Kids' Perspective of Villa Hermosa

Straight from our children's lips come their stories about their experience in Villa Hermosa.

C (8 years old):

I liked playing baseball, and I really liked meeting Jeffrey (our bus driver's 18-year-old son), and I especially liked working - it was really fun.

Me and J were really tired, so we took a nap one day. I was sleeping and I heard a blow on me and I was wondering what it was. It was Antonio, so I woke up and he took my hat. I was running after him to try to get it. So we were running around chasing each other playing tag. At the end of our last day there, I gave Antonio my Colorado Rockies hat since he really liked it.

Mommy handed me the camera so I took pictures of him and he kept on wanting me to take more and pointed to things for me to take pictures of.

One day, Antonio said my name and pointed out the rest of the (American) people and knew many of their names, but I had to help him with some of their names. I thought it was cool that he wanted to get to know the people from our church group.

Every day we played baseball. On Tuesday, I played baseball and I was trying to scootch up to hit, and another kid said "after me" in a little bit of English. So after him I tried to go up to bat, but there was a 15-year old girl there and she went up before me.  When she swung really hard it hit my back a little bit and so my back was sore from that day on.

E (10 years old):

I liked making friends. One of the really cool friend experiences for me was this little girl named Dana. She was sitting all by herself and she looked bored and sort of sad. So I asked her if she wanted me to take a picture of her and she said "no," but since I said it in English I figured she didn't understand so I took a picture of her anyway and showed it to her. Then she was really excited when she saw it so I let her use my camera and she took pictures -- lots of pictures and she really liked it. On all the days after that, she would find me and give me a hug. So we became really good friends, even though she's just six years old.

The kids came early for VBS on Monday so they started playing in the side yard of the church. I thought it was a good time to take pictures so all these kids came up and wanted me to take their picture and show it to them. A girl named Michelle wanted to take a picture of me with some of her friends and she took a lot of pictures with my camera. When she gave it back to me she said "thank you" in English. She started talking to me and so we talked and became friends and played together the rest of the days and tried to communicate.

On Sunday, we had lunch with a family and I got to know the little boy named Antonio. The next day I was carrying Dana on my back and Antonio remembered me and called me by my name. So I said "hola" and I thought it was really cool that he recognized me.

On Sunday, they gave us little paper presents that say "God Loves You" in Spanish and I thought it was really nice of them to make those for us. Even though they don't have very much, they made something for us and that showed me that they really cared about us and were thankful that we were there.

I liked it when Lorena braided my hair. On the first day she braided K's hair. I really liked that so mommy told her that, so she braided my hair on Wednesday and she braided mommy's hair, too.

On the last day when we got on the bus, we hadn't even left Villa Hermosa yet and I already missed the people.

I really want to go back!