Hola…
Today we finished the home that we were
working on. Altogether this entire group will be finishing up 6 homes. Project
Mexico has had other teams down here already, and will be having more groups
coming down before the end of the summer. All in all they will be building 25
homes. That will be 25 families that will be receiving new homes with no
strings attached. What a blessing it has been for the team to be a part of
this. It has also been wonderful to see how God has been working on building
the community within our Ohio team and the other teams from all across the
country and Canada that we have been able to join up with. I cannot encourage
people enough to participate in one of these trips…it is an awesome and rewarding
way to spend your vacation.
Stucco, Step One…
The first step of putting on the stucco is to
sift the sand to get the rocks and gravel out. Altogether we sifted about 48
five gallon buckets.
Stucco, Step Two…
Six buckets of sand, 1 – 80 pound bag of
cement, 2 shovels of lime, about 3 buckets of water, and a lot of backbreaking
stirring produces a batch of stucco. Since I was helping do this today, and
mixing 8 batches of this stuff I did not get any pictures. The one above is
what we did to mix the batches of concrete, which is the same technique…four
people mixing and stirring until we had an oatmeal-type mixture.
Stucco, Step Three…
The rest of the team grabbed the mortarboards
and trowels and spent the day applying the stucco to the walls. This will be
the first coat on the house. After it has dried for a few days the Project
Mexico staff will return to the site and put on a final smooth coat that the
family will be able to paint at a later date.
The final step of the project…
One of the beautiful parts of this work is
that we are doing all of this work for our Lord. We have been starting each day
off with morning prayers and devotions and ending each day with evening
prayers, each followed with private meditation and prayer time. This is such a
critical part of doing this kind of work. We were not building this home for
our satisfaction but for the Lord and a fellow family in need. This focus on a
spiritual process continued into the turning of the home over to the family.
The priest that resides over St. Innocents goes to each home and conducts a
blessing service for the home. We all then share with the family our
appreciation for being able to serve them and then give them the keys to their
new home. There is much joy and many tears because we will most likely not see
this family again in this life.
Our team…
Before cleaning up the worksite and heading
out we took some pictures to remember our new found friends and family. This
picture includes the family, the staff that we had on our team, our entire
team, and Fr. Nicklas.
To reward the team for a wonderful job we
stopped at our favorite taco stand again, drove around a little bit, and then
stopped at a wonderful small bakery for treats. On our way to the worksite, we did
a Chinese fire drill…all of us, and on our way home we were rocking out on some
Mexican rap music…quite a sight to see (and hear) for the crew that we had
here.
Tomorrow is our day of rest before we pack up
and head home. We will start the day off with a liturgy (Eastern Orthodox
worship service). Then we have planned a half-day of sports (soccer,
volleyball, basketball, and whatever else) with the boys and a trip to the
beach. We pack up early on Monday morning and head back to the airport to
return home. Thank you for the opportunity to share our adventure with you.
I understand that some of your email servers
are dropping the pictures from these emails. If that is the case you can see
the same email with the pictures in my blog at http://journeys-of-a-redeemed-child.blogspot.mx/
If you would like to get more information on
Project Mexico and St. Innocent Orphanage you can check them out at http://projectmexico.org/Home.aspx. I have also been posting updates on Facebook (david.b.short) if
you would like to follow those updates.
Thanks for your prayers and thoughts.
