hiv/aids education, world cup, and palm sunday

Brittany and I spent the weekend in Soacha. Like I've mentioned before, it's about 1.5/2 hours away in bus so we stayed with Padre Carlos and his family for a couple of nights. As always, it was great to spend time with his 3 children and his wife, Janet. On Friday we met up at the church in Soacha. We played uno with a few kids and taught them colors and numbers using the cards. We are starting an after-school program there on Fridays.

On Saturday, we had our first HIV/AIDS education workshop. It went really well and 13 people showed up. We used a video, information from a book and the internet, and a few review questions to complete the lesson. We are going to have our next workshop in April, followed by a day of olympics for the kids in Soacha. It's been great forming this relationship with the community and we are really excited about starting these programs there.
Saturday afternoon, we took the soccer ball out to a field and played for two hours with some boys from the neighborhood. We played one of my favorite games, World Cup, and they loved it! It was so much fun to play soccer again, especially with a bunch of enthusiastic kids and with Padre Carlos playing goalie. After playing soccer we made decorations for the church, including a tree with our handprints.

The Palm Sunday service was great. We arrived early to decorate and set up. Then we started our procession through soacha. We started at one family's house,

walked through the streets of soacha,

and ended up back at the church to start the service.

It was a great weekend with an awesome family and community. This week we will be busy working at Usme for Holy Week (Semana Santa). It should be a great experience and a very interesting week. I'll be sure to update about it after next Sunday. I hope everyone has a great Easter!

Love, Kate