Sunday, August 21, 2016
Esperanza 2016 Day 8: Sunday
Well we are all in the airport now in San Francisco with a four hour lay over which turns out to be a great time for everyone to spend just a little more time together. It's been a wonderful week, thank you for all your support of our team, and I'm especially thankful for my boyfriend, Matthew Phillips for putting up all our pictures for you to enjoy. Tomorrow you'll see the ones from Sunday, and hope to see you all next Sat. Aug 27th after 5pm Mass for hordurves and a presentation where we can thank you personally and share with you more about our week. God bless you all!
Esperanza Day 7, Saturday
Our first stop today was at the beautiful St. Martin De Porres
church that we had been blessed to pass each morning on the way to the worksite. The huge Jesus statute is very welcoming! The
inside of the churches have very detailed stained glass windows and murals on
the ceilings as well as many beautiful statues. There were European style
confessionals and a mock burial of Jesus with a real crown of thorns. The
detail on the alters were very ornate. There was a family there preparing for a
baptism of a beautiful baby girl!
Our next stop was at the beautiful beach in Rosarita! The beach scene was filled with a beautiful array
of laughter, fun, music and shear enjoyment of the waves from the ocean.
Families, couples, friends, Mexican’s and American’s alike shared a beautiful
day of sunshine and building up community. Several of us had a fun experience
bartering at the market. While shopping, when we mentioned Esperanza, one
beautiful merchant lit up with excitement, as it was familiar to her.
Once we returned to the Posada we had a meeting to where
each one of us reflected on our feelings about giving up a week of our lives to
help the less fortunate in an area that many in the USA think is unsafe.
Everyone agreed that after interacting with Mexican people for a week, we were
impressed with their love for us and gratitude for us being here. None of us have
had any reason to feel unsafe but every reason to feel very good about being
here, and the fact that we were building community and not walls. The gospel
reading today was from Matthew 23 where Jesus criticized the Scribes and Pharisees
for not practicing what they preach, but serving the poor for the week, all of us who are very
well off by the worlds standard feel very good about our decision to take a
small risk in order to be obedient to Christ’s call.
At the end of the evening, our team was blessed with a
prayer experience of being served, by our incredible leaders, Sarah and Tony.
Tony began by reading John 13: 1-17 (the story of Jesus washing the disciple’s
feet) and then they proceeded to go one by one and wash our feet, and pray over
us. There were many tears from our humbled hearts, it was a very healing and
moving experience.
Our group grew very close this week, and had so many opportunities to discover the gifts and hearts of each other, with laughter, tears, and sore muscles and enlarged hearts we are coming home with so much more than we began with. Thank you for your prayers. We are coming home today with the desire to bring back to you all and to those around us the treasures in our heart. Thank you for your prayers and your support. God bless you all!!
Our group grew very close this week, and had so many opportunities to discover the gifts and hearts of each other, with laughter, tears, and sore muscles and enlarged hearts we are coming home with so much more than we began with. Thank you for your prayers. We are coming home today with the desire to bring back to you all and to those around us the treasures in our heart. Thank you for your prayers and your support. God bless you all!!
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Esperanza Day 6: Friday
Today was the last day of work, a lot of us were trying to get done as much as we could at the work site knowing it was the final hours. A lot of the people who had come before in our group and those who came for the first time really liked the family and the young boys that came to help today.en with the language barrier we were able to work very well together with a lot of scratching our heads and pointing, with some laughter here and there. For lunch they had a very Americanized Mexican meal for us, trying to make it more catered to us, and for the first time they brought soda for us, where for the other meals they served drink mixes that they called agua (water) but they were flavored with fruits or flowers, different each day, loved by everyone! ( before you read this clench your fist grit you teeth and read son)
Today started out SLOW... everybody seemed tired, but everything changed when we started making progress and got into the groove of things. We had myself (Brian) using the jack hammer, actually almost everyone in our group has used it at some point this week. But this was my time to shine :) And boy did I break up that dirt as Jim and Lu shoveled it up and gave it to Jeri to send it down the bucket line to get rid of it. I got 20 inches deep and we needed to get to 28 before the foundation could be poured. But I heard that Tony the man down in the dungeon (the spot we poured all the dirt) was the only one down there expressing distress at the lack of support (you can stop clenching at this point). So I got on my high horse and went down into the dungeon to help Tony. But a catastrophic event occurred, (a note from the editor: this explanation for dramatic effect was described a little more with flare than it really was, but as an Irish friend once said: "don't let the facts get in the way of a good story" this note is only to prevent unnecessarily high blood pressure over the concern of our safety 😉) with so much dirt being sent down the shoot, the support pillar gave way, putting us in a bind, so myself Tony and newly arrived and curious volunteer, Victor, who doesn't speak english, fixed the support beam by bracing it with a fallen 2x4 and that meant that that support was weak so we had to constantly shovel the dirt off of it. Luckily at that point we had four people down there to help down in the dungeon. If that wasn't bad enough more problems in the dungeon arose. The place where we were moving the dirt to was supported by cement blocks that weren't concreted together but were just sitting on top of each other. So if you can guess what happened as we were moving the dirt, feeling good about everything and had the 5 minute mark before the day was over, the cement blocks toppled over each other and cracked letting the dirt spill onto the road. Just out of courtesy we were trying to clean it up putting it on the pile and fix it up, quite the grand finale. After the group picture was taken, the dirt bucket challenge happened, where they dumped buckets of dirt on each other, then we had to get going because we were going to a presentation where people showed us how they used recycled chip bags to make all kinds of things including purses and jewelry for financial reasons. I wish I could tell you more about that presentation but before the women arrived I fell asleep sitting on the couch, and no one woke me up. And about an hour later our youth minister asked me to write this blog, so I had no preparation. Hope it was a good read, signing off I'm done.
Anonymous Brian :)
Today started out SLOW... everybody seemed tired, but everything changed when we started making progress and got into the groove of things. We had myself (Brian) using the jack hammer, actually almost everyone in our group has used it at some point this week. But this was my time to shine :) And boy did I break up that dirt as Jim and Lu shoveled it up and gave it to Jeri to send it down the bucket line to get rid of it. I got 20 inches deep and we needed to get to 28 before the foundation could be poured. But I heard that Tony the man down in the dungeon (the spot we poured all the dirt) was the only one down there expressing distress at the lack of support (you can stop clenching at this point). So I got on my high horse and went down into the dungeon to help Tony. But a catastrophic event occurred, (a note from the editor: this explanation for dramatic effect was described a little more with flare than it really was, but as an Irish friend once said: "don't let the facts get in the way of a good story" this note is only to prevent unnecessarily high blood pressure over the concern of our safety 😉) with so much dirt being sent down the shoot, the support pillar gave way, putting us in a bind, so myself Tony and newly arrived and curious volunteer, Victor, who doesn't speak english, fixed the support beam by bracing it with a fallen 2x4 and that meant that that support was weak so we had to constantly shovel the dirt off of it. Luckily at that point we had four people down there to help down in the dungeon. If that wasn't bad enough more problems in the dungeon arose. The place where we were moving the dirt to was supported by cement blocks that weren't concreted together but were just sitting on top of each other. So if you can guess what happened as we were moving the dirt, feeling good about everything and had the 5 minute mark before the day was over, the cement blocks toppled over each other and cracked letting the dirt spill onto the road. Just out of courtesy we were trying to clean it up putting it on the pile and fix it up, quite the grand finale. After the group picture was taken, the dirt bucket challenge happened, where they dumped buckets of dirt on each other, then we had to get going because we were going to a presentation where people showed us how they used recycled chip bags to make all kinds of things including purses and jewelry for financial reasons. I wish I could tell you more about that presentation but before the women arrived I fell asleep sitting on the couch, and no one woke me up. And about an hour later our youth minister asked me to write this blog, so I had no preparation. Hope it was a good read, signing off I'm done.
Anonymous Brian :)
Thursday, August 18, 2016
Esperanza 2016, Day 5: Thursday
It's Thursday today, and today we had a packed day. After we woke up and ate some breakfast we went straight to the work sight. We established a bucket line and continued to dig our trenches. We had lunch and like always it was AMAZING! Authentic Mexican food is nothing like what we have in the USA. After lunch we continued working and got pretty far. All we need to dig is a couple more trenches and then we will be able to pour the floors. Sadly we won't be here for that because tomorrow is our last work day. In the middle of the work day I (Daniel) was able to play with Gustavo in the kitchen that is smack dab in the middle of the work site the only part of the household that's not being remodeled. Gustavo is the grandson of the lady we're building the house for, he is ten years old and very chill. It was Nathan, Gustavo and I, we blew up a few balloons and started to play soccer with them. We popped like four balloons until we were finally told to get back to work. After we finished for today we went to a house that we had worked on the past year. It was beautiful, with bright colors and an amazing view of a large portion of Tijuana. After that we left to go back to the posada. We took our quick one minute showers then headed to a place where migrants and deportees from the USA are aloud to stay for a week to four months depending on their situations. We had dinner there and met two brothers who came all the way from Haiti. They told us about their story of how they got to Tijuana, its was an amazing experience. Through tough emotions we understood their passion greatly. Their insight and motivation really struck some of our hearts. We left to the supermarket to get ice cream and some goodies. And when we got back to the posada we got an amazing announcement. We get to go to the orphanage again on Saturday! Once we got that news we hung out and slowly trickled out of the main room we where in and went to bed. In all it was a ten out of ten day.
Corbin, Daniel, John Paul
Esperanza 2016 Day 4
Do to editor's flaw 😄 Your awesome script for Wednesday wasn't published, we'll put it up after our workday today 🙃 The jist of it was it was an awesome day praying at the beginning of the day with our fearless headquartinator, Edwardo, who has led us through this week and made it so special, whose father in law just died early Wednesday morning, then proceeded to the work site and had a incredibly great work day, finishing off the evening with the opportunity to go to a soccer game watching the Tojuana Xolos. What an experience, I'll let our two writers fill it when I put their story up.
Hello! This morning we woke up and made breakfast and had a daily devotion with the whole group. Also later on, we grew closer as a group and had more group prayers. Once we loaded onto the bus, we made our way down to the work site. The colorful houses and open markets have become almost normal to us now! Then, we all hopped out and got right to work. After climbing the stairs we set to work with a bucket line and digging trenches. Lets just say we've dealt with a LOT of dirt these past few days LOL. While some people dug trenches, others were using the jackhammer and clearing out a wall. Its amazing to us how much energy the whole group has, we all keep each other motivated to continue forward! Of course we all look forward to lunch time, especially when its a home cooked meal by all the neighbors and family. It was delicious. After that we got back to work with the trenches and moving all of the buckets of dirt(its a whole lot more than you can imagine). Once we had made enough progress for Eduardo, we headed back to the posada to make dinner for the 42 people staying here! After dinner our group got the opportunity to go to a local soccer game, Los Xolos! It was such a neat and cultural experience and we all enjoyed it, even if we tied 1 to 1. After the game, we took a cliche American photo and was able to have a young boys soccer team join us! The ride home was longer because of traffic but once we all got back, we were ready for bed.
Thank you for your continued prayers, and see you all in a few days!
Love,
Kristin P & Kecia H
Hello! This morning we woke up and made breakfast and had a daily devotion with the whole group. Also later on, we grew closer as a group and had more group prayers. Once we loaded onto the bus, we made our way down to the work site. The colorful houses and open markets have become almost normal to us now! Then, we all hopped out and got right to work. After climbing the stairs we set to work with a bucket line and digging trenches. Lets just say we've dealt with a LOT of dirt these past few days LOL. While some people dug trenches, others were using the jackhammer and clearing out a wall. Its amazing to us how much energy the whole group has, we all keep each other motivated to continue forward! Of course we all look forward to lunch time, especially when its a home cooked meal by all the neighbors and family. It was delicious. After that we got back to work with the trenches and moving all of the buckets of dirt(its a whole lot more than you can imagine). Once we had made enough progress for Eduardo, we headed back to the posada to make dinner for the 42 people staying here! After dinner our group got the opportunity to go to a local soccer game, Los Xolos! It was such a neat and cultural experience and we all enjoyed it, even if we tied 1 to 1. After the game, we took a cliche American photo and was able to have a young boys soccer team join us! The ride home was longer because of traffic but once we all got back, we were ready for bed.
Thank you for your continued prayers, and see you all in a few days!
Love,
Kristin P & Kecia H
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