Our Cancun Trip in March 2012

Here are some photos from our trip to Cancun in March. It was a wonderful time to see B2B Cancun staff and then to join in with the Northstar team from Cincinnati (which included several members of my family) to serve for a week. Here are some glimpses of what we did :) 

Buying groceries for Oti and her family. Oti is a widow with 8 kids and has some severe health problems. When we arrived for an afternoon visit, we were told they had no food. Some of the kids went with us to the store to pick out groceries for the family. 

Cheque helping two of Oti's girls with their homework. They needed help creating masks for a school project. My artist husband found himself at home helping them create awesome masks to take to school.

My little brother Simeon ready to work at Delila's house. Delila is another one of the widows that B2B Cancun supports. She is saving money and constructing a house for herself and her children. We poured the concrete floor the day we were there. 

Now we know where Simeon gets his energy for work! This is my mom getting ready to mix cement for the floor. 

The Northstar team working together to mix cement. We did this quite a few times that week. It really makes you appreciate cement trucks :)  On the Northstar team came my mom, brother Simeon, Aunt Terry, Uncle Steve and cousins: Rachel, Zac, and Shiloh! 

My favorite part of the trip was all the prayer times we had, both for one another and the people we were there to serve. Here we are laying hands on Josephina and her children in their very small impoverished home. 

Constructing a play set for the 12 little girls at Casa Hogar San Jose. San Jose is a Catholic children's home run by nuns. These ladies are beautiful in the way they minster to the children. They truly consider it God's call for them to work with the girls, not just a job and that makes all the difference. 

Aunt Terry and the power tools :) 

Play time with the girls from San Jose. Here they are making pipe cleaner creations! 

Sim working on the play set

My handsome husband hard at work. 

Here I am helping the sisters at San Jose prepare traditional Yucatan foods. It was soooo good! 

Uncle Steve and Cheque jamming out with the kids before dinner

Rachael helping the girls with the craft project. We taught a VBS lesson  on Peace to the kids and here they are making dove hand print paintings. 

Our team taking a dip at the beach one afternoon. 

Aunt Terry and I trying marquesitas, a traditional Yucatan dessert! It is basically like a pancake rolled up and filled with nutella, nuts, jelly or even cheese!!! We didn't get the cheese filled one, but we did get raspberry and nutella... yum! 

Pouring cement beams at Pastor Victor's church in Tres Reyes. Pastor Victor started ministering in this impoverished community years ago before there were even roads to get there. He would ride in on his bike with a projector in the basket to preach the gospel to the people. Now Pastor Victor is building a church and we were able to help him. 

Group photo in front of the church

Getting to know the real Cancun culture with fresh fruit smoothies in the street. We tried mango, tamarindo, mamey, and lime smoothies.  Boy were they good! A sweet end to a sweet trip :) 

Casa Hogar de la Montana

A B2B group hiking out to the work site at CH de la Montana

Now this is real desert! When most westerners think of Mexico they usually picture some kind of dry, dusty desert... that is not terribly accurate. Mexico is home to all sorts of climates, however about 1 hour away from Monterrey is the closest thing I have been to real desert.

 About a month ago I went to a children's home in the desert near Saltillo called Casa Hogar de la Montana. This is a new children's home for B2B to be working with. Currently there are 7 kids in the home and a wonderful family directing the ministry.

Our most faithful bus driver, Mariano, giving us a hand on a project. 

Railroad tracks that run along side the children's home land

Fifteen years ago the government basically gave land to a retired couple from Tennessee in order for them to start a children's home near Saltillo. They have begun developing the land and currently have 2 homes on the property. The vision is to build 10 different family homes on the land. The idea is sorta that of foster care. Orphaned children do so much better in a family situation than in an institution. CH de la Montana is building homes for families to live and to take in troubled kids. We love this idea and are very excited about a potential partnership with this home.

tracks and old watering station outside the home

A B2B team of Pepperdine students helping to install a fence around the property

B2B brought a team to stay for two days at CH de la Montana to help out. We spent the majority of that time digging fence pole holes... I think our record was 66 holes in 2 days!

Making Guacamole

When not digging holes we helped the children's home in their ministry to the impoverished community right outside their gates. We brought the fixings for an arrachera meal and invited the community to come. Several women from the community came to help prepare the guacamole.

Jalepeno eyes!

Right after telling the cooking team to be careful not to get jalepeno juice in their eyes, I accidentely got some in my own! Talk about humbling and painful! Little did I know that even after you wash your hands with soap, the jalepeno oils don't come off... My mother-in-law helped me clean my hands with lime juice to get the jalepeno residue completely gone!

Don Pedro

The children's home often brings food to this elderly man in the community. He has lived in this abandoned house for years and spends his days collecting a certain part of a cactus in nearby fields with which he sells for a small income. Pedro cooks over a fire in his house and sleeps in his own garbage. I have never been in such impoverished conditions in my life. Pray for Pedro to come to know Christ as his living Savior.

Pedro's house from a distance contrasted by a beautiful sunset. 

Kelly, a fellow staff member, came for the night with her twin boys!

Evelyn's Tuesday morning Bible study

One of the most impressive things about CH de la Montana, is a girl named Evelyn (orange sweatshirt). Evelyn is 19 and lives with her parents, the current directors, to help take care of the kids in the home. Her dream is to have a children's home of her own specifically for infants and babies. Evelyn, on top of caring for the kids, teaches Kindergarten three days a week in the community where there is no school, and has a Tuesday morning woman's Bible study for the community ladies. I continue to be impressed with Evelyn's maturity and her heart to serve and love others... I totally see another Katie Davis not too far away :)

Putting in the posts

The team and the kids after a rousing soccer game. 

Casa Hogar de la Montana is an amazing place so full of potential. Thier biggest prayer request right now is for more workers. They are prepared to receive more kids, have a house ready and everything, just are lacking a family to live there and take care of the children. Pray also for the funding they need to continue with the building projects on the property. They still have 7 and 1/2 houses to go, a community center, and a school that they desire to build.
What a blessing it was for me to go and be apart of this ministry at CH de la Montana. May the Lord continue to bless this place!  

Excited for Literacy!

The students look through the book bins to pick out the books they want to borrow for the week. 

Here are some more recent photos from the literacy program I'm heading up in the Rio. We have now been going at it about 6 months! How time does fly! Just today I was out in the Rio with the kids teaching them a lesson about good readers asking questions. We did an activity where we listed all the questions we had about a particular book before we read it, while reading, and then afterward. We checked to see if any of our questions were answered along the way. I was really encouraged to see the kids participating and enjoying the mini lesson. The kids worked in groups of three to do the same activity on their own with another book... it was great! Even the littlest of 4 years was asking great questions. So good to see the kids involved in the books and excited about reading!!!!!

We love to read!!!!

Maru, my mother-in-law and my biggest helper, reads with Monse. 

Daniel and Sara bring the books they have borrowed to exchange them for new books. 

Reading with Yajira during free reading time.

Today a very excited thing happened while I was packing up my things to leave the Rio after our class. I noticed that one of the ladies in the community had stopped the students, on their way back to their houses, to look at their books. It turns out that this lady is the aunt of several of the students and I discovered that after the students leave my class they usually go to their aunt's house and let her borrow some of the books they have borrowed from me. This aunt lives two doors down from the comedor where we hold the literacy program. She has two tiny boys. Open seeing her eagerness to read the books the kids had, I invited her to come to the literacy program herself next week. I said her boys were young, but if she wanted to bring them with her to the class she could. Exposing her sons to literacy at an early age is really just what they need! She was delighted at the thought of being able to check out her own books to read to her kids. She told me that maybe she could learn some things too in order to read better with her boys! I am very excited about this opportunity and pray that she becomes a weekly participant! Praise Jesus for parents who have interest in reading to their children!!! What a great day! 

Flower pots!!!

Our potted plants :) 

Yay for potted plants! Cheque and I have been cheering up the front of our apartment with flowers! We spent our day off a few weeks ago picked out plants and arranging them in pots. There is nothing so relaxing as being outside and getting your hands in the dirt :) Praise Jesus for His creation!!!!

The front of our house

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Dentist for a week :)

One thing I really like about my work is that it is never the same! I am constantly learning new skills and am challenged to be or do something that I have never done before, meanwhile helping little kids and showing them Christ love. It's great! 

Several weeks ago I had the chance to translate for a dentist who came down to serve. Let me tell you that before then, my dental vocabulary in Spanish was pretty much at zero. I quickly learned how to say cavity, filling, pulpotomy, etc.... some words I didn't even know in English! It was quite the challenge. 

Elisa getting a filling

A local dentist volunteered her time along with Marty, the dentist from the states. Between the two of them and Marty's wife, Dawn, about 60 kids were visited in 4 days. There were more fillings done than I can count and around 30 teeth pulled over the course of those few days.

Dawn and Marty hard at work. 

 Dawn and Marty put in some LONG days trying to see all the kids who had urgent dental needs. Dental needs in the children's homes and Rio areas are everywhere. Dawn and Marty saw kids from dawn to dusk and there were still many that couldn't been seen. Please pray. While Dawn and Marty were extremely helpful, this week was just a scratch in the surface in all the dental work that needs to be done in the kids we work with.

My Rio kids playing jump rope with Cheque while waiting their turn with the dentist. 

 I was especially excited because some of my kids from the literacy program in the Rio got to be seen by the dentists! For many this was a first time experience.

Vania from the Rio getting a filling

Naomi (another of my students) showing off her tooth that was just pulled. 

Helping  Dr. Marty with Dalia's teeth :) 

I was in the clinic with the dentists for several days primarily as a translator... however when the going gets tough and there are not enough hands to go around,... translator turns hygienist!

Luis' first time at the dentist. Pray for this little boy as he literally needs work done on every single one of his teeth! 

Praise God for the dental work He provided for these kids! Please continue to keep this need in your prayers :) 

Teen Retreat

In February we had an amazing weekend up in the Sierra Madre mountains with around 80 of the pre-teens who live in the children's homes we serve. We realized that often the little kids at the homes get our attention and also the teenagers who are in our Hope Program, however the pre-teens can easily get over-looked. So we took them up into the mountains and set aside a weekend just for them to be poured into. 

Chris Cox, a B2B staff member in Ohio, came down to Monterrey for the weekend to host the retreat. He and Tonio worked hard exciting the kids and translating everything into Spanish.

The teens listened to several talks throughout the weekend on the life of Jonathan the son of Saul. The theme of the weekend was "Unbreakable"... everything in our lives can break except Jesus who is UNBREAKABLE. 

Team building activities

Working as a team to complete a challenge. 

Group games

The chapel where the majority of the talks were held. 

Fellow support staff making snack bags and tang for the kids between sessions! 

Hearing the word of God in His amazing creation!

Cheque getting to know David, the son of a caretaker at Casa Hogar Douglas.

One huge part of the retreat was an opportunity for each teen to express how they see themselves on a mirror. There was such a variety of answers both surprising and sad. Reading what these kids wrote really motivated me to pray. It is easy to go to a children's home and hang out with the kids and never really see the pain going on on the inside. To read how these kids view themselves was very eye opening, humbling, and motivating...

"I am trash"

"I need love, but pure clean love"

In the culmination of the weekend Chris, the speaker, talked about how all the things written on those mirrors were breakable. Everything that we put our trust in (aside from Christ) is breakable. Every way that we describe ourselves can change or break (aside from what Christ says about us). Chris smashed the mirror to illustrate this point and went on to talk about putting your confidence in Christ, the only nonbreakable one and coming into His freedom in our lives.  

Kids coming up to sign their names on the cross to show their faith in Christ. 

Cheque praying for one of the teens during the ministry time. 

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was that a local church group came simply to pray while the retreat was going on. For most of the sessions they were in another room interceding for the teens who were in the sessions. Some times they came in to pray and minister directly with the kids. It was AMAZING! 

My husband leading worship

Our whole group!!!