More Fun at Jovenes

Ah….I already miss being there.

In addition to the roof being done, we were able to do other things to help out while we were there.

Since the boys were usually the ones on the roof, us girls found things to keep ourselves busy when we weren’t playing with the kids  :)

dennis

One of the first things we tackled were the flower beds on the side of the building.

The ONLY things that were actually supposed to be in there were the palm trees  – good thing Dennis and Munguia found a tool to use! Some of those weeds were super strong and hard to break up.

dennis

You’ll see more of him later, too, but let me introduce Dennis. He was born without irises so he doesn’t open his eyes very much, especially outside. He was so sugary sweet to us – tons of hugs all the time and so helpful. I miss him.

Our other helper with the flower beds was Munguia, who I think is playing with an inchworm he found in this picture.

munguia

After a few hours of pulling up weeds and clearing them out, the flowerbeds looked brand new!

flowerbeds

Our helpers did a great job wheeling the weeds away in the wheelbarrow, too.

Gabby, Cindy and I also got to help serve lunch a few days while we were there. They have such a beautiful cafeteria – I love how open it is. It was fun being in here with the kids and hearing our team up on the roof at the same time!

cafe

And besides helping serve lunch and helping with the clean up/ washing dishes…

dishes

The main cook also invited us in to learn how to make tortillas from scratch!

mixer

Of course, now I can only make a batch of 200 and we used an entire 1 lb. tub of lard to roll them out  :)

cindytort

Here’s Cindy patting one of hers out. Ours were so bad at first – we couldn’t even roll them into pretty balls! His tortillas were perfectly round with no seams, and he definitely went back and “fixed” a lot of ours  :)  I don’t blame him though – some of our first ones were pretty ugly!

I did make sure to take a picture of my best one – I had to prove that I actually made one that looked good!

tort

After being patted out by hand,

tort

gabbytort

we took them over to the stove, where they were cooking them on 2 small skillets, one at a time.

stove

I can’t imagine how much slower we were than when they usually make them, but they were delicious! The cook let us taste one of our creations – I think we pulled out one of the many triangle/rectangle shaped tortillas we made to taste  :)

We also got to make sugar cookies one day, but I guess I didn’t get pictures of that. More rolling out dough by hand, cutting into cookie shapes with a cup and baking lots and lots of cookies. I’m glad we were able to help.

There was also some other cleaning up around the orphanage, especially once the tiles were all down from the roof.

sweeping

Plus the most important part and the most fun:

cindydennis

spending time with the boys.

Still to come!

  • The boys at Jovenes
  • Crazy experience we had

10 comments

  1. Wow, what an inspiring thing to do!

    I think it’d be mega fun to roll tortillas!

  2. They look like they really appreciate all the help.

    I know first hand how hard it is to make homemade tortillas because I used to do this with my students when I taught High School Spanish. So hard but so worth it :-)

  3. Thanks for sharing this with us! It’s so much fun to read!

  4. aw that is so awesome!
    -muffy

  5. Wow that’s so neat that you got to help make tortillas! I only recently discovered that most have lard in them. (Recently because before I went vegetarian, why would I care?) There are brands you can get now without lard, but I wonder what it is about lard that makes it the fat of choice for tortillas?

    Looking forward to reading more of your blog!

  6. tortillas from scratch!!? YUM

  7. What a fun adventure to read about – thanks for sharing! Looks like it was fun!

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