What's in a name?

It is the last day here and I've only blogged once, so I thought I'd better do one NOW. Well, it seems that many of us have been given different names and/or nicknames. For example Neal is being called Ronaldinho, the Brazilian superstar soccer player, however more so because of his long flowing dreadlocks and ever-present broad boyish smile than his futbol (soccer) skills. Myself, I'm being called Zidane, the French soccer player who was ejected from the World Cup for head butting another player..... I am hoping it is because of my shaved head and good looks; not my bad temper and random acts of violence. Haha. : )

Of course this has caused us to develop nick names for each other, like Shim-shim, Darddi and Lyds among others.... besides the numbering system our fearless leader devised to tell if we were all on the bus, plane or boat. You see we all have a number, Nathan (Natan) is numero uno (1), I am nueve (9), all the way up to quince (15)... that is Brad (also known as Mateo) cuz he was the last to arrive, but you will hear about that later. So, every time we gathered Nathan would shout UNO!, and I mean shout (come on y'all know how loud he is, it isn't a secret!) and we would count off in Spanish. I am quite sure it was very amusing to the locals, especially since we had some difficulty with it most of the time. Not because we didn't know our number but we were never paying much attention to Nathan.

Silliness aside, and there was much silliness, I know because I was voted the youngest person on the trip.... attitude wise. We did get some work done on the property. We managed to finish spackling some drywall, cemented a rather dangerous ladder in place (read between the lines Nathan almost fell off of it) that lead up to the roof, clean a great deal of water (it's the rainy season here in the high desert) and debris off the roof, put a tarp down and created some additional drain overflows to ease the ponding problem, and fixed a leaking drain among other small issues . As well, I surveyed the condition of another leaking roof and the general conditions of the buildings and facilities so I can assist in organizing future work efforts.

We had a total blast and become a true "family in Christ" on this trip. We have all bonded in our service to Him. I whole heartedly challenge everyone who reads this to take a risk and experience what serving can really mean to you!

David (Zidane) Dardzinski