Starting at Roblealto

Hi everyone!
We have finally started our work at Roblealto this week. We are 3 days into it and have already learned a lot. We were so excited to begin what we came here to do!

There is a small team of college students from Washington that is at Roblealto this week as volunteers so it's been good for us to see what it looks like to have a volunteer group. This is the last team that comes until February when Ridgewood will be coming, so it was key that we are there this week to see how it looks. We were able to jump right in! Unfortunately, Pamela (our boss in the International Department) injured her foot and is out this week, but Steve (who was our initial contact at Roblealto) has taken over and helped with the organization and support of this team. We have so much to learn about Roblealto over the next several weeks, but this week we get to be around the homes and help with the projects - painting, organizing the free clothes store... one of the girls on the Washington team is an artist and is painting a beautiful mural for the school. We've gotten to use a little bit of Spanish with a few kids and the Roblealto staff, but are mostly hanging out with the volunteers and learning as they do.

We are excited about our new office space that Steve prepared for us. It's a beautiful room, but lacks furniture so one of the first things we'll be doing is rounding up some furniture. We got an old table and sanded it down and painted it today so we have a conference table for when we all sit down as an International Dept. team to talk about our goals and roles. Mark and I have a lot of ideas of what we hope to be involved in, but our roles are sure to develop and change over the year. Mark has been working on Roblealto's new website and is planning to launch it in the next week or so. One of our jobs will be acting as reporters for what is happening at Roblealto to go on the website so that you all can keep up to date with the organization. We'll be sure to let you know when the site is active!

Please continue praying for our Spanish as we are now really needing to use it! There are a lot of new construction terms that we haven't learned in school, obviously! Pray also for us as we learn about Roblealto and experience the many parts of the organization - there will be a huge learning curve coming! Thanks for all your prayers and continued support. We can't believe we've been here over a month and we are doing well. God is good!