Mexico Trip, June 30 – Day 6

Hola…

Today was our day to rest and have fun. We started the day off with Matins at 8:30, followed that with the hours, and ended with Liturgy. It was a treat to see all of the boys from the orphanage participating in the service, many of them as Altar Boys.

Game Time…

We were able to sign up last night for beach volleyball, soccer, basketball, or whiffle ball. It was a time to spend the day just playing games with each other and the boys. Here some of us playing beach volleyball.

Head to the beach…

The orphanage is only a couple of miles from the beach. The water was cold, but it was still fun body surfing, building sand castles and just laying in the sun.

Getting ready to head home…

On our drive back from the beach we got this great view of the St. Innocents Orphanage compound. Tomorrow we pack up and head back to our normal lives. It has been enjoyable listening to all the team members sharing their stories and exchanging contact information. My desire when leading these teams is that we all come home different from what we were when we came here. I believe God has done some awesome work in touching each of our lives. It is always amazing what He can do when we set aside our personal preferences and give Him our time and resources. I wish I could make these kinds of trip available to all of you that are reading these emails. If you ever get a chance to participate in a short-term mission trip by all means seize the opportunity.

This will be the last email that I send from Mexico. I will send out a final follow up email a couple of days after I get back. On the way home I will collect everyone’s camera and copy their pictures to my computer. When I get home I will push them up to my Flickr account and those who are interested will be able to see all of the pictures. The will give you a much fuller picture of our trip.

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 again for your prayers and thoughts. It has been very encouraging to hear back from many of you along the way. May God Bless you all!

Mexico Trip, June 29 – Day 5

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.

Mexico Trip, June 28 – Day 4

Buenos Dias…

Today was another very productive day. I don’t know about the other team members, but I started hitting my mid-trip wall today. It happens on every trip because the work is hard, the sleep has not been caught up on, and the body is still adjusting to the different food. It is also a great place to reach because it provides and opportunity to reflect on just how good we have it at home. Hot showers, air-conditioned homes, fresh running water, ice cubes, and the list goes on. But the people that live here live in these conditions 24x7x365. We are so blessed back in the states and take the blessings so much for granted. I am thankful that I have the opportunity to do this once in a while to be reminded of this.

Morning mist…

Since we are staying so close to the Pacific Ocean each morning we are greeted with this morning mist. It is great, it feels great, but unfortunately it burns off long before we make it to the worksite. Most of our worksites are out in the open and in the direct, tropical sun. We have a lot of lobsters running around, but the all have big white grins on their faces.

The Frito Banditos…

One of the cool things about a trip like this is to see how the best comes out in people. By this day in the trip everyone is becoming good friends and starting to have fun together. Here Jacob, Valentina, and Jon are modeling their use of scarfs…ultimately they will be used for sun protection, but why not have a little bit of fun along the way.

Putting on the roof…

Today we split into two teams. One team worked on the roof. We put down OSB and squared the roof. When that was completed then tar paper was put down followed by tar and roofing paper. The family has some wonderful protection from the storms.

Preparing the walls for stucco…

The other half of the team put up the chicken wire, corner guards, and installed the windows. With all of this in place we will be ready tomorrow to start stuccoing the walls.

Madam Chef at work…

We have our lunches out at the worksites. It has been a fine combination of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fruit. Yesterday we even had the delicacy of tuna sandwiches. Today Mary gave us a wonderful, Chef Mary, rendition of all that we had even down to the sparkling fruit of the vine called Sprite…naturally warmed no less.

Helpers…

It has also been great to see the children step in to help. They are a little young to do any of the heavy work, but today they were able to start doing some of the painting. They are so excited about seeing their home come to fruition.

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.

Mexico Trip, June 27 – Day 3

Buenos Dias…

Well, yesterday we got the foundation in place and today we took on the framing. It is an awesome experience to have people that 3 days ago did not know each other operating as a team, a family, for a common, worthwhile cause. What a testimony for the love that comes from being common in our belief and willing to join together in a community. Each day begins and ends with a brief reading of the scriptures of the day and morning and evening prayers. This is the foundation that each of us are able to build upon to make these days work so smoothly.

Building the walls…

We started out by dividing into smaller teams. Each team had a wall section to focus on. Some of us were designated team leads based on our experiences. For many of the participants this is the first time that they have ever done this kind of work or used these kinds of tools. It was a wonderful demonstration of teamwork and willingness to serve.

Raising of the walls…

Once the wall sections were all completed we brought them all together and set them up in there planned location. Holes were drilled for the bolts in the foundation and then we started the process of squaring up the building.

Framing the roof…

The final step of the day was lifting the roof sections up on the roof and anchoring them down. This meant that some of us had the fun job of crawling around on the roof nailing everything down. Other team members were frantically cutting filler pieces and passing them up for us to finish out the edges.

Today on the way back to the compound we stopped for ice cream, which was quite refreshing after a very long and hot day.

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.