summer blessings

I was a little unsure of how my first summer in Colorado would go. For the past several summers, I just have gone away to a certain place for a long time (like Chile or YouthFront), and that was pretty much my summer. Granted, my summer is full of trips, but it's been awhile since I've had this spurts of down time in between.

But let me just say now, it's been awesome.

I have just been so blessed by the friends I have here. And they are friends in a whole different way than I've ever had friends before. So now I'm going to try to explain how cool they all are.

For the fourth year in a row, I am part of a rec league softball team.

Yeah I look good. Even though it's a church team, I really don't know many of the people on my team. I was friends with two of the girls, but then they moved. So one of the ways I've been blessed is by people coming to watch my games. I'm pretty sure at least two Wysockis have been at every game.

Angie and Sophie are like the sisters I never had, and their family has blessed me in so many ways from giving me a room to feeding me to attending my sports events--and I'm not even that good.

Those pictures are from my game two weeks ago when Jeff G. and the girls came. I only know Jeff from being Mark and Angie's friend and from visiting, but for some reason he quickly became a part of my family of friends as well.

Then a week ago at my game eight people showed up to watch. And this place is at least 15 minutes away from Arvada. Jean and Angie were there of course, then my boys who are finally back Jake and Seth, two of my El Salvador girls Kristen and Kim, one of the senior guys Max, and Joe Kingry--along with his two dogs.

I was a little disappointed because I was playing right field that night, but I did get two hits which is rare so that's good. But anyway, I remember just kind-of pausing that night and thanking God for the people he has placed in my life here in the past 9 and a half months. Who knew rec league softball could be such a profound experience?

Sherpas, I'll always remember you.

On Wednesday Angie left town for five days. She gets back tonight. And Sophie and Mark and Nic and Ev have all been gone for the past 10 days in Alaska, and they get back tomorrow. So in all of those people's absence, I think I was forced to kind-of step out of my box in my friendships, or else I was gonna have a boring five days.

Praise the Lord for the El Salvador team because on Wednesday night I hung out with about half of them. All students. Wednesday night can also sum up why these past few days have been so awesome.

Jesse told me him and his cousin were gonna play disc golf, which I have been missing a lot here in the CO because not too many people play. So I passed the word on to Ben Gager, which is where another friendship blessing comes in.

The Gager family. I feel like I'm becoming one of them.

That's Ben and Beth and me. There's eight kids in that family, six of whom I'd say I'm friends with, with one more a soon-to-be-friend I think. Not to mention the parents are da bomb as well. That Wednesday they invited me to dinner before disc golf time, and after disc golf we went back there and watched a movie with like the entire family. On Saturday, I spent like six hours at their house playing on the trampoline, trying to beat Ben in this stupid tennis game, watching Star Wars, and of course, having dinner. The very next day they invited me to lunch with them after church and when I walked in, Mom Gager was like, "Oh here comes our eldest daughter."

As I told Jean the other night, the Gagers are like the big family I never had. Not that I don't appreciate my own family, because I loved growing up in the Tate house. But it's like life at the Gagers is never boring, and when I'm around them, I really do just feel like part of the family. Plus people always say Beth and I look like sisters.

Back to Wednesday night. Ben, Beth and I headed out to the disc golf course to meet up with Jesse, Laurel, Brittany (all of them from my El Salvador trip), Morgan and Jesse's cousins. The actual disc golf game was not all that awesome, considering the course is full of really tall grass, Ben and I were having allergy attacks, I lost my frisbee in this swampy tall grass area for 20 minutes and practically broke out into hives looking for it, but the company was good for sure.

Near the end of our game, we were joined by Kristen Felten. She's another new blessing to my life for sure.

That's us in The Salvador. Her best friend Rachel (also really cool) was out of town this past week as well, so Kristen and I turned to each other and it's been sweet. She's the first high school girl from church that I really feel like I've connected with.

So after the high-allergy game of disc golf, and before movie time, me and Ben and Bethany and Kristen all went to Cold Stone and talked about how we all miss our siblings in Alaska. And got in the fountain.

Not quite sure if that's allowed, but whatever.

Also in the past few days we've played two games of ultimate frisbee which is always bomb, spent some time with my junior high girls, went to a fire at Max's house with the boys and had a...somewhat okay day at Elitch's (the Six Flags of Denver) with the junior high youth group.

So to sum it all up, I'm finding that in this new stage of my life my friendships look much different than the usual all-peer friendships in the past. I've been blessed by cool people in my life from ages 8 to 50-something recently and they are all the reason this summer has been, well, da bomb. Plus after experiencing like the worst winter ever in Denver, we're now having one of the hottest summers ever, which you know makes me happy.

And speaking of my bomb summer, here's where I'll be for the next couple months:

July 1-7: Kansas for a week at YouthFront Camp South!!

July 12-15: Dallas for Aunt Melinda's wedding and practically a family reunion.

July 19-21: Glendo lake trip with church.

July 22-27: Denver inner-city mission trip with the junior high kids.

August 12-19: Wonderful beautiful Florida with the fam.

Holla! And don't forget to read my El Salvador blog right below here if you missed that one.

the story of the salvador

As I begin this epic tateblog, I'd like to start by saying thank you to all of you who prayed for and supported me and my team on this trip. You are awesome, and God used you in El Salvador just as he used us. Amen.

We arrived at the airport at 8am on Friday, June 1. There was already a handful of students there even though they weren't required to be there until 8:30. Everyone was pretty much pumped. All 19 of us: 12 students and 7 leaders.

It had been three years since my last Chile trip, so I was getting so excited to be in a Spanish-speaking country again.

We landed in San Salvador, El Salvador at around 8pm. My weak Spanish skillz were immediately called upon when we realized the customs people didn't speak English. Fortunately for me, Chileans speak Spanish at a ridiculously fast rate and drop letters from words, so listening to the Salvadoreans speak was much easier.

The humidity hit my Colorado friends like a ton of bricks as soon as we walked out of the airport doors. I just felt at home. I miss the humidity. We got on a nice air conditioned bus that took us to our home for the night.

We stayed in San Salvador one night in a nice little bed and breakfast-type place and headed out to the village of San Isidro the next morning.

Pulling into that village was pretty intimidating. People just stared at us. I mean, I guess I understand why, seeing as not many cars even drive through there and rarely does a large group of gringos show up. I still couldn't help but wonder if these people would even like us.

I was quickly proven wrong. We were greeted at the church with smiling faces. The pastor went on and on about how grateful he was we were there. One of the first things we did that day was walk around the village just to check things out. I remember that first day I was wearing flip flops on those muddy streets and so scared of where I was walking. But San Isidro became home so quickly that none of that mattered within a couple hours probably.

One of our first visits was to a chicken farm.

The chicken farm, from what I understand, was a partnership with the Compassion project where we stayed. Basically, chickens and coffee are muy importante to this community.

As we left the farm and stopped to learn more about coffee, I noticed those two boys from the picture up there had followed us out and were watching us. I turned and looked just as one of them I think was making fun of my hair, because, well, it looked like this:

We wore name tags that day so the people we met would know our names. As we started walking away then, that same boy said, "Bye-bye Ta-tay" (which is the Spanish pronunciation of my last name, for those of you who are confused.) It was almost a little creepy sounding but I laughed anyway.

So those boys actually started walking back with us too, and Joe Kingry and I started conversation with them and talked the whole way back. Their names are Wilmer and Jorge, and they became two of our best kid friends we made there. And that all happened within like an hour, no joke. Because this picture was us all hanging out later that day at some other coffee place (I don't know, I was never paying very good attention during the tours.)

I don't really remember the timeline of that day, but somewhere in there we also played soccer and it was way fun.

It wasn't as fun though as when we played later in the week in the pouring rain. I mean seriously pouring. It was awesome; nothing can compare. As Mark said, we all looked like we were in a Gatorade or Nike commercial or something. One of those moments you see in movies or dream about but never think you'll live.

The rain comes out of nowhere in El Salvador. At least it did when we were there. We tended to just work and play straight through.

Life in San Isidro was simple.

We slept on air rafts in the classrooms that had already been built. The first night was a little rough. Those rafts are not too comfortable and also really loud. Nonetheless, it was fine.

We didn't shower much, seeing as there was only one showered that only worked sometimes. We just used wet wipes and water. A little gross, but it was fine. Plus the rain helped.

We all brushed our teeth together outside for the most part.

It was a great moment of community. Same with the bathroom we all shared. We all washed our hands using bowls we filled with water from the giant water source called a pila or something. I wish I had a picture of that, but I guess it's kind-of weird to take a picture in the bathroom. Especially since that was a place most of us hated by the end.

The streets were small, but we never needed to go anywhere anyway.

Except to occasionally walk down the street to get a 25 cent coke. We just lived simply, and it was great.

On Sunday we got up and got ready for the day. The locals told us we'd be taking a little hike...maybe about 30 minutes. At least, that's what we thought they said.

In reality, it was something like 4 or 5 hours long. Crazy. We hiked up a mountain.

The really cool thing, as you can kind-of tell from the picture, was that a whole bunch of the local people from the church--between 20 and 30 probably--just joined onto our hike. Just because they wanted to be with us.

There were kids and adults, women and men, most of them dressed in jeans and not carrying water or anything. But they hiked that mountain better than us. You could just feel the great sense of community they have, and how they were looking out for us and one another. It was awesome.

Not to mention the very top was pretty sweet looking.

The next day we began our work project on these grounds, the end result being to have mirror classrooms to those three already built.

I guess I failed to explain at the beginning that this work project was the main focus of our trip. We worked with Compassion International, which is an organization that provides classes and services and basic needs to children in impoverished countries around the world. We raised the funds to build more classrooms for the more than 300 children in the village of San Isidro.

That Monday was by far the dirtiest. We basically just dug trenches for the foundation all day. We were seriously disgusting by the end. And exhausted. All I remember is that when they called the day, this was me (in the front):

I literally just passed out there. Muddy legs and all. One of the best naps of my life.

Day two of work was mostly some shoveling some cement mixing cutting rebar and the ever-monotonous job of moving dirt. We did a lot of that. It was nuts. That was the day Mark and I were supporting the KWTA for Mel.

Kirkwood Women's Tennis Association that is. Holla.

The work project was great, but the best part of the trip by far for me was the kids.

Words can't describe the feeling I got from being able to communicate with them, joke with them, watch them play, play with them and just see the great joy in their lives. It was amazing.

On Wednesday we didn't do a whole lot of work because most of the day we were having a field day with the Compassion kids.

We played on this soccer field across from the church, which was the most well-kept clean piece of land in the entire village. I guess they like that game of futbol just a little bit.

Anyway, we played Tag and Red Light Green Light with the kids and then got in groups to play with bubbles.

They LOVED the bubbles. Blowing them, chasing them eating them, whatever. I've never seen such excitement over bubbles. Even my favorite little boy Jose, who seemed terrified of my most of the time, was jumping around in excitement and let me take his picture.

Actually, the kids loved pictures too. Anytime I took their picture, they ran over saying "I want to see I want to see." And then they would always want to take pictures too.

Anyway, for the rest of field day, we made some snacks and some crafts and ended the day playing with the giant parachute.

So that day was awesome for sure.

Thursday was our last day in San Isidro. In the morning a huge truck of bricks showed up, so we formed an assembly and got to work. By the end of the day, we had a massive pile of bricks.

And that's our wet laundry drying on the roof.

That was also the day no one was feeling very well, including me. I realized there were plenty of people eager to do the work that day, so I just took it easy after brick moving and focused on what I love most: playing with the kids. That afternoon was one of my favorites for sure. A group of kids were once again hanging around the work site, so Ev brought them all into the eating room and got the play-doh out.

At some point Ev left and I was all of a sudden baby-sitting eight to ten Salvadorean kids who don't speak English. I kept telling them they had to share and not mix the play-doh, and then they started mocking me. I would say "No mezclar," which is basically don't mix, and they would laugh and say "Si mezclar! Si mezclar!" And we would go back and forth with the whole "No!" "Si!" "No!" "Si!" thing. I loved every moment about it. Except for when they started telling on each other, which is when they get mad and the Spanish gets really fast and I have no idea what they're saying.

The kids were so loving. I spent like a half hour with them and they were jumping all over me and hugging me and wanting to show me their work. Then they invited me over to Carla's house (she lived across the street) to play some more. We ran around the house playing tag and hide and seek. And even though I was doing nothing with the work project, I knew that was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Everyone worked until dark that night. We even took two shifts of eating so we could get as much done as possible. It was an intense feeling moving concrete in the dark and rain. But we had to end quick, because our good-bye church service was that night.

The pastor gave us so many thanks. They made a certificate for each one of us, as well as a really cool jersey with their Compassion logo and name on it.

That's me graduating from El Salvador, as we like to say. Also my little 10-year-old friend William took that picture.

We got to sit by each other at church, it was cool. Anyway, while the people there thanked us so much, including a moment when William got up to say a few words,

I just felt an overwhelming amount of thanks for those people. For the men who worked with us so hard everyday, and always worked longer and harder than any of us. For the women who cooked us great meals (although completely unappetizing by the end) every day and were pretty much just wanting to serve us however they could. And for the kids who pretty much just blessed us beyond words.

I've gotta highlight some of my kids now, because they're the best.

This is Wilmer, Jorge and William. The latter two are brothers. They hung around the most. My favorite memory of those boys is one day they were asking me how to say "quiero" in English, which is "I want." So I told them and they all started saying "I want I want." Then I asked them what they wanted. And they said in Spanish chocolate. And that is how the phrase "I want chocolate" became one of the most commonly used English expressions from those boys. They were awesome.

The third brother to Jorge and William was Wilbur.

So cute. He was a little younger and therefore a little more shy, but he just killed us with that smile. Those boys lived right next to the church so we would often see them up in the tree overlooking our work site.

And I mean like really high in the tree. The kids just play there. There's so many less worries.

I can't forget Irvin.

He became best friends with Ben, and I would hang out with them a lot too. My name was always confusing to the kids, and one day Irvin thought my name was not Ta-te but Tatiana. I think my face of disgust at that name is what gave him the great idea to call me that constantly just to bother me. He wouldn't give it up, so I started calling him Irvina (clearly a girl's name in Spanish). He also lived across the street and was around all the time. So you could often hear us yelling across the street to each other "Tatiana!" "Irvina!" It makes you feel like you're really good at Spanish when you have inside jokes with kids.

Well if you couldn't tell, I could go on about and on and post a whole lot more pictures of the kids I grew to love in El Salvador, but maybe that will just have to come in person later. But I'll just say I miss them a lot. And they mean more to me than I think I can express here in a few memories and pictures.

But I do want to wrap this up by talking about what I learned from this trip because I'd say it's pretty significant. Some of the money we paid for this trip went to sponsoring four of the Compassion kids from San Isidro. On Tuesday, we went to visit those kids, and they were just so grateful to us and so happy to meet us. I'll never forget visiting Marlon, who lives in a one-room house. I always knew people lived in one-room houses but had never seen it. Before I always thought how awful this lifestyle must be and how depressed the people must be, etc.

But seeing the never-fading smiling face of Marlon (on the right) showed me something different.

While these people have "nothing" in our eyes, they still have joy. They still have great families. They still have an incredibly loving community. They are still blessed, just as much as I am. And you are.

We always say, "money doesn't buy happiness." But how often do we talk about how much more blessed we are than other because of all the stuff we have? Yes, those things are blessings, but God is blessing us in so many more ways than we even stop to realize.

I saw countless blessings to a seemingly "unblessed" village in El Salvador. I saw love, care, protection, joy, freedom, community, fellowship, talents, gifts, sunshine, humidity (hey, I think it's a blessing), rain, family, friends, food, God. Why should we think we need anymore than that?

God is present everywhere. And He is blessing all of us beyond belief. What I learned was so simple, and yet at the same time, so profound.

I almost just now started typing out all the blessings in my life, but then an overwhelming amount of them came to me along with the tears to my eyes. I wouldn't even know where to start. And you know what? I bet that most of the people I met in San Isidro would say the same thing.

May God bless you, and may you realize the great blessings in your life.

the exciting month of may

As I start to type this blog, I am beyond overwhelmed with all that I feel I need to report on. But in the words of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, "let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start." That's for Mel and Mar.

The beginning being where I last left off. The Tates and Poshaks and Cait all came to visit in May. It was way sweet. The parents came because it was our Youth Sunday, and that was awesome.

One of the highlights was a little hike we took. Here's our weird-looking family that went:

Not sure who's all related in that photo, but whatev. Here's our band pic too:

And me and the parents:

Also that weekend the parents all got to come to a Rockies game with us and the junior high youth group. I think they enjoyed it.

I cheered for the Royals obviously. There was more that happened that weekend, but I don't really remember it after all that's happened since then.

On Memorial Day weekend I completed my four states in four days trip. I first flew to Chicago, where none other than Steven Sweat picked me up, and spent the day with Julie and babies.


In case you were wondering, they're still really cute. Don't even worry. And they both liked me a lot up until bath and bedtime.

The next morning Angie picked me up and we started on our way the STL. And yes, after a nice dinner with the fam (including Poshaks), we did make a trip to Ted Drewes. How can you not? Saturday we made our way to Kansas, stopping in Columbia on the way to eat Lion's Choice. This trip was obviously all about the food.

In Kansas I got to be reunited with some of my fav peeps, except Emjo wasn't there so that's lame, but whatev. Here's some of the girls.

We had to take a walk around campus so I could relive 4 and a half years of memories in twenty minutes. Plus we had to stop and pray or whatever with Moses. Duh.

Oh, AND Angie had to experience what it's like to graduate from a big university.

There she is walking through the Campanile. Good work Ang.

And after some Grace EPC goodness on Sunday morning, we made our way back to the great state of Colorado. Oh, after getting some Steak 'n Shake in Topeka. That day got a little boring but at least Gar and Mel gave me a portable DVD player so we could be entertained by episodes of Arrested Development. Six of them in a row actually.

Once home, I then began my preparations for El Salvador, which I've decided to hold off a little longer on writing about because my computer battery is almost dead. Tune in next time, perhaps even later today, to read about my adventures in The Salvador. Get excited...