Last Week and Baby Washing

Last week was a long one for us. Natalie left our weekly team meeting on Monday and was sick by the time she got home. We got her on antibiotics on Tuesday afternoon for parasites in her stomach. I quickly followed by getting sick Tuesday night with parasites and starting antibiotics on Wednesday afternoon. We spent the rest of the week, until Friday, in the bathroom and/or sleeping. Needless to say we are both very happy to be healthy again!

Since we had such a short week of actual work I thought I would focus this post on our Saturday Baby Washing. So every Saturday our team runs a baby washing program in the main plaza here in Cochabamba. We are serving poor families that have no access to warm water and often this is the only time each week that their kids get a bath. We show up at 4:30 and setup two tents. The first tent is the washing tent and it is one of the tents that they setup at track meets. The other tent we setup is the clothing tent, which is actually a camping tent. The process is that we wash the babies and young kids with hot water in the first tent and then wrap them up in a towel and carry them to the second tent where they get a new set of clothes. After they are dressed we have a bunch of people who brush and do the girls' hair and will paint their nails. We also hand out bread and fruit to the kids and moms. We also setup a few tubs to wash the hair of the older kids and some of the moms if we have enough hot water. During this whole time we are playing with the kids that are waiting for their turn or are already down. We also read Bible stories to any of the kids who want to listen. The whole thing lasts about an hour. It definitely changes your perspective on what's important in life and how lucky we are to have simple things like hot water when you look into the eyes of some of these kids and see how happy they are as they splash around in the small plastic tubs. The best part about it for us is playing with the kids; no matter what your attitude is as you arrive, hearing the kids ask you to "Cargame!" which means carry me, "Salta!" which means jump, or "Corre!" which means run always brings lots of laughing and fun. The kids leave with huge smiles, new clothes, full tummies, and are sad that we will not all be together again until the following week. Here are some pictures of this past week's baby washing. We are hoping to do a drive with our softball team to collect supplies before our friends Ben and Tenesha visit in September. If you are interested in donating baby washing supplies such as hair ties and ribbons, combs and brushes, nail polish, lightly used baby and kids clothing, or baby shampoo and soap, let us know and we will get you in touch with Ben and T!