Regional

Me, Rosa, Elieth                               Me, Rosita again, Rudi, Clivia

On Tuesday of this week, we piled into the 15-passenger van of an hermano from church and headed down to Siguatepeque for our meetings with the LACA Central America/Haiti sub-region! And by "we," I mean Rosa, Clivia, and Gaby (friends from church who had agreed to watch all the reps' kids during our meetings); Sam and Emmanuel; don Marcos; Elieth, Rudi, and I. We got to the retreat center in the early afternoon and Rudi and I worked to get everything in order for the others' arrival (matching shirts to nametags and folders). The rest of our team, as well as the Nicaragua/Costa Rica, Haiti, and Guatemala/El Salvador teams all arrived at various points throughout the later afternoon and early evening. We played get-to-know-you bingo (organized by Jenny) which was a fun way to learn who all was having birthdays during the week (Christy, the comms SALTer from Haiti; don Marcos; and Clivia) and other random tidbits!

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, we had devotionals followed by workshops on trauma healing. Our team was in charge of devotionals on Wednesday morning, so Joel, Keyla, and I led three songs before Elieth gave the message about spiritual resilience. Wednesday afternoon, Cesar and Lizette gave all of us who are new since the last regional get-together an overview of LACA and how it ties in to MCC as a whole. Then, in the evening, we had a Zumba session led by Abner from the Guatemala team followed by a campfire complete with s'mores (made out of Chiky cookies since chocolate bars are expensive) and songs (some Christmas tunes got thrown in... the lack of both Halloween and Thanksgiving here means there's no buffer! I was already seeing trees up when I went shopping with my host parents back in September).

Thursday afternoon after taking group pictures (you can see the Honduras team photo on my Facebook), we had some free time. Sarah (rep from Guatemala) and I spearheaded a trip to the Mennonite Bakery down in town. I found some granola, pumpkin bread, chocolate, and peanut butter there! Several of the others got ice cream, which I heard was really good, but I thought I probably already had enough of a haul... 😆 After dinner, we had a karaoke night organized by Wendy, the CPC from Nicaragua. One of the kids kicked off the night with "Baby Shark" and I followed next with "Me Enamora" by Juanes. It was really fun to see the variety of songs that people chose! Later on, Keyla and I sang a duet of "Rosas" by La Oreja de Van Gogh. After karaoke, Gaby, Lars, Rudi, Honduras Sarah, Clivia, Rosita, and I engaged in a rousing game of Spoons.

The end of the talleres yesterday meant it was time for some sightseeing! After lunch, we had one group go for a cave tour and another group go for a boat cruise on Lago de Yojoa. I was part of the second group.

Me, Rudi, and Gaby during snack break from the Friday morning workshop

Views from my seat on the boat

Eastern shore of Lago de Yojoa

We headed back to the retreat center for dinner and a Noche Cultural—our team had brainstormed a skit imagining how the baleada got its name, and Lars wrote a parody of "Sencilla" to make it about a baleada sencilla which we sang after performing our skit. Highlights of the night for me were Guatemala's hilarious dramatization of a trip on a chicken bus and Keyla's performance of "Colombia Tierra Querida"—poignant in light of recent events there and a history of Colombians performing this song abroad during times of turbulence in the country. After the show was over, all of the SALTers from the region (Jenna, Kailey, Christy, Josh, Andrew, Kara, and I) got together and videoed ourselves dancing to a song that our IVEP friends from the Republic of Korea had taught us at orientation back in Akron and posted it in the group. It had been fun reconnecting with all of them over the course of the week, but we had to say most of our goodbyes before bed since many of them had to head out early early this morning.

This morning after breakfast it was time to head back north to SPS. Since getting back late morning, I've been recharging my introvert batteries before Valeria's 16th birthday party this evening!