Mindo with the Interns

We finally had a day off yesterday, so Howard took all the interns to Mindo for the day. Mindo is about one hour from El Refugio located in the Cloud Forrest. The interns were able to ride the zip lines, thirteen in all and then some of them chose to try the tubing on the river. While they did that, the rest visited the butterfly farm. Howard said it was good just to hear them laughing and having a good time, although the truck ride home was a little chilly:)

Jonathan, Dan, Nate, Kevin, Jonathan, Lisa-Lynn, Danielle and Kevin

2010 Summer Interns

Raising Tower #1 Geneva Style

With the combined efforts of the Geneva Team 2010, summer interns and staff from El Refugio, we were able to raise the first of the three, 40 foot towers for the climbing wall. The most remarkable thing about this was we were able to do so without the use of a crane. Geneva earned the right to name the first tower, we are just waiting to hear the name they have chosen.

(For more information on the climbing wall refer to the past blog entitled "Reduce Reuse Recycle from the April 2010 archive)

Why we do What we do

These were two of my favorite pictures from

VBS. On the left is Katherine, our guard's

daughter. She was so captivated by the bubbles, she was trying to catch them with her mouth. On the right is our "little David". The theme for the VBS was "David and Goliath." This last spring Howard had children from the jungle town of Durano collect over 500 rocks. Our interns then marked the rocks with the words faith, love, hope, courage and trust. The kids then decorated the rocks and made a small sling which they decorated as well. Finally, they made a waistband to hold the sling. You can see in David's left hand the pouch with the rocks. The only concern we had was that the kids would really get into the theme and trying taking down a Goliath or two.

Geneva First Baptist 2010

Geneva First Baptist Church arrived twelve days ago with 51 people, mainly Juniors and Seniors in High School with about 9 adult counselors. This church has been largely responsible over the last 9 years for all of the building projects at El Refugio. What we appreciate about their leadership is they just "get" the idea of "reciprocal" ministry. They come every year and invest in our ministry and at the same time we provide opportunities and programming to invest in their kids lives and spiritual journeys. For twelve days El Refugio just "popped" like popcorn. The kids hauled, chopped, cleared and built many different projects. They also hosted a VBS for the kids in the bario and this year there was a first, they discovered the empanada lady in Calacali who delivers, even at 10:00 at night!

Thank You Geneva

Dios Te Bendiga!

Geneva 2010

Danielle helping with programming

Jonathan helping with VBS

Danielle VBS

Jonathan VBS

Danielle "snack girl"

"Gringos"