Hello all,

Life here has been so busy, it seems like so much has happened since my last blog entry! Bobby and I are keeping very busy with our work. Bobby has been working hard in the garden. He is starting to get some vegetables already. We have eaten green pepper, and onions, and the tomatoes are almost ready. He is so excited! This time of year is mango season, and they are everywhere! The home has several mango trees here, and the mangoes are ripe and are falling all over the ground everywhere. It's kind of a problem because when they fall on the ground they get squishy, stinky, yucky, and they attract flies. I am not sure why they don't pick the fruit and serve it to the kids with meals, but who am I to say anything, right? Bobby picked a whole bunch of the mangoes last week and gave them to the kids - they just love to eat tons of them! I also tried a new recipe...mango crisp. I made it Saturday afternoon with the help of one of the girls, and it turned out pretty good. Cooked mangoes taste a lot like peaches. I am going to try and make green mango pie later on this week, it is supposed to taste like apple pie, but we shall see!

Bobby and I are still having our youth night every Saturday evening. The high school kids all got their grades a couple of weeks ago and they were all pretty bad. The grading system here is a little different. The kids are given a number from 1-10, with a 10 being perfect. Many of the kids were receiving 2's and 3's in their classes! This is not good at all. They are all really smart kids, it is just that so many of them lack any type of motivation, and I think that a lot of them are depressed. The directors reviewed all of their grades and decided that the kids who were failing 2 or more classes were not able to come to the youth night on Saturdays. So, instead of our usual 17, we are down to 6! This has turned out to be okay though. We have found that 6 is a much easier number to handle, and that group is now more personal and the kids talk more. So, really, this has been a blessing in disguise.

We have also had a problem lately with the kids stealing. This has been somewhat of a problem from the beginning, but it has been gettng worse. Just last weekend, we seen one of the teenage boys wearing Bobby's clothes. Bobby and I were walking into the cafeteria, and there he was sitting on a bench wearing Bobby's shorts and t-shirt. When I questioned him about it, he just got this glazed look in his eyes and never really gave me a straight answer. Well, long story short, we found out that he had taken the clothes out of the clothes dryer behind out apartment. That dryer is really for use by teams when they come, but our dryer was broken, and it had been raining a lot, so I was using the team's dryer. Well, this boy found the clothes in the dryer and he thought that they were clothes that the team had left behind, so he took them. Little did he know that they were actually our clothes. He ended up having like 3 of Bobby's t-shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, and one of my shirts. It is actually kind of funny, yet, really bad at the same time. It is funny because they were actually our clothes that he unknowingly stole, and he was quite embarrassed when he was busted. But, it is bad that he was stealing. Bobby and I have had CD's, videos, tools, and now clothes stolen from us here by the kids. Oh, my, they do need lots of prayer.

But, you know, through all the craziness, we still love the kids and we still love serving them. Yeah, we might want to wring their little El Salvadorean necks from time to time (or daily), but we still love them.

Well, I must go for now. Work is calling me. We love and miss you all.

Lots of love,
Britney