The Adventures de Ashley and Kassara: Our favorite family!

This blog has been super difficult to update! We haven’t had fast enough internet to upload pictures. One night I tried uploading 28 pictures. I left it up ALL night long while I slept and it was only on number 21 when it stopped working completely. Very frustrating! So now I am at an internet café waiting for them to upload! It is still taking forever! Kids are all standing around my computer in my personal space to see what I am looking at haha.

There is one family that we absolutely love! The whole family is so sweet and so humble. They live up the mountain behind our house in a tiny one bedroom house/shack. Their father died a couple of years ago and left the mom with six children. This poor family has only one hammock and no beds. We have no idea where they are sleeping or what they are sleeping with because there are not even blankets in the house. Their water supply is simply a pipe running into an overflowing bucket and this is where they get their drinking water, wash their dishes, and do their laundry. Their living conditions are so sad and unhealthy. However, with nothing, they still seem so happy and blessed. We hike up the mountain once or twice a week to visit this family bringing them school supplies, taking pictures with them, blowing bubbles, putting together puzzles and just playing with them. The little kids love it. We are actually taking the family a pila tomorrow and we are so excited. A pila is a free standing sink with three different compartments, one for water storage, one for washing dishes, and one for washing clothes. Everyone uses pilas here and it will greatly improve their living conditions. Getting it up there will be a difficult task though; it is 400 lbs and the path to their house is straight up hill. Luckily we have found ward members who are willing to help… we will see how it goes.

Here is their water supply. They have a pipe going into this bucket that is constantly overflowing. They use the small board to wash their clothes on.

This is the inside of their house. They cook on an open fire, have a dirt floor, and they have nowhere to sleep.

Bubble blowing!

Having fun taking pics with the kids!

Kass helping them put together a spongebob puzzle!

We helped the girls make flowers for their hair! They loved them and even wore them for the family pictures!

Kass and Anna

Puzzle Complete!

Here is the family photo! The mom’s name is Alicia, and the kids are Erica 19, Victor 17, Gisenia 14, Gilbert 10, Anna 6, and Alex 4. Seriously the best family! There are many other families who are in this same condition but this has been our favorite. They don’t ask for money or toys (like other children here) they are just happy to see us and are so grateful for what we do give them. Before we leave we hope to get them a wood stove, a water purifier, and new outfits/ toys for each of the kids.

Us and Victor!

So we delivered the pila! And by we I mean the two of us and about 15 young strong men who were willing to help. We helped carry the pila for about 50 yds before the boys decided it was easier without us. Saying it was a difficult task is certainly an understatement. It took these fifteen men three hours to carry it to the house. The combination of the weight and the slippery 2 mile trail up hill were not to our advantage. Feeling a little worthless Ashley and I ran down the mountain and bought back soda for everyone helping. The family was so grateful! They all helped as much as they could; the oldest brother helped carry the whole way, the grandpa and the nine year old boy went crazy with the pitch axes widening the trail and the mother bought food for everyone (probably using all of the little money she had). It was such a great feeling when we finally got it all set up at their house. Despite their faces, they really were so happy, they just don’t believe in smiling in pictures. We try so hard to get them to smile but as soon as we pull out the camera the smiles disappear. The littlest ones are starting to catch on though.