Day 29

 Hello everyone! We have been here about a month and things are going great! Tomorrow we will be finishing our 5th house and I can't wait for the family to move in! However, outside of the house building, we have also been doing outreach in a little community called Las Aves. We go out every Monday evening and gather at tiny little house with as many of the locals who are interested. We start out with a time of worship and then go into a time of bible study. The adults (almost entirely women) go inside and are taught by either Neri (welcome home staff) or Richard (orphanage staff) while the kids stay outside for crafts and teaching by Brigi (Welcome home daycare director). After that, its time for playing and passing out of muffins and hot chocolate or lemonade!

Time for worship at the outreach in Las Aves

In Las Aves, it is fairly common to see a house looking like this. This happens to be the family that will receive the house that we have been building with the extra money brought down by a church from Portland. This pic shows the beginning steps of prepping for the foundation.

Another home out in Las Aves

Some of the kids out herding turkeys

We were blessed this past weekend by the fairly random visit from some of my wonderful family! Jen and Gabe caught a ride down to Ensenada with my aunt Carolyn and grandma, and then hitched a ride down here to VG last Friday with Jackie. We put them right to work and the spent the first part of Saturday digging for the foundation at a brand new site and then laying block at a house in progress. We were able to hit up the beach in the afternoon and then had an evening full of games and laughter to complete the experience. My aunt, uncle, and grandma came down on Sunday and we gave them the tour and they were able to experience the orientation for a new group that had just arrived. And then just like that, they had to leave again :( It was such a wonderful treat and I am so thankful for the effort they put in to make it happen!

Jen and Gabe laying block under the direction of Steve

Ash with Jennifer. One of the amazing kids that always come and help out at the two work sites in Las Aves

Our first trip down to the beach since we've been down here. Though it is only 3 miles away, it's not exactly easy to get to... Anyways, Gabe and I had a wonderful time playing in the waves :)

Parking lot for the beach. Along with the awesome van that Ash and I get to use when we need to get around :)

And I just had to show this video of our drive out to the beach... Good times with Jen and Gabe in Mexico. We miss you SO much!

Day 19

Hello everyone, Kev has been doing a great job writing these blog updates, and now Im taking a turn on this one :) Thank you for all of your prayers and support, we are so grateful to have such great family and friends who are praying for us and what God is doing here in Vicente Guerro! One of the outreach projects Welcome Home Ministries facilitates is handing out food bags consisting of rice, beans, oil, lentils, corn masa and flour. When there is extra money left over after teams have paid to build a house, this is one of the additional projects we encourage teams to take part in, a great way to spend left over money and greatly bless those in need.  Over the summer this is one of the tasks I am responsible for helping with. Jackie and I spent the first half of the day driving to the warehouse and purchasing all the food. We then spent the afternoon measuring out proportions and bagging the items up.

The next day Jackie, Meghan and I opened the front doors and passed out one food bag per family that was waiting in line. We ended up giving out about 70 food bags, praise the Lord for providing!

The line of people stayed consistent for 2 hours!

Once a month the staff does a little birthday fiesta for all the kids whose birthdays fall in that particular month. For this month we celebrated miss Julissa, Paula and Sarah's birthdays, they get the honor of sitting in the front of the cafeteria at the special birthday table. They are each giving one present and Brigi (a member of our staff, the school director) bakes a huge cake for all the kids to enjoy. This is a very special day for the kids each month because for many it is the only piece of birthday cake they will eat, the only present they may receive and the only birthday "party" they will have. It was so touching to see these little girl's faces light up with such joy over anticipation of the cake and their one present. We have a lot to learn from these little ones who are so excited and content with so little. 

Cande our sweet kitchen cook, who has been here for 22 yrs & Abel our bus driver joined the birthday girls at the table.

God has deeply blessed us and our time here, serving at Welcome Home Outreach Ministries, we are fortunate to have this opportunity! We are also reminded that no matter where you are living, there is a mission field close by, there are so many unsaved souls that surround us everyday, so many who don't know our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You don't have to go far or look very hard to find mission work to do, even in your own neighborhoods. We are called to love as Christ loved, to serve, to be His hands and feet, to reach the lost, broken, hurting and sick and to share with them the love of Christ.  We encourage you to spend less, give more,  to think globally and act locally,  invest in others lives and love the unlovable.

"If you can't feed 100 people, start by feeding just 1." -Mother Teresa

 LOVE IS THE MOVEMENT 

Day 16

Hola!
Another week done with so much accomplished! We finished up house #2 and have three more in different stages of development. This week we had another group from Portland that consisted of a high school youth group along with a college/young adult group. They had a lot of people and since we had so many houses in progress at different sites, I was put in charge of groups and had to oversee the work being done at some of the sites. I was a little nervous at first considering a lot of this stuff I had only done once before but so far everything has worked out!

This was the main project and the house we finished this week.  It is for a family of five  who live in a tiny little shack and all share one double bed. Both parents work full time in the fields and their middle son, Bernardo, attends the day care at Welcome Home. In addition to the house, we are also able to provide an additional bed and some other furniture that had been donated from the states.

I always end up getting dirty, no matter what job I have.

Bernardo's dad was so thankful and started to tear up a little while telling us how much it meant to him.

It was a touching time to see God bringing people together from very different cultures and lifestyles and to have both sides leave feeling they have been blessed. I just want to say again how amazing it feels to be able to present a home to a family who is so in need. Even more so when it is a home that you have put a lot of hard work into. It is so awesome that God continues to provide the funds for these homes. They really do change lives.

On a different note, we figured we would meet some interesting people during our summer here in Mexico, but we hadn't expected to meet a man from Ireland who was doing a record breaking jog across the world. Yes, the world. Over 31,000 miles. Running. He had made a connection with Welcome Home and ended up staying here for a night on his journey. We had some good conversations with him over dinner and breakfast and he ended up bunking in my room for the night so I was able to chat with him a little more. He has some crazy stories and is a really inspiring guy. You should check out his site.