Today was a hard dance for me as leader of the day because as the choreographer I was not allowing myself to learn from others. I, Bethany Williams, picked day 16 to be leader because it was the LAST DAY for the Community Action Project and I was really interested in signing up. When we arrived at Rio Blanco, we skipped our welcome coffee break because we had too much work to do! I really love how everyone went directly to work when we got there – there was no questions asked about where to start and what to do. We all know what had to be done and so then we completed our task to best of our capabilities.

We continued from where new left off yesterday in two groups: painting and construction. The painting group continued to paint the mural with all the details, making colorful shapes and writing the alphabet in English and Spanish. The alphabet will turn into an interactive game with Rio Blanco words and pictures for each letter of the alphabet. I helped with mostly a lot of painting. The construction group worked on the see-saw, making grooves in the sides of the wood planks where students will sit, sanding the boards and watching the welder cut the base to be shorter.

During lunch, I asked everyone to tell the group what they were working on and what they still had to do in the afternoon. We all helped each other finish what needed to be done. If someone saw a task that seemed incomplete we would make sure that it was finished completely. In the last hour of work, the see-saw was painted, the mural was finished with some beautiful bamboo, screws were installed in the alphabet wall and we had a closing dedication with the campesinos.  As we gathered together, Esteban expressed to us that his vision and our creativity and hard work is greatly appreciated because it will last forever. He said, “Don’t think what you did here is little; it is actually a very big step for the future of the children of our community.”

I am proud of myself for being a leader today. I felt sick when we first arrived at Rio Blanco because I was starting to stress out when getting ready to paint. I had the colors I needed but the fact was that I was trying to be perfect when I was starting so I was being too hard on myself. But today was my fourth favorite day because the person who most inspired me was Eliza, the Executive Director because that morning when we were leaving to go to CAP day two, she had said, “I loved the great work and the mural is looking awesome.” So that helped me get through the day, because she was very encouraging.

On this Wonderful Wednesday July 16, 2014 from Bethany Williams, Leader of the Day.