This week was a great week, a little exhausting a little hot and a little cold, but at the end of the day, I wouldn't change it!
This week we had a service project at the house of the Benitez family.... Hermano Benitez works making and selling peanut candy. He has to work all night making the candy then leaves early in the morning to sell it, sleeps a little during the day and then gets to work again making the candy. So when we went to their house on Saturday, Hermano Benitez was sleeping and we were talking with his daughter helping her wash her clothes, when I saw their spicket of water (their only source of water) and underneath was basically a swamp that the little kids and everyone had to walk in to get water. So I asked if they had ever tried making a trench, Diana his daughter said yes, but that her sisters always do it and then only halfway do it and not very well. So I grabbed the shovel and we started to work. We made a nice big trench for the water to flow through, and as I was finishing the trench I had to start digging closer to the spicket... We found a pipe and took care not to hit it and to clear its path way, but unfortunately the other pipe... that actually leads to the water, had not yet be found. And this pipe was found in the worst way possible.... I broke it..... I basically just wanted to find a hole to crawl into to hide when Diana went to ask her dad where the valve is to turn off the water and he came out of his room to see what was going on, stressed, tired and a little upset. He came over to look at what was going on... and as we continued talking and planning how to fix it. He just started to die laughing.
This week we had a service project at the house of the Benitez family.... Hermano Benitez works making and selling peanut candy. He has to work all night making the candy then leaves early in the morning to sell it, sleeps a little during the day and then gets to work again making the candy. So when we went to their house on Saturday, Hermano Benitez was sleeping and we were talking with his daughter helping her wash her clothes, when I saw their spicket of water (their only source of water) and underneath was basically a swamp that the little kids and everyone had to walk in to get water. So I asked if they had ever tried making a trench, Diana his daughter said yes, but that her sisters always do it and then only halfway do it and not very well. So I grabbed the shovel and we started to work. We made a nice big trench for the water to flow through, and as I was finishing the trench I had to start digging closer to the spicket... We found a pipe and took care not to hit it and to clear its path way, but unfortunately the other pipe... that actually leads to the water, had not yet be found. And this pipe was found in the worst way possible.... I broke it..... I basically just wanted to find a hole to crawl into to hide when Diana went to ask her dad where the valve is to turn off the water and he came out of his room to see what was going on, stressed, tired and a little upset. He came over to look at what was going on... and as we continued talking and planning how to fix it. He just started to die laughing.
This man, who only had one way to get water, to bath his children and his grandchildren, to cook his food and his candy that he sells, to drink. Started laughing. I was confused of course, not understanding how he could laugh at something so serious, and he just looked at me and told me "if you take everything in life seriously, you're never going to be happy and look at you, you're covered in mud and its hilarious."
I know at first he was stressed, he knew how serious it was that we had broken this pipe, but I also learned something from him that day. Even when life gets hard, even when we have hit our bottom and then we get packed down deeper in this hole, there is always something to be happy about, there is always something to laugh at, and there is always something we can do to make things better.
I love you all! And I hope that you can all keep smiling through the good times and the bad. This life is short, and theres something even better waiting for us :)
Love,
Hermana Speakman
(sorry theres not a picture of my awesome trench, it was night time by the time we fixed everything up haha but next week!)
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