Day 4 & 5 - Military Base (take 2), Food Court, Flood Survivors, the Chinese Restaurant, and Ahuachapán

We visited the military base once again and this time we spoke to two groups of soldiers - army men and those in the military band. The band was awesome; they not only played El Salvador's national anthem, but they had also prepared, as a special gift of thanks and appreciation, something just for us (or for Bethel's Korean members, rather) - the South Korean National Anthem. You should've heard it - every adult and even some of the young'uns who knew the lyrics were singing along to the music.

On the way to lunch, we played a friendly game of "Give me your hand so I can smack it till it hurts!" (I know that's not the real name of the game, but it might as well have been!) Here's Becca getting ready to put the hurt on people...

For lunch we went to a Mexican restaurant - of all the places to visit - and we had some tortas (Mexican sandwiches). I was quite impressed because they were mighty tasty.

Afterwards, one of the elders needed to panhandle for money because he was the only one who hadn't paid for a return-trip ticket... haha, just playin'! That's my money in the guitar case. =p

But what we ended up doing outside of that restaurant was even crazier than panhandling... it was around 100 degrees, the ground was scorching so bad you could see heat waves rising, but even still, we busted out our whole shebang for all the people who gathered around... and there were tons!


On the way to our next destination our brothers Tony and Pastor José Guerrero decided to gives us their best "crazed lunatic" impersonations...

We were left speechless, hehe.

Our next stop was a small, makeshift village that we had visited last year when it was still in shambles:

(picture taken last year)

The US donated funds to this little community this past year, and it showed; the main roads were all paved, none of the houses were aluminum shacks like the ones you can see at the bottom of the picture - this time they were all the same kind of pink, cement houses with doors and some lots even had gates around them. They housed an inumerable amount of children born to parents who were displaced because of a flood early in '04.

For dinner we were treated by one of the local church members to a fancy Chinese dinner. Besides the highway inspection guards, I never saw any police officers, but these guys were everywhere:

Most businesses have a private security guard with either a shotgun, AK47, or some other type of powerful firearm for protection. Needless to say, we felt safe wherever we went.

The next day we visited a small town in the western part of El Salvador named Ahuachapán. Our first stop was Ahuachapán's central plaza. That same day the mayor allowed us to host our shindig in the center of the town for the world to see. After we were done at the central plaza, we went to a more rural locale on the outskirts of that same town where the corn fields and all of nature's beauty were truly a sight to see. There we prayed for a woman who had been bedridden for 6 months, held a service at the local pastor's house, and I also managed to catch this little fellow flying around: