Arrival in Santa Ana
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2009
1
17
Trip End
Jul 31, 2009
Santa Ana, El Salvador
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Susie had never seen Romero, so we watched it together. It got pretty late. I was so wound up I ended up not sleeping at all, just staying up until 2:50 when we started getting ready to leave.
Our flights and layover were uneventful and we arrived in El Salvador on time. The customs workers were all wearing masks due to swine flue cases.
Only Susie had her nametag on - we couldn't find ours, although I had packed them as soon as we got them!
We found them later in one of our carryons.
Yessenia and Henry were waiting for us. We recognized them from our visit in 2006. Sergio took us to the van and gave us water while we waited for the other 2 people arriving around the same time, Mary Jane and Mercy.
We were shocked when the van pulled into a hotel! We thought we were staying at the foundation offices! I guess married couples get to stay at the hotel, and their family members, which included Susie, who got her own room! This was a pleasant surprise.
The van came back and got us for dinner and we had prayer, dinner and a short meeting going over some general guidelines. There were no introductions, you just got to know people by mingling and talking. I like that much better!
2006 partial mission trip explanation for anyone interested:
In 2006 we decided to spend a week in Nicaragua traveling independently and then go on a mission trip in El Salvador. I booked our flights and then learned the mission trip was very full! (Somebody didn't read the mission trip handbok!) We made arrangements to join the trip for just the day the sponsored children meet their sponsors. This was done through the Kansas offices.
So we went to Nicaragua and had a wonderful time, and took a bus across the border into Honduras and stayed in Copan for a few days and then bussed to Santa Ana and then took a taxi to Hotel Sahara and called CFCA to tell them we had arrived. I'm not sure they knew about us! They seemed to scramble to pull everything off, but they did, and the next morning we met Veronica and her mom at a water park. We had a great day and CFCA invited us to go with them the next day, too. They even came and got us for dinner that night! So we went out to a school in a subproject with them the next day. And then they invited us to go to the capital with them the next day! But we had more time to spend in Santa Ana so we declined. Those 2 days were enough to convince us that CFCA is the real deal!
