Caroline: We were told in the pre-tour literature that it was permissible to bring gifts to give to the people. Before the trip we pondered what we should bring with us. We decide to bring baseballs (they are huge baseball fans), crayons, toothbrushes, tylenol, etc. There were many highlights of this trip but the one that touched my heart was when I handed a boy of about five years old a baseball. His eyes lit up and the smile on his face was all the “thank you” I needed. It was the kiss on my check that really got to me. We gave out 12 baseballs and I wish we had brought many more of them. We gave the crayons to the little girls. They were quite surprised and happy.
On our way home from the Hemingway museum we saw a group of children walking home from school and we had Lazaro stop the bus and we gave away 5 baseballs to little boys. Unfortunately, nobody in the bus knew what we were doing so nobody was taking pictures.
At the project we gave a little boy a baseball and he was delighted. He headed home to show it off. We did get some pictures of him and what we assume was his dad. After going home for a bit, he came back and was showing off his ball
He started playing catch with his dad. He was having so much fun throwing the ball. I joined in the game and Caroline took the movies below. Check out the great catch of that pop-up I made. And observe the boy trying to figure out his pitching style in the other video. It was great playing with him.
We gave a ball to another boy and I got this picture of he and him mom.
In addition we gave gifts for Lazaro to distribute to the people in the country where he came from.