Semana Santa

This has been a pretty crazy week in El Callejon. We have a team here from a church youth group in California. We have 2 awesome girls working at the Social Work site with us, but also joining us this week is the construction team (led by Ryan). No, the high school boys aren't helping teach crochet. They've been working on an addition to the Social Work site! It's almost finished and is looking sweet. They built an addition on the roof and put concrete on the ground. It will be open, without walls, and will be a huge help as additional work space. We can get pretty crammed in there when there are 30 women working on 30 different projects. So this will be a huge blessing to us.

The art site is also in El Callejon this week working. There is a 10 ft high wall that runs across almost all of El Callejon. It was built because on the other side of it is where the wealthier people live, and they didn't want to have to look at the run-down shacks all the time. Last summer the art site started a project where each student would get a section of the wall to paint however they wanted. It just had to portay the gospel message in some way. So there have been a handful of students here working on that this week also. I don't have a picture of this weeks' artwork, but here's a picture of the wall to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.


This week is also Holy Week. In the States, that doesn't necessarily mean anything special, but here, schools are closed for the entire week, some businesses are also closed the whole week, and those that aren't are definitely closed Thursday and Friday. So this means that there are even more kids than normal hanging around the site. So it's been an interesting week, but a good one. God is using his people to bless the community of El Callejon in many ways.

In continuing with our theme....I'll leave you off with a few new faces to get to know....

Luz. Luz is one of the most talented women that come to the Social Work site. She can sew, crochet, embroider, and cook. She has a lot of great ideas and is currently trying to start a bakery out of her house. Her husband recently was arrested for selling drugs. She cares for her 15 year old grandson who was basically neglected by his mother, who happens to live just down the street. She has a beautifully decorated home, very different from most of the other houses in the community. She is certainly what I would call a strong woman.

Araseli. Araseli is 15 years old and has already had 2 husbands and 4 abortions. She "got married" (I put this in quotations because in the poor communities here, people say that they got married when they decided to move in together one day. Only one couple in El Callejon is actually legally married.) when she was 13 and dropped out of school. Right now she lives alone with no job. Many people in the community look down on her for all of these things. Thankfully, she has sort of become part of another family in the community and she is able to eat with them.