Two for the price of One!

We got back pretty late last night and it was hectic, hectic! We didn't have much time to post about the day, so we've got to bring you up to speed pretty quickly... Today is Monday, yesterday was Sunday... Sunday started out with church... We went to church at Nuevo Pacto where the staff attends church...

It is a pretty large church, so it didn't feel like the whole congregation was staring at us wondering what we were doing there! The music was great - great musicians, great feel, great saxophone (surprisingly)... During worship Jordan felt led to pray for an elderly woman, so he prayed, she prayed, they smiled and hugged and cried and then sat together for the whole service...

After the service we ate lunch at a park then headed to the Rio... If you remember from a previous post last week the Rio is a community of people who live down by the river... They are the poorest of the poor... It's basically a squatter's village... They pick through trash and leftover construction supplies to build their homes... We brought them food and crafts and donations and hope... It was a great, great way to spend the day...

Karen Holliday held this little guy for 5 hours (alright, maybe only 3 hours, but she never let go of him the entire time!)... It was great because she got to talk to the little dude's mom (who knew quite a bit of English!), so they were able to truly enjoy each other's company the whole afternoon...

Tanya Hubers did a great job cutting hair for much of the day... She just told me a story that she had a pretty bad headache on the way to the Rio, but she prayed that the pain wouldn't inhibit her from serving... She said she didn't feel any pain until she finished the final haircut... Amazing!

Greg Holliday was helping stir the pot of spaghetti sauce to perfection... Here he is with Meme, who lives in the Rio... Meme works with Back2Back helping out the staff families, but she chooses to live in the Rio because it's her community and this is where she most effectively serves and loves her neighbors...

Jen and Kathy started helping out with the haircutting... This is a great way to serve these people because it means that they don't have to pay someone to cut it... Imagine if you didn't have access to regular haircuts... We, as humans, become so self-conscious about our appearance that our identity gets wrapped up into it... Giving these kids haircuts is like renewing their whole personality...

There is a man who lives in the Rio who has a horse-drawn delivery cart... Once you think about it, it makes pretty good sense... No one is going to come to the Rio to buy a drink, or some beans, anything else for that matter... So this guy takes that stuff out to the people where they will be able to access his goods... Hmmm... Sounds like a good church metaphor! Here Mark hitches a ride in the field above the Rio...

When we finally said our goodbyes at the Rio we loaded up the bus and went to this great place called "Tacos Fede"... Fede is the name of the guy who owns Tacos Fede and he makes some really, really good Tacos... You can have your choice of Beef, Pork, Beef and Pork, or grilled Steak! They all come in a tortilla with cheese, and the table has a few different salsa choices to spread over your mound of meaty goodness... This place is legendary around here! It's open from 7PM until 3AM, with the busiest hours between 11 and 2... Jen and I went there last week, but I didn't have my camera... If you're ever in Monterrey, just ask around for Tacos Fede and you won't be disappointed!

After dinner we gathered with the other group that's here (Southbrook Christian Church, near Dayton)... We played a game called Birdie on a Perch where people pair up and walk around in two opposing circles... When the music stops the person who is the Birdie has to find the person that is the Perch and sit on his or her knee... It's like an instant and hilarious traffic jam... We worshipped, debriefed, and settled in for a nice, cool evening of sleep...

A new day!

Monday we worked at Casa Hogar Douglas (CHD) all day... CHD is about a mile from where we stay so we sent the supplies ahead of us and we all walked there... This area we are in is something else... All of these dilapidated houses everywhere... But some of these folks have really nice cars... It turns out that this is actually a pretty wealthy area... This neighborhood used to be mainly thought of as a retirement community... Sometimes people have a home here and a home somewhere more close to their family... The buildings don't look that nice, but the land is incredibly expensive... Since we sit between two ranges of mountains there is really only one direction for the city to grow... Imagine if all the main development in the Cincinnati area (West Chester, Milford, Beechmont, Mason, Loveland, etc.) had to be squeezed into a few miles on either side of I-71... So land here is literally more expensive per square acre than it is in Indian Hill in Cincinnati! Unbelievable...


So here is a picture of us at Casa Hogar Douglas... Todd explained some of the history of CHD and also some of the projects we had to work on... There was plenty to do! Some people built picnic tables, some worked on roughing in the electric on the new Palapa, some worked on tearing apart old playground equipment, some pulled out concrete forms, some built new concrete forms, some shoveled gravel, and some worked on a fence at the back of the property...

Everyone worked incredibly hard and we got a lot of stuff done... After lunch we continued working, but some of us got to play with the kids who were just getting out of school!


Here is a picture of the Sport Court that we worked on last summer... It is finally finished! The kids absolutely love this thing, it gives them an all-weather playing surface that won't make them dirty or dusty... It's so cool to come back this year and see the finished product... It also helps us to see the big picture of our work projects... We know that the work we are doing now is the foundation of the finished product... It's great do to things that are so meaningful!