The Great Spanish Misspeill

Check out over 50 new pictures I added! Happy Birthday Memaw and Me! Memaw's birthday was on the 3rd, so I taught my 4th graders how to sing Happy Birthday in English, and I called up Memaw and all the kids sang to her. They had some ridiculously thick accents, "...Appi Birtdai dare Mamaw..." But Memaw loved it and all the kids smiled really big when I told them how much she enjoyed the phone call. Oh yeah, and mine was yesterday! This was probably the best birthday I have ever had. Let me explain:

So, on Friday, (the day before my birthday,) a whole lot of the students from Shalom got some money together and bought me a cake and they surprised me at the end of the day with a little birthday celebration. It was so sweet to see all these kids so excited about pouring my drink and serving me cake. Afterwards, there was a teacher meeting, and they had a cake for me as well. For dinner that night, Mark and Andrea and Reuben all took me out for "Fon Du" (or however you spell it.) They give you this big plate of raw meat, and you fork-it, stick it into a pot of hot oil, then dip it into cheese and then eat it like it's going out of style. Mark and I kept talking about how D-well is going to love this place when he gets here -- "Meat and Cheese!"

Anyways, the next day (my birthday,) Shalom's group called Fusion (their twenty-something's group) was moving blocks and dirt up to the 5th floor to prepare for a team coming in next week. I went and had a great time serving the Lord on my birthday. We got all the blocks moved to the top and some of the dirt moved up. Once the people there found out it was my birthday, they went out and got a cake (the third one so far) and we did a little celebration. After Fusion, we rounded up a few people and headed to Mark's house where there was this massive cookie cake that had my name on it. So we celebrated my birthday like 50 times down here. It was crazy.

At Shalom, the kids aren't supposed to have cell phones in class. Last week, I was walking through the class room and noticed a student hunched over in a strange position. When I walked over to investigate what could be causing her weird body language, I noticed that she was talking on her cell phone. Immediately, I tried to make a big deal out of it because this is a big "no-no." After Antonio came over to translate, the girl told us something that we hoped never to hear. She was on the phone with her dad and telling him that she was alright because there was a gang after her and could take her life at any moment. I was shocked. Sometimes it's easy to forget what some of these kids go through because they come to school with a happy face and all dressed-up in school uniform, but at home MOST of these kids are abused physically, verbally, and sexually by their fathers. And when I say MOST, I mean the one's we know about -- there are others who say nothing about their troubles at home. Zone 18 (which is where Shalom is and most of it's students live,) is a red zone for violence mainly because of all the gangs there.

Switching gears a little, we have been giving exams the past few weeks. Everyone here knows my Spanish is... "crappy" to say the least. Well, while the students were taking their tests, I started to write on the board about extra credit points for being able to recite their memory verse, Proverbs 3:5-6. Well, as I wrote out the word "points" in Spanish, "puntos," I accidentally left out the "n" which changed the meaning of the sentence entirely. When I meant to write, "You can receive four extra credit points for knowing Proverbs 3:5-6," I really wrote, "You can receive four extra male prostitutes for knowing Proverbs 3:5-6." If that weren't bad enough, that particular word in Spanish is like the English equivalent of the "F-word."

As Antonio was monitoring the kids from the back of the room, he looks up at the board and what I had just written, and in a frantic voice says, "Oh man! Erase the word 'points,' erase 'points!'" As I looked at the board completely confused as to why I should erase the word "points," a wave of giggles from the students starts to move throughout the room. By this point, I figured I didn't need an explanation as to why I should erase it, but just to erase it. As Antonio runs up to explain what I just told the students, my face started to become red with embracement.

Today in church, Shalom had it's first live radio broadcast! And guess who they called on to make sure it ran smoothly... go figure. Anyways, as I was looking over the sound board for a good place to plug in my headphones, I realized that I would have to think of something more creative because when the radio guy got there, we needed to used the headphone jack for the "out" to the radio station. So, I noticed a boom-box (I know, that's an 80's word,) sitting next to the sound board, so I tuned the radio to the station that Shalom was being broadcast to and plugged my headphones in to monitor it. I tell you what, it's bad enough managing Shalom's sound for in-house, but to do in-house and broadcast on the same board by the same person -- I mean, WOW! I had one ear plugged with a broadcast headphone, and the other was listening to the in-house. It was crazy, but it went better than I thought it would.

Shalom needs to know about a little thing called "dead-air." It's when you say or sing NOTHING while a live broadcast is going on. Well, we had a good two or three minutes of dead-air today as the pastor got up to talk. The radio guy at Shalom freaked out and started playing this "music" which sounded like something from the original Mario Brothers game on the 8-bit systems. Yeah, I almost laughed when I heard it. Then he got on the radio mic and starts trying to kill time saying, "Uh.. you're listening to Shalom... uh... Baptist Chruch... uh... and uh... it's in zone 18 and uh... you are listening to it... uh, like right now... and uh... the church is located in zone 18..." I shook my head in shame. But other than that the broadcast went better than I thought it would!

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