On Sunday, June 6th, we had the opportunity to join with BMDMI's church in San Gregorio to celebrate a baptism service in a nearby river.  We traveled down the rough dirt road for several kilometers to finally arrive at a part of the river that had been dammed up to make a swimming hole.  On one end is a beautiful waterfall that cascades down the rocks for about 40 to 50 feet and ends below on a flat rocky surface.  It was a beautiful day ina beautiful place.  The only problem was that the owners of the park forgot to close up the dam until about an hour before we arrived.  So, we had to wait about an hour for the area to fill.  When it filled it was quite muddy but we went ahead with the baptisms anyway.

On the morning of May 18th, twelve year-old Katherine went to the health center for her final check-up before she was to give birth.  The nurse at the health center was a little concerned about the heart-rate of the baby so she was sent to the hospital in Jinotepe.  Upon arriving, she was checked-in and sent to the maternity ward and began the long wait.  On Friday, May 21st, she was taken into surgery where she gave birth to a baby girl by c-section. 

April and May were months with many birthdays.  Ivan David and I (Karl) celebrated our birthdays on April 14th.  Ivan turned one year-old and I turned a lot older than that.  I was a great day.  We did the typical activities with the pinata and then were entertained by some of the girls.  Some sang and others did folk dances for us.  It was a fun day. 

Friday, May 7th started with a 5:30am wake-up call from the children's home.  The voice on the other side was one of our guards informing me that Yessinia was having labor pains.  I quickly got myself together and headed out the door to pick up our director, Veronica, and race to children's home to see what was going on.  Quickly we gathered up clothing, sheets, baby clothing, toothbrush, toiletry items, and the medical file and stuffed them all into a duffle bag and rushed to the truck to take Yessinia to the hospital in nearby Jinotepe.