August 2008 Projects

We have been very busy this past month, as seen in these pictures. We began with building "cubbies" or storage shelves for the boy's in their new home, Casa Hogar. These would provide a shelf for each boy that contains two baskets that are personally theirs. Walt took the design that Scott came up with when he was here as a starting point. Walt was assisted by a missions team that was here from South Carolina. Michael first helped cut and prepare the largest of the two shelf units. He has an interesting story. When asked where he is from, thinking he would mention a city in SC, he said, "Poland". So Poland is sending someone on a missions trip to the US who then connects with a team going to Mexico! Sounds like Poland sees a need in the US for something like this. Michael would like to come back next year with a full team. Brooks helped the next day to assemble the largest unit.

Nancy's creative mind came up with the idea of a painting of a tree, void of leaves, as a way to allow missions teams to record their stay. Each person places a leaf, in the form of a palm print, on the tree with a little note about themselves. This was such a popular idea that Nancy was asked to create a mural for the boys as a record of when they came to Casa Hogar and then if they leave. The Missions Team's tree currently has some three dozen names on it. The boys tree is in their new home. They moved in a few days ago.

We were asked by the staff at JUCUM (Juventud Con Una Misión), the local Youth With a Mission base, to be part of a worship team for students that came down for SST Phase III, basically a three week survival camp. The first week we played for worship both morning and evenings and then the second week only in the mornings. The third week they were busy doing outreach projects, working with local business people and the government. On their last day we invited them all up to our home for their final recap and for dinner. It reminded us so much of our Survival Camp experiences in CA because they presented skits and videos, plus we had to grill forty-one hamburgers on our BBQ. So the training of grilling twice as many hamburgers as a griddle will hold, learned at Survival Camp CA, paid off!

Just as an aside, Walt has also begun to teach bass lessons to an older Mexican gentleman from our church. Is there no end to all of this?

We have also thrown in a couple of pictures to give you a feel of life in Mexico. One day we were driving along the highway and traffic was stopped. A loaded dump truck was stuck in the ditch crossing the highway. Call a tow truck when you have a back hoe handy? They set the backhoe up and very quickly "pulled" the fully loaded truck out of the ditch! Only in Mexico! Also, our first rains hit mid-June. There is a picture showing the storm as it sat over the lake. We are rapidly approaching the yearly average rainfall. We have another 6 weeks to go and the lake is reasonably full. The good news is that the day time temperature dropped from the low 90's to mid-70's overnight. It is always good to get the first rains and, by the way, the rains really do occur at night. Most of the time.