A Day in the Life

Working on their weekly badges, with a temporary bed
for Smile-On in the background, while our co-worker
stays at our house as she recovers from a fire.

We certainly have settled into a 'typical' day, although it does seem like most days have a surprise element. Here’s how the days fly by for us. It usually gets light about 5:30-6am, and we get up about an hour later to take care of filling all our waters and often filtering water. We make porridge for breakfast, feed the chickens and dogs and make sure they have water for the day. We catch up on news and emails. By 9 the children and I are at 'school' and El Padre is getting to work at the national church office. The children and I finish school by 11 and they have some time to play and I work on food, cleaning, laundry, “Casa”, taxes, emails, everything that takes longer than you expect etc. until lunch around noon.

El Padre usually comes home by the time lunch is over and the children then have a quiet time. An hour later quiet time is over and the children play. We try to go outside and play soccer with the neighbor boys during this time. We try to go and visit neighbors. There is also the job of making sure dinner is figured out during this time.  In the late afternoon we have “Casa” classes and the children play. We have a very generous teacher who often stays around to see what else we need help with, so class usually runs over.

After that it is similar to life in the States. We are racing to get dinner on the table, make sure all the animals have food and water (and collect the eggs!), clean up from dinner, get baths, maybe play a family game, read and bedtimes for the children.

Then El Padre and I work on communications like email and studying language and lately we have worked in some relaxation movie time or books and land in bed by 11pm! If the water is on, we fill water containers and run drinking water during this time too.