Tuesday, June 28

Today we had our first home visits! Well, first we woke up and got ready, and Julie made us a wonderful breakfast of eggs and I made the toast. Anyways, we went on our way and when we got to Tresford and Fabiola’s, we finished sorting, made the food staple bags, and the WOV/TOV gift bags. In the food staple bags, we put some flour, soup, tea, wheat, beans, peas, noodles, sugar, candy, and cookies. We put together about 45 of these bags, and then went to store them in the closet. However, when I opened up the closet to pile in some food bags, a large spider crawled across the wall, and well, I shouted. Joyce came running, and when I showed her the spider, she ran to get the Doom. When she came back and began to spray the spider, he crawled into the other closet that is adjacent to the first closet. The bad part of this was that the second closet had bags of blankets in it that we needed for our home visits. We slowly pulled out each bag, hoping the spider wasn’t hiding in it. But the spider was still inside the closet, and after being sprayed a few more times, he died and ended up flushed down the toilet. After we finished storing the food bags, we did the WOV prizes, which were purses a friend of Joyce’s made out of placemats. We put a scarf, a sewing kit, and some sort of jewelry in each purse. Then we did the TOV prizes, which were a few jewelry boxes with earrings in them, purses with hair ties and sewing kits, and a bag with school supplies. When we finished prizes, Fabiola gave us our home visit assignments and we gathered the clothes, toiletries, toys, and other supplies based on the needs of the family. I visited two homes with my mom, Carol, Fabiola, and her daughter Pearl. We first visited Robert, his mother Oligen, and her daughter. Robert is deaf, blind, and paralyzed. He can’t talk or communicate and his mom takes care of him, and has for the past 17 years. Robert is now 31 and was accidentally shot in the throat/neck area when he was 14. His parents had alcohol problems and when they realized how much care Robert would need, Oligen chose between her husband – which included the alcohol issues – and Robert. Carol did and amazing job telling the story of Jesus via touch, because this is the only sense he can still use. While his mom said he can’t hear, Carol asked Pearl to translate anyways. I choked up quite a bit when Carol did this story, because she is wonderful and had such patience and faith that somehow Robert would understand. We prayed over Robert and his mother, to whom we provided clothes, food, and toiletries for the whole family. After we left this house, we went to visit Johanna, but she wasn’t home and neither was her sister, Helvi. Her brother Joseph was home and he accepted his clothes and toiletries and asked us to come speak with his mom and sisters tomorrow. Johanna is hard of hearing, and my mom found one of her old hearing aids and was able to have her ear doctor clean it up and provide her with the things she would need to make the hearing aid work. My mom was very excited and hoped that this aid would be able to help Johanna hear better than she does now.

After we finished our home visits, we went back to Tresford and Fabiola’s, and all the kids were still playing outside. I was excited because I had thought about staying behind from home visits so I could play with the kids, but I didn’t so I was glad to still have the chance. Playing with the kids in TONS of fun, and I really enjoyed it! I just need to start working the Gospel into our play, so I can speak with the children about God. At a little after 4, we headed back and made it to the Beach House in time to walk the beach, take some pictures, and enjoy the sunset. After having dinner and playing a few rounds of Yahtzee, we decided to call it a night.