, even though this is the “dry season,” so the open areas are not as green as they are in the wetter times. Still, it is beautiful!

After the walk, most of the group found a small taco stand, where they had some drinks andlight food (we didn’t have any food on the planes, so we were quite hungry!).

For dinner, Alex took the group to a (very popular) restaurant, one of his favorites, which specializes in “typico” food—pupusas (stuffed corn tortillas—practically the national food of El Salvador), plantains, beans, tamales, fried yucca, and lots of other delicious food and drink! We also ate with another group in El Salvador at the same time. They were from Canada, and they will be building in a completely different area of the country.

While everything was so delicious, it had been a very long day, and it is time for bed!

A note about the upcoming posts

2011-04-16T23:00:00.003-04:00

So, even though it has taken me way too long to get these up, I have tried to write them as if I were able to write and post every night on the trip. It may seem a little ridiculous, but I'll also be posting once a day over the same time period as our trip. Please enjoy!

Our “Los Buenos” Family and Community

2011-03-04T16:13:00.008-05:00

Today's guest blogger: Cappie!

First Trinity’s Habitat team worked in the "Los Buenos" neighborhood on the rural outskirts of the city of Ahuachapan in Northwest El Salvador (about 2 hours from the Capital, San Salvador). "Los Buenos" translates to "Good Things," possibly implying "A Great Place To Live." No surprise that this wording comes from the last name of our family: "Bueno." (Good).

We don't really know how far "Los Buenos" stretches along the winding, steep, one-lane rutted roads that took our team to the work site each day, but we do know that most everyone in the small homes near the house we were building were siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and other direct and indirect members of the (very) extended Bueno family.

The house in which “our” family was living when we arrived is a partial cement-block structure with corrugated-metal covered space added over a hard-packed dirt floor. In this “extra” space the family cooks in the rainy season, keeps household supplies, and slings hammocks for little ones. The homes in the neighborhood have electricity, but, as far as we could tell, little or no running water during the dry season, which is when we were there. Water for cooking, washing, as well as for our construction work was drawn from a communal water spigot about a quarter of a mile up the rocky road. The work of filling large plastic jugs with water and lugging them home falls mostly to women and girls, although the men of our team amused children and grownups alike by balancing these jugs on their heads to bring water to our work site in order to fill huge oil drums from which we drew water to make the cement and mortar we needed to lay blocks for the new house. Here, the girls with us are helping to fill the jug of a neighbor, waiting to carry it back--on her head!

Maria del Carmen Bueno is the grandmother and matriarch of the family with which we worked. She said she was born in this same community, as was her husband, Juan Bautista Bueno. Juan Bautista looks to be in his sixties, although he seems older, yet for two days he worked quietly but hard alongside our team lugging earth, making “chispa” and “mescla” (cement and mortar) to strengthen and hold the cement blocks together, and pounding down the floor of what is to be his daughter's new home.

Heidi Ruth Jimenez is Maria del Carmen and Juan Bautista's second daughter. She was born in her parent's home some 20 years ago. She and her husband, Gabriel Jimenez, are the couple for whom we were building our Habitat home. Gabriel works as a policeman in a nearby town like Sonsonate, which is more than an hour’s distance by bus away. This means that he gets back to his small family only on his days off. Yet it is because of his regular salary that the Jimenez family has enough income to qualify for Habitat's help in building a home.

Heidi and Gabriel have a little daughter named Abby, 18 months old. When we arrived, Heidi was very pregnant with their second child due in mid March. On Thursday of our work week, February 24, a Habitat truck heading into nearby Ahuachapan offered Heidi a ride to her regular doctor’s checkup and it turned out that just then she went into labor and Gabriel's and Heidi's second child, a son, was born. If all continues to go well with building the Jimenez’ family’s home, this little boy will be the first in his extended family and neighborhood to grow up in an earthquake-proof home that has an indoor bathroom.

Heidi's younger brother, Juan who is about 15, also lives in the family’s current home, which adds up to seven people and three generations living in that one structure. Just up the hill from the house we were working on, beyond the outhouse and through banana trees lives Heidi's older sister and her husband, Cesar. Their three children, Cesar, Jr., about 10, Jasmine, about 7, and Henry, 4. (That's Cesar, Jr. back row on right, Jasmine in center front, Henry on the far left in the front row.) They were constant companions to our work team. Cesar Sr. works as a guard in Santa Ana. Since it is over an hour's ride on several busses to get to his work, Cesar, like Gabriel, comes home to Los Buenos just on his days off.

Extended family members who came to help us on the work site were Don Guillermo and Don Jose, both nearby neighbors in their fifties or sixties. They appeared for a day or two, worked quietly alongside us, often doing the heaviest tasks, then disappeared. Even though they had no English, they gave us the feeling that they supported with their "sweat equity" the home-building task we were doing for Heidi's family.

Across the rutted road from where Heidi’s and Gabriel’s home is growing lives Dona Rosa, the "engine" of the community according to Tania Mesa, our Habitat site coordinator. Dona Rosa met us as our work team first arrived and introduced herself as the "presidente" of the community. She is the one who made the connection to Habitat that has resulted in Heidi's and Gabriel's home being built. She also turned out to be one of the many cooks for our final "thank you" celebration meal on Friday afternoon, making all sorts of Salvadorean specialties on several outdoor fires.

Since there is no mail service (just as there is no garbage pickup) in the community, we are hoping that we can get photos of our team members and especially of “our” family as well as of the community’s many children to Dona Rosa via Habitat's Tania as our First Trinity team wants the people of Los Buenos to remember us just as we will remember Heidi, her extended family, and especially the children of Los Buenos.

The Story of the Subversive Cross

2011-03-02T16:01:00.003-05:00

While I am still gathering pictures to be able to properly do daily journals, I thought I’d share the story of the “Subversive Cross,” which we saw when we worshiped in San Salvador our first Sunday in El Salvador. The story itself is powerful enough, but we were incredibly blessed to hear it in first person from Bishop Gomez after the service.

In the fall of 1989, both the government and guerilla forces were gearing up for a final battle in San Salvador. Bishop Medeardo Gomez led his congregation in a ceremony whereby a cross, painted white, is then inscribed with the sins of El Salvador and prayers for the country and its people.

A few weeks later, on November 16, the situation had gotten even worse. Bishop Gomez learned that government forces were coming to arrest and possibly even to kill him, and he took refuge in the German embassy. Sure enough—shortly after he left his church, the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection, soldiers appeared, seeking the Bishop.

At the same time, soldiers were headed to the Central American University. There, six Jesuit priests were murdered execution-style.

But at the Lutheran church, the soldiers only found an international group of witnesses, holding a vigil. They arrested 15 people, along with the cross, saying that the church was using the cross to teach subversiveness. The cross was taken to the jail, where individuals were interrogated (and possibly tortured) in front of it. Bishop Gomez eventually had to flee the country to save his life.

When the war ended and Bishop Gomez returned, the American ambassador worked to get the cross returned; it had, somewhat miraculously, not been destroyed. The cross was brought to the house of the President of El Salvador, who then personally presented it to the Bishop. The “subversive cross” now resides in the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection as a reminder of the war and all that happened.

Day 1--We made it!

2011-02-19T21:58:00.000-05:00

It has been a VERY long day, so I´ll just keep this short. We successfully arrived in El Salvador, and we were met by Alex, our Thrivent Builds assistant, who will be with us all week. He studied English (as in for a higher education degree) for three years, and he has a lot of fun stories.

For tonight, we are in a beautiful, extremely comfortable hotel in San Salvador (note the computer access that, if I had more time or energy, would also allow us to post pictures immediately). After church tomorrow we will transfer up to the hotel we will be at for the rest of the week. We are still not sure what sort of internet access we will have there, but rest assured that we will do our best to keep you posted on what we are up to!

For now, buenos noches to all our friends, families, and followers out there! And if anyone knows how to create the "at" symbol with a Latin American keyboard, I would love to hear about it.

Final Countdown

2011-02-13T20:36:00.000-05:00

Today at First Trinity, service focused on El Salvador. Throughout Epiphany we have been highlighting a different world culture, celebrating the message of Epiphany that Jesus came to Earth to share God's message of love to all people. And so, as a send-off to our Habitat team, this week we celebrated the Salvadoran music and culture. In addition to special music and hymn selection, our post-service reception featured Salvadoran-style quesadillas and delicious tamales!

I also gave a "mission moment" during the announcements. Due to a printer malfunction, I realized once I got to church that the first page of my speech had never made it to a hard copy. As a result, the text below is not quite what I actually said, but I think it still worked!

¡Hola! Buenos Dias, hermanos y hermanas.

Hello! Good morning, brothers and sisters.

My name, for those of you who don’t know me, is Amanda Wahlig. I am here this morning, full of excitement and joy, to thank you on behalf the 11 people that you, the people of First Trinity, are helping to send to the beautiful country of El Salvador for a week to build a house with Habitat for Humanity.

When many people think of El Salvador, they think of the horrible civil war that ravaged that country throughout the 1980’s. And that war has left deep scars that will take lifetimes to heal. But since the peace accords were signed in 1992, the country has been undergoing a dramatic turnaround and rebuilding process.

One of the biggest remaining effects of the war has been its impact on the Salvadoran economy. Since 1990, El Salvador has experienced an inflation rate of 7%, while its economy has averaged only 5%. Annual remittances from family abroad, particularly in the US, total approximately $2 billion, while external aid is only $500 million per year. The minimum wage is only $145 a month, while the cost of basic necessities for a family of four is approximately $600 a month. This means that there are many families who have to go without the basics of food, shelter, clothing, health care, and education, even if more than one family member works full-time outside the home.

Shelter is the one area that Habitat for Humanity can, and does, help dramatically. In El Salvador, the concrete-block houses are typically 450 square feet, with two bedrooms, living and dining areas. Some houses, depending on the site, will either have an outdoor latrine or an indoor bathroom and shower. In 2007, one of these houses cost between $4500 and $5000, plus land and utility fees. The average family is only able to pay $45 a month.

The housing need is great in El Salvador. Between the poor economy and the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, earthquakes in 2001 and January 2007, plus volcanic eruptions and Hurricane Stan in 2005, there are over 720,000 families in need.

Habitat El Salvador was founded in 1992, and it is one of the fastest-growing and most stable programs in the developing world. Despite the lack of domestic funding and an almost exclusive dependence on foreign volunteers and monies, Habitat El Salvador has been able to build over 8,400 houses all over the country. Since June 2007, Habitat El Salvador has expanded their mission to reach an even lower economic stratum of families, working with so-called “model” communities, providing families with land, a house, basic services, and community development social structures, such as a community center or daycare facility. The goal of this is to encourage the families to unite and work together for their communities.

That’s why our ability to go down as a team is so wonderful. Because we are able to pair up with Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, Thrivent will be donating an additional $8,000 because of our team!

Our team will be going down this Saturday and, after having a chance to see some of the capital city of San Salvador, will be going to the region of Ahuachapan, the poorest region of the country, and near the Guatemalan border, to worship with a local community on Sunday and then to build for five days. While we don’t know the exact stage of construction the house will be in, we will be moving the blocks around, mixing the mortar, helping to form the dirt foundation for the floor, and perhaps helping to lay the blocks. Through it all we will be working with experienced masons, and, depending on the family’s schedule, with the family who will be living in the house. We will then have one more day to experience some of the incredible natural beauty and hospitality of the Salvadoran countryside before returning on Sunday.

As I finish up, I would like to thank those of you who have supported us, both financially and with your prayers. This trip is a wonderful opportunity for us to do some extremely valuable work in the name of God, and it would not be possible without your help.

One final note—this trip has a blog! There is a link to it on the home page of the First Trinity website. As internet access permits we will update it while in country, and we will definitely post stories and pictures upon our return.

Pr. Tom also spoke about our trip in his sermon today, which can be heard here. Please note this may take a few days to post.

Phase 1 Complete!

2010-12-07T10:32:00.000-05:00

Our team is now entirely registered, flights are being booked, and folks are starting to receive their packets with their t-shirts and other helpful info! It's getting exciting around here!

This trip, we will be building with the Thrivent community in Getsemani. Our last trip, we helped ESHFH put together their video bid to be the host for a Thrivent community in Latin America, and it was wonderful that they got it--it's a great program, and this wonderful country has benefited so much from the increased partnership with Thrivent.

Getsemani is located in Ahuachapan, right next to the border with Guatemala. It is one of the poorest departments (the Salvadorian equivalent of states), despite having some of the richest soil for coffee. One-fifth of the families survive on a monthly income of less than the cost of the family food basket.

The area, because it is up in the mountains, is also subject to earthquakes. Habitat houses are seismic-resistant, and therefore represent not only stability for these families, but desperately needed safety.

The Getsemani community seeks to create a holistic community. It will not only be the location of 90 homes, but the project is built around increasing community leadership and economic opportunities. Because many of the volunteers are international volunteers, it is also an opportunity for cultural exchange and education (on both sides).

For more information on Ahuachapan and the Getsemani community, please go to the HFHES website on the project.

2011 Trip is On!

2010-11-15T10:56:00.000-05:00

I have been confirmed as another trip leader for a Thrivent trip to El Salvador Feb. 19-27, 2011!

Membership on the trip this time will consist not only of First Trinity members and friends, but also fellow Lutherans from the DC area.

Registration information for trip members is going out soon, and then we'll be able to start the process of booking travel, choosing our activities for our rest days, and pre-departure meetings.

Having so many months before the trip is a luxury compared to our extremely quick turnaround the last time we went down. But I'm getting excited that the ball is moving!

Sunday, February 24

2008-03-04T20:52:00.001-05:00

Our last day was our most leisurely. We had a late breakfast, then we took some time to worship in an open pavilion as a group before packing to get ready to take a bus to the airport. We all had to make sure that we packed our golden level awards, which we had received the night before.

I got the big surprise while finishing packing. In some of the clothes in my suitcase that I removed to repack, there was a half-dollar-sized spider (a hairy sucker) trying to stow away! While I was fairly calm at the time (Oh! Look! That's one HUGE spider!), I can only imagine how much I would have been freaking out had I not found it until I got back to DC. Finding a giant spider in El Salvador (where it can scurry on home) is one thing--unpacking a hairy, giant spider in your room is something else.

On the way back we got our driver to take us the slightly longer route along the Pacific coast. It was a pretty curvy route, but the views of the ocean were great. Plus, we went through several tunnels that were carved through mountains, and the walls were still just bare rock. Poor Pr. Tom, who was using his clip-on sunglasses to hold his broken regular glasses together, just thought we had turned out the lights!

But despite some minor mishaps (security took Kjersten's guitar strings and half the plane only got static through their headphones and so had to watch Evan Almighty without sound), we made it home safe and sound. It was an extremely successful trip, and definitely one that, despite having to immediately return to our busy lives, we will not soon forget.

Saturday, February 23

2008-03-04T18:40:00.000-05:00

This was our big day to play "tourist" in the beautiful countryside. Sonsonate, where we were staying all week, is along the Ruta de las Flores (Route of the Flowers), a scenic drive starting in San Salvador and working west through the mountains and volcanoes. It's known for the many nurseries and flower plantations and coffee-growing operations that make it extremely beautiful.

So on our day off we headed further north to a small town called Juayua (pronounced why-you-ah). The town itself has several neat features that sounded fun. Every weekend it has a "gastronomical festival" that's known around the country for the food vendors it brings in (and, according to our sources, it is pretty heavily regulated by the government to make it safe for tourists). It also has a church, the Iglesia del Christo Negro (Church of the Black Christ), built in the 16th Century. Home to one of the only black crucifixes in Central America, it is a place of pilgrimage for many.

Juayua is also the starting point for a hike to seven waterfalls. We were warned going into it that the hike was a strenuous one, so only 9 of us took the trip. The rest of the group decided to take it easy and hang back in the town for the day.

I went on the hike, so I can't give a lot of details on what those 5 people did--hopefully one of them will post with some more information. They spent the day with Alex, the guy who drove us to and from work all week and was then contracted to drive us on Saturday, too. Alex took them to several other towns along the Route for some sightseeing and shopping. One of the things they found was a church that had been destroyed by an earthquake in 2001(?). The congregation is rebuilding, bit by bit as they get the money. Plus, after a week of doing concrete construction, the group was able to see and understand what was going on.

The group also had the chance to check out a funeral procession and a baptism.

Meanwhile, those of us on the hike (we were joined by a Canadian named Len) had an adventure and a half. The waterfalls were incredible--they varied in height from just a few meters tall to over 35. They were mostly in these out-of-the-way places, undisturbed by traffic or a lot of visitors.

Of course, that meant that they were anything but easy to get to. When we first got out of the van to meet up with our local guides, we noticed that they had machetes and large coils of rope. We were a little unsure about what these could be for, but we decided to go with the flow.

Turns out, we needed them for navigation. Not only did we have to climb up and down very steep slopes (or walk on footpaths only about as wide as our foot with pretty sharp drop offs on the edge of the path), but we also had some rivers and other things to cross. Some of the rivers we waded through. Another required us to cross a concrete plank about 6" wide (Laura had to carry a dog that was hiking with us but got scared and stopped while on the plank). We also crossed this huge tree that had fallen and created a natural bridge. It was a massive tree, very strong and steady, but just at the right incline where the rope railing was helpful for mental security.

About midway through the hike, we came to a waterfall and didn't really see how the path continued on. Then we noticed that the guides were climbing up the rocks and stringing ropes--we were going up! We climbed about halfway up the waterfall and then crossed to the other side, where we had a snack. Then it was back across and up the second half of the waterfall!

At another point we went through a coffee plantation. At first it was just walking through the trees, then we headed down--at a pretty good angle and with very loose soil. The key was to grab the trees by the base and use them to hold on as you slid your way down the volcano! Not the cleanest method (but by then we were all pretty filthy anyway), but fun anyway.

The final few waterfalls were in an area maintained by an electric company. The company has harnessed the waterfalls and connected them to generate hydroelectric power. These were the easiest to get to--there was a well-tended path--and are often used by townspeople and other tourists for swimming holes. We had lunch at waterfall no. 7 and then went back a few to one with a very large swimming pool. While we hadn't planned on going swimming, we decided we were wet and dirty already, and besides--how many times do you get to swim in the base of a waterfall?!

The water was very cold, but we enjoyed using the falls as an automated massage and a way to take the first layer of dirt out of our clothes. When we got back to the entrance to the company's property, we found a pickup truck that our guide hired to take us back into town the Salvadorian way--standing up, just holding onto some bars.

Once back at the starting point, we were able to meet up with our group (Alex did NOT want to let us into the van) and spend a bit of time in the town ourselves for sightseeing and shopping, with the others as our unofficial guides. On the way back to the hotel, we also took the time to stop at one more small town and check out their local street artesian festival.

All in all, it was a wonderful day, and a great way to end our trip.

Friday, February 22

2008-03-02T22:45:00.000-05:00

The final construction day arrived, and we were starting to run out of anything approaching clean clothes. The good news is that we were well on track to meet the goal of 14 total lines of blocks laid.

And we made it! By the time we knocked off work, we had all 14 rows up, a completely level and packed floor, and the sewage ditches were dug and laid with pipe!

The time had come for us to bid farewell to our construction site, the family, and the HES Sonsonate people. It had been a great week, but our job was done.

Before we left for good, however, Habitat had one more surprise for us--a farewell reception with cake and parting gifts! It was also a chance for final goodbye speeches by Cesar and Veronica, Don Mario, and us to our new friends. Then Patty Cordero (assisted by Cesar and Veronica) gave each of us a small bucket with the HES logo, a t-shirt, and a certificate with our group's picture on it. It was a wonderful way to end the work week and, for some of us, a guaranteed clean shirt for the flight home!

Habitat also had a cake for us. It was a large round cake, and I was asked to cut it. Normally with round cakes I cut it in wedge-shaped pieces, but this was much too large for that, so I started just cutting in a grid pattern. This made the Salvadorians laugh; normally with such a cake they cut a smaller round cake out of the middle and then cut semi-wedge pieces from the outer circle and work inward. Our cake, however, was cake cut gringo-style!

Thursday, February 21

2008-03-02T20:57:00.000-05:00

While we were fresh off a shorter day on Wednesday, we were all moving a bit more slowly as the week went on. Still, we kept plugging along, continuing raising the walls and moving from inside the house to finishing some of the outside the house yard work. It's filthy work, but those ditches needed to be dug!

And as we kept on building, the snack hits kept on coming. Every morning at 10 and every afternoon at 2:30 or 3 we were served snacks--a little something to help us keep going. From the very beginning, the snacks were absolutely incredible.

Part of the reason they were so great is because they were so fresh! I mean, canned pineapple cannot come close to comparing with pineapple freshly cut, and probably picked just a few hours prior. And that was only one of the first snacks we got!

Another afternoon featured fresh coconut milk and meat. We saw the coconuts unloaded from the truck, and then Cesar and Veronica chopped them open with a machete for us to stick a straw into and drink. When we finished the milk in a coconut, they cut open the husk to allow us to scoop out the coconut meat. It was definitely a treat that is just NOT the same in the US. It was, however, a treat that got mixed reviews from the group. While some loved the taste, others could only take a few sips of the very rich, sweet milk.

Wednesday afternoon was my favorite snack story. I was mixing the mortar with Cesar, when he pointed out a mango tree. A mango tree that was being climbed by his wife, who was picking green mangos! For snack that afternoon, we had green mangos (peeled, cut with a knife, then spread with salt and sometimes with tobasco sauce), almost directly from the tree! Veronica was wicked with the knife. She made cuts in the mango so quickly while holding the fruit that we were a bit afraid; so to show off, she closed her eyes! That's what I call skill.

There were all sorts of other fresh fruits--watermelon, bananas (while they weren't ripe yet, we did see bananas growing on the tree that we eventually cut down in the family's backyard) , and cantaloupe. We also had freshly squeezed juice from various other fruits for lunch. They came in these plastic baggies, tied up tight. To drink, you either had to bite off a small corner of the bag and drink it straight from the bag, or you had to carefully try to pour it into your glass (some did this with more success than others. But with everything so fresh and so delicious, it'll be hard getting used to what we get in the grocery store again!

Wednesday, February 20

2008-03-02T19:53:00.000-05:00

Day 3 of construction, and we were right on schedule. The folks working on the floor finished up today, and just in time. Right after our afternoon snack, the heavens opened up with a deluge of rain. February is the dry season in El Salvador, and this amount of rain in the middle of the day was pretty unusual. At first we were able to keep working, but then it just got too hard to continue. The neighbor of the house, Anna Theresa, who had been allowing us to store tools and more at her house all week, very generously let us track mud and more into her house as we sheltered both our bags and our bodies on her porch until it stopped.

While the rain interrupted our full head of steam we had built up, it did give us a chance to see that the dirt floor was solid--even soaking wet it didn't move when people walked on it, and there weren't puddles from low spots. It seemed that the concrete and tile would be on firm ground!

The rain also came on an unfortunate day. Wednesday was a short day, because it is the day that HES schedules for a "cultural exchange." We stopped work early, put on our Thrivent Builds shirts, and left the site for a field trip.

First stop was at the house that I worked on in August. When I had last seen it, the walls were not complete, and it was all very not-finished. Because we were working in the same reason and then expressed an interest in seeing a finished Habitat house, the HES staff arranged for us to visit "my" old house to see it with the family moved in.

That was really neat for me. Not only to see what a complete, inhabited Habitat house looks like, but to have a chance to see the house that I helped build finished, painted, and with stuff in it! The lady of the family (Carmina, wife of Tito, who is the brother of Victor, the HES Sonsonate construction supervisor) was also kind enough to allow us to traipse through her house to get a look at how the lights and other interior fixtures work. That house is slightly larger than the one we were working on (3 bedrooms vs. our 2), but the concept was the same. Carlos had returned to be with us, and he took the time to answer some of our questions about how the houses are finished.

After the tour of the finished house, we went back into the small town of San Antonio del Monte, a little place just outside of the town of Sonsonate. San Antonio del Monte is the home of the restaurant that catered all of our lunches while we were working. The man who owns the place lived in the US for about 25 years, and then he and his wife moved back home so that she could open the restaurant.

So we visited the restaurant for a little taste of El Salvador--pupusas! These stuffed corn tortillas (usually filled with cheese and/or beans, though sometimes with chicken or veggies) are the traditional dish of El Salvador. Everywhere we went in the country, we saw these small pupuserias offering them up for sale. They are often served with shredded cabbage and a mild salsa, and are very filling; and this afternoon, we were offered all we could eat.

We stuffed our faces for a while, then went on a bit of a walkabout of San Antonio. About a block from the restaurant is a beautiful small church, built during colonial times (I'm guessing by the Spanish, though I can't confirm that). It has held up incredibly over the years, including through several earthquakes and the countless small tremors that often go through the country.

We were very fortunate to have Victor with us. He attends the San Antonio church, so he was able to give us the lowdown on the building and its various historic features. He was extremely proud of the church, and it gave him great pleasure to be able to show it off.

From there it was back in the van and "home" to the hotel!

Tuesday, February 19

2008-03-01T22:31:00.001-05:00

Construction, while varying slightly each day, was not something that bears recounting in great detail each day. Basically, throughout the week, we continued to put up walls, fill in the floor and yard, and eventually dug up some of that yard to lay sewage pipes. We did some landscaping (aka removal of banana trees that were in the way of the sewage trenches), and various other small jobs around the worksite. Pictures are really all that are needed to tell that part of the story--recounting those details would just be repetitive and, frankly, not that interesting to read.

Instead, I'll take this word space to tell other stories about our experience and the week. And while I tell these stories, I'll sprinkle more pictures of us digging in the dirt and putting up concrete walls!

The family for whom we were building the house is made up of a father (Cesar), mother (Veronica), son (Cesarito, aged 5), and Veronica's pregnant younger sister (Naomi). They are a wonderful group of people--open, welcoming, and kind and generous to all of us.

Veronica's mother taught her how to make a living by crossing the border into Guatemala, buying clothes there, then crossing back to sell them at market in San Salvador. By living carefully within a budget, Veronica was able to set aside money each month to pay for a small plot of land in the hopes that one day she would be able to build a house on it.

And last December, while she was making one of her last payments, someone told Veronica about Habitat for Humanity. Because in El Salvador the program is that you have to own your land before being accepted as a homeowner, Habitat was a dream come true for this family. Instead of being a long-term, far off dream, owning their own home is an immediate reality.

They were right there with us throughout the week. The place where they are currently living is about 2 blocks up the road, and it was the place where we had a bathroom and where we ate lunch. While Veronica was usually back at her house, taking care of things there, Cesar was working alongside us, mixing concrete, digging ditches and lugging dirt, and sharing his wonderful sense of humor (especially when there was a language mix-up along the way!).

On Thursday, Veronica shared some family pictures with us at lunch. She showed us some family members we hadn't been able to meet, and some delightful pictures of Cesarito when he was younger. We knew we were really in the family, however, when the pictures of Cesar at a fun Father's Day event in drag were brought out!

After that, before we headed back to work for the afternoon, Cesar took us on a short walking tour of the neighborhood. The tour started at his church, a Mormon church. Cesar's father is the leader of the church, and Cesar is the head of the men's group. The church was built by the US Mormon church, and it has about 150 members. When they reach 200, the US church will build them another, larger building on the same grounds, since their current building is too small to house that number of people.

Monday, February 18

2008-03-01T21:40:00.000-05:00

First day of construction!

When we arrived, there were already 5 rows of blocks up on the house. We knew our goal for the week was 14 rows total, plus a great deal of work on the floor and yard of the house, so our work was cut out for us, and we got straight to it.

The primary work for the first part of the day was on the floor in the house. There were many trenches left from the digging of the foundation that had to be filled in, and then the entire floor of the house had to be raised by a foot or so. This meant bringing in lots and lots of dirt (in five gallon buckets) from piles outside the house, digging out the trash, and then pounding it down with things we called "tampers"--coffee cans filled with concrete with large wooden handles attached.

While these are fairly simple steps, they are very time consuming. In addition to the many shoes, odd toys, and random household items we discovered in the ground around the house, we had to pick out the organic matter (roots, plants, etc.) that was in the dirt going into the floor. While the floor will be tiled over, it was important that there not be anything in the dirt that might eventually rot and create a soft spot to weaken the floor.

Shortly before lunch we began laying our first round of bricks. Because of his previous experience, Don worked in tandem with our mason, Don Mario (the Don is an honorific for the master mason and our construction supervisor, Victor). Don Mario used the first day as a chance to work with Don and both show him Salvadorian construction techniques and to learn some of how similar work might be done in the U.S. Don apparently did a good job, because by the end of the day Tuesday, Don was working solo!

As we worked throughout the week, we stuck to several basic rules--hydrate (there was always plenty of bottled water on site), and wear a lot of sunscreen! We were pretty fortunate that our work site had shade available for much of the day, and we often had cloud cover in the middle of the afternoon. Still, we all decided it would be better to be safe than sorry!

Then, after work, we headed back to the hotel for some relaxation after our strenuous day. Some of us hit the pool, while others elected just to take a shower and sit for a while. Either way, it was a wonderful end to a first day of work.

Golden Level Awards

2008-03-01T11:29:00.000-05:00

At our last evening meal after we had completed our week of work we held the First Trinity Awards Banquet. Awards were determined by a secret commitee only know to Pastor Tom and presented to the group by our fearless leader Amanda Wahlig. Each recipient received a "Golden Level Award" because everybody knows that a good house is a straight and level house. Awards were not distributed in order of importance except for our last two very special people.

1. Golden Level Award to Don Titzman, Master Mason.
2. Golden Level Award to Sarah Speckhard, Assistant Master Mason.
3. Golden Level Award to Ron Morgan, Asssitant Master Mason and all around good guy.
4. Golden Level Award to Sean Dillon as Master Digger.
5. Golden Level Award to Kent Forde as Master of Fully Loaded Wheel Barrow Driver and assistant UN Ambassador.
6. Golden Level Award to Emily Oline Master of Chispa down the Block.
7. Golden Level Award to Keith Wahlig for Master Chispa maker and part-time trench digger.
8. Golden Level Award to Amanda Patton for Master of Espanol according to Amanda and Master All Purpose Worker.
9. Laura Dillon known to boarder control as Laura Liefer Master Weeder and Master Shopper of Artist Gifts.
10. Golden Level Award to John Molinaro: Master of rebar tying and Master of being prepared for everything.
11. Golden Level Award to Kjersten Priddy also known to Salvadorians as KJ: Master of Filling cracks in blocks with Mescala.
12. Golden Level Award to Cappie Morgan Master Group UN Ambasador, translator, and Master trash collector.
13. Golden Level Award to Amanda Wahlig for Master Leader/Director and Master Mescala Maker.

Sunday, February 17

2008-02-29T17:31:00.000-05:00

Before we got started building, we had a day to explore some of the heart of San Salvador.

We woke up to a wonderfully delicious breakfast of typical Salvadorian food--fried plantains, beans, eggs with vegetables, melon, and freshly squeezed fruit juice. It was a great way to wake up in the morning.

Since we were headed off to Sonsonate after our time downtown, we had to bid farewell to the people at Casa Concordia as we left. I stayed there for much longer when I was down there in August, and I was sorry not to be able to spend more time with "Mama Trini" and her extended family.

We had an escort for the day--Carlos, the HES Church Coordinator. He turned out to be an excellent person to have along, as he was able to answer many of our questions, both about El Salvador in general and the various buildings we were seeing downtown.

First stop was the National Cathedral. From the outside, it looks fairly plain (especially when you compare it to the cathedrals of Europe), and it has beautiful paintings along the outside of the doors.

There was a mass just finishing up, so we stood in the back and observed a bit as Communion ended. The presiding priest was actually the Archbishop of San Salvador. Technically he's only in charge of the San Salvador area, but because it's the national capitol, he is expected to have a national voice and presence. Traditionally it has been a position of great power and influence (see more below).

The inside of the cathedral is just beautiful. I'll let a few of our pictures do the talking for me:

Below the sanctuary is another very special place--the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero. He was Archbishop of San Salvador from 1977 until he was assassinated in 1980. When he was appointed, governmental and church officials thought that he would be a great friend to the rich and powerful. But once he got into the midst of the abject poverty in the middle of San Salvador, he quickly became an advocate for the people and economic justice.

This earned him both the loyalty and love of the ordinary people and many death threats from elsewhere. At a time when news was highly censored, Archbishop Romero would use his sermons, which were broadcast nationally, as a way to spread the true news about killings and other acts of violence. In 1980 he was celebrating mass when a gunman killed him.

A week later, hundreds of thousands of mourners packed the plaza outside the cathedral for the funeral mass. Carlos, who was 12 at the time, was there. He remembered being in the crowd when sharpshooters with rifles and machine guns opened fire on the crowd. In the end, between the shots and the panic, somewhere around 60 people were dead (exact details are not known because of the civil unrest at the time, and will probably never be complete). Now, Archbishop Romero stands as a powerful figure of liberation theology and almost a patron saint in much of Central America. He has been named a "Servant of God," one of the first steps for canonization in the Catholic Church.

From the cathedral we went to the national artesians' market for a bit of shopping. Right off the bat, we knew the place was special because of the great mural painted on the wall of a covered area off of the parking lot. We were the only ones there, so we were the center of attention for all the vendors.

Typical handicrafts in El Salvador tend to center around wood--carvings, paintings, etc. There are some textiles, but often the textiles are made in Guatemala and brought across the border. However, painted wooden crosses are a very typical art. Some of them have images that are significant, but often the idea is to use bright colors as a symbol of hope and joy.

We ate lunch at a cafe called El Arco, a combination nursery and restaurant. It was up on the side of one of the mountains surrounding San Salvador, and we had beautiful views of the city in the valley below, as well as the San Salvador Volcano. It was great to see so many growing and blooming things in the middle of February. There were flowers and blooming bushes ready to sell, as well as some beautiful orchids hanging from the covered dining area!

We had a little while to wander around the nursery before sitting down to lunch. The restaurant specializes in sandwiches and desserts. We didn't take the chance to sample the desserts, but the sandwiches were excellent. We were also joined by Dagoberto (Dago), the head of the HES Sonsonate office. He ate lunch with us, then rode with us to Sonsonate so that he could give us some specific information about our build in Sonsonate. He is also someone I worked with in August, and he took very good care of us all week.

Our hotel is beautiful! It's called an "eco parque"--just what it sounds like. The rooms are small cabins, up the mountain from the restaurant and main office. Each of the married couples had their own rooms, while the rest of us split up into men and women and had large "familial" rooms--a double bed and two bunk beds. We had two such familial rooms that were in the same cabin, just on different levels, and the women took the lower level while the men took the upper floor. The setting was beautiful--luscious forest all around, a fire circle (where we were able to have campfires every night), two pools, and lots of flowers (the hotel also serves as a nursery). There were also animals: roosters and hens, and three very large geese that had the run of the place and also like to attack any humans that got too close.

As it turns out, there was something wrong with the electrical pump system up on our end of the mountain, so it was very common for the water in the joint cabin (and Ron and Cappie's cabin, since they were right next to the joint cabin) to go out. Once we figured out how to fix it ourselves, however, it dramatically cut down on the amount of time we were without agua.

After dropping our stuff off in the cabins, we went down to meet our mason, the site supervisor, and the family for whom we were building the house. I'll write more about them later, but it was a very pleasant way to get to know a little bit about them and for them to meet us before we were faced with the construction work. Plus, everyone was quite a bit cleaner than they would be for the rest of the week!

Saturday, February 16

2008-02-29T16:57:00.001-05:00

This was an early morning. Our flight was just before 9 a.m. out of Dulles, so we aimed to be there by 6 so we would have plenty of time to check in and get through security.

But everything went well. There were no delays at any step in the process, and we all arrived safely in San Salvador.

There we were met by Patty Cordero, the Habitat Host Coordinator in El Salvador. She greeted us, got us to our bus, and then bid us a temporary farewell. El Salvador was hosting 4 different international teams, so the central office staff had to spread themselves around. Unfortunately this meant that we wouldn't be able to have someone with us at all times from the main office, but we were still able to contact them, and they would continue to check in as much as possible. It was very impressive the number of people who were there to meet arrivals. In El Salvador, it's traditional for entire families to meet and drop off travelers. This can make things crowded, but very festive.

Because we arrived just after 12:30 local time (El Salvador is one hour behind EST), we were a bit hungry. We had gotten breakfast on the plane, but we were ready for some food. We stopped by a very popular chain restaurant, Pollo Compero, on the way to where we were staying. The chain is known for its breaded and fried chicken, and many Salvadorians traveling back to the US will carry boxes to share with family and friends. Ordering was rather interesting due to language barriers, but between Ron and Cappie and the help of the Habitat volunteer, Glenda, with us, we managed to work something out for everyone, including the vegetarians. We also had fun with the motorbike delivery vehicles parked out back!

For that night in San Salvador, we were staying at the Casa Concordia, a rooming house that is associated with the El Salvador Lutheran Church. It is run by a wonderful woman named Maria Trinidad and her family. Her daughters help her prepare the meals and run the place, and her grandchildren and foster children are also around--playing, helping, and generally making the place bright.

After we got settled into our rooms, we had a few hours to kill before Pedro, another person from the Habitat El Salvador (HES) office, came to give us our orientation. Many of us took the time to enjoy the warm weather and cool breeze that were available. Kjersten was even brave enough to join the kids for a game of soccer.

Pedro gave us a wonderful introduction to El Salvador, giving us all sorts of great information about the housing crisis in the country, difficulties facing HES, and telling us some important safety warnings about how to take care of ourselves on the worksite in the coming week. Pedro himself would be with a Canadian team elsewhere in the country, since they needed a Spanish translator and we had Ron and Cappie!

After dinner we continued to explore our surroundings. A group went out to check out the neighborhood, and were able to get a great sense of life in that part of San Salvador. I hope that others who went on the trip will soon post and be able to share their experiences.

Don wasn't feeling well, but there was a group of nurses and dentists staying at the Casa Concordia as well, and they shared some of the medicine that they had brought to donate. This turned out to be a wonderful blessing, as Pr. Tom later came down with the same sort of illness. But because we still had medications from our first night, we were able to avoid seeking out additional medical attention and Don and Pr. Tom were able to stay with us as we built the house.

Home Again!

2008-02-25T00:36:00.001-05:00

I know that if you're reading this, you don't have much information. That's coming, I promise! We didn't have internet access after the first night, so I apologize to those of you waiting to hear what we were doing.

I will have more detailed posts, and others will share stories and pictures, later this week as my schedule allows. But I wanted to say that we are all OK--there were a few minor illnesses along the way, but we met some nurses and other medical people during our first night, and they helped us immensely by providing the proper medications. I am also currently suffering from some allergic reaction to an unknown substance, but if allergies are the worst thing we come home with, that's great!

The trip was wonderful, and I cannot wait to share with you all what we have done. Again, thank you for your prayers and support--we could not have done this without you!

Arrival

2008-02-17T09:04:00.000-05:00

Buenos Dias!

I apologize for the brief post, but our schedule is a bit tight.

We have arrived in El Salvador! The flight was excellent··everyone got to the airport without difficulty, and the flight was smooth and on time!

For lunch we stopped off at a typical fast food fried chicken restaurant that´s very popular here. Ordering was a bit of an adventure, but we all managed to get something to eat!

After we got here yesterday, we got an orientation to the country and Habitat El Salvador before having a chance to sample true homemade Salvadorian food.

Today we´re off to explore San Salvador!

Pastor Tom's view

2008-02-09T15:22:00.001-05:00

From Pastor Tom:

I am looking forward to going with our team. I have been on several habitat builda and have lots of experience working on rehabbing my own homes and many homes for the homeless. Last year our church team, the Biloxi 9, went to The Gulf coast to help rehab homes for those who were flooded out by Katrina. We completely dry walled an entire house in one week. I have been to El Salvador back in the mid 80's during the war. The country and people are beautiful. The war was very sad. I hope that this trip will be a positive life changing experience one all of our team.

Natural Beauty

2008-01-31T13:20:00.000-05:00

I just heard from our in-country coordinator, Patty Cordero. Patty has been an incredible help to me in setting up this trip, and I know she has been extremely busy in working with all the other teams coming into El Salvador this year!

Habitat arranges our lodging during the time we are working and building, and they do an excellent job of making sure we are as comfortable as possible.

The hotel they have chosen for us in February is absolutely beautiful--it took my breath away when I looked at the hotel's website. I think we are going to be VERY happy there!

We have also finalized some of the final pieces of the itinerary. It's all coming together, and 16 days to go!!!

I'm excited!

2008-01-20T22:21:00.001-05:00

This is the first time I have gone out of the country to do a build. I'm looking forward to learning new techniques and hopefully getting some new skills. The leader of this trip, who happens to be my daughter, has also gotten me looking forward to meeting the people and seeing the sights. I am also looking forward to getting to know the people of First Trinity. February 16 can't come soon enough.

Less than One Month!!!

2008-01-17T22:29:00.000-05:00

In one month from yesterday, 14 people will be in El Salvador! It's hard to believe that it's so close!

A lot is already finished. Our number is set at 14, everyone is registered, and almost everyone's paperwork is filled out. The tickets are purchased, and everyone seems excited to get there!

We got an update from Habitat El Salvador today. We will be building in the area around Sonsonate, a beautiful little town almost directly west of San Salvador. It's where I built when I was there in August, and I'm excited to go back.

There has been one change to the itinerary. Instead of taking the free day at the end of our trip to go to the beach, we have decided we would rather see some of the beauty that is the country. So we're going instead to a little town in the mountains named Juauya. It has some beautiful hiking and waterfalls around, and the town itself has a very rare black Jesus statue (it was burned in a fire and never repainted). Best of all, it has a huge food festival in town every weekend, and it's supposed to be one of the best in the country.

I spoke to the leader of the trip I took in August, and she and her husband are helping me set up our hotel in San Salvador. If it works out, we'll be at the Casa Concordia and connected with the El Salvador Lutheran Church. Hopefully we'll even have a chance to meet and talk with Bishop Gomez. We'll keep you updated!

Flight is Booked!

2008-01-09T21:51:00.000-05:00

Well, all 13 people going to El Salvador are registered, and we have booked the group flight from DC to San Salvador!!!! The great news with the flight is that we got a spectacular deal on the airfare--about $100 less per ticket than we had originally thought we might be facing. Pr. Tom joked that the flight was so cheap that several of us might have to fly the plane! Plus, the flight is non-stop, so no dealing with changing planes in Miami or Dallas and all the hassle that means, especially on the way back.

There are still details to iron out, but much of that will be done in conjunction with the El Salvador folks. We still need some hotels in-country, and I'm beginning to rethink the beach proposition. I've found this neat little town with spectacular hiking, a unique little church, and a food festival every weekend!!! The beach just seems to be a surfer's hangout, and from what I've read, it's a semi-dangerous area, as well. I think more people would be happy with the change, but I'll talk to the coordinator in El Salvador and see what she thinks.

It is great to have some of the biggest steps out of the way and finished. Since this is the first time I've led any group like this, I won't really be able to relax until things are set and ready to go.

Our Trip is On!

2007-12-14T14:36:00.000-05:00

With our Habitat for Humanity trip to El Salvador confirmed and the initial members registering, I thought it would be a good time to establish this blog so that we can share the details of our journey with all our friends, families, and supporters! As the official leader of the trip (though with plenty of help from Pr. Tom), I decided to get the ball rolling.

Come February 16-24, members and friends of First Trinity will be headed to El Salvador to build a house with Habitat for Humanity. This trip will be organized through Thrivent Builds Worldwide, a division of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. Thrivent will not only help us with coordination, etc., but will also provide a great deal of financial support for the El Salvador affiliate! In addition to the $500 per person donation (and right now we have 20 people going), which Thrivent will pay for Thrivent members, Thrivent will give HFH El Salvador an additional $10,000 because of our trip! That's enough to pay for the materials and labor for two additional houses!

With the trip coming up so quickly, however, things are moving at a fairly hectic place. Right now team members are registering and paying deposits, securing our place on the schedule. We'll be sure to keep you updated with our progress and let you know how you can help!