Some nights here with Back2Back we ask the american groups who are with us for the week to share what their "picture of the day" was that day.  A "picture of the day" is a moment that you don't want to forget or one that you just can't get out of your mind.  My entire day today was amazing and worth a million "pictures of the day" but I'd like to describe my best from today for you all....

The STINT team went with one our directors today to several areas in town where we serve to help us learn a hands on lesson in the "bigger picture" of what our ministry does and how we decide who to help.  We stopped at one of the children's homes that we have a long standing relationship with to drop off some donations and see how they were doing and ask what their current needs are.  As we walked through the gate we learned that the children are going to be kicked out of the house that they currently rent in 2 to 3 weeks and that the directors are currently looking for a new home to rent.  Crazy... who kicks out orphans?  

This director had a list of probably 20 things that we could help them with- PJ's for 28 kids, shoes for 5 of their boys, 4 kids need glasses, they need someone to drive the older kids to dance class and soccer practice in the evenings, they want to be able to afford food that is more nutritious like cheese and beans and meat, when they get kicked out of their home they will need help moving their stuff and 28 children, 23 of the kids need new school uniforms..... so we sat there and took notes and wrote down everything she said.  This director has a masters degree and runs the most organized and clean home you could EVER imagine for a home with 1 child let alone 28.  As we sat, listening to her tell us about the children and ways in which they make ends meet each month financially... she told us about the pastor of their church who made it possible this summer for 12 of the oldest children to drive 6 hours east to go to the beach for the first time in their lives. 

Do you remember the first time you saw the beach, the ocean?

What brought tears to my eyes was when she told us how the kids kept asking, "what time does God turn on the machine that powers the waves?"

"The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love."  - Psalm 33:5

A LOT of people live on the Back2Back property here in Monterrey, Mexico.  There are currently 34 teens in the Hope Program, 30 or so staff kids, and about 30 staff including myself.  A prize goes to the first person who can find waldo (me) in this photo.  
Salsa dancing anyone?  For the record- i'm a horrible salsa dancer but i'm getting better- honest i am!  my goal is to be able to dance 4 different kinds of salsa by christmas.  so far, i've got about 2 halfway mastered.  We had a really fun time dancing this night thanks to the boys.  They teach us the dances and even got us roses from the bathroom- yes that sounds silly but thats where they got them. 
Happy Independence Day Mexico!  VIVA MEXICO!!  One of Mexico's several independence days was last week and a bunch of went to a super cute city south of us called Santiago to celebrate and join in the grito.  At midnight, everyone yells "viva mexico" to celebrate the day.  Well.... apparently in Santiago they yelled at 11 pm and we missed it but had a great time anyway with this random lady who jumped in our photo.  and we did get there in time to see the fireworks.  
From left to right: Kenzi, Jay, Becca and myself - The 2008-2009 Back2Back STINT Academy.  It's not really an academy but that makes it sound more fun doesnt it?  Poor Jay... he has to put up with girl music in the car all the time.

Prayer Requests:  for direction and safety

"Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."  - John 17:3

  

Here i am at the doctor... doctor Juanita.  She said that I was healthy and she said that my ears were clean.  I think a lot about what the future holds for each of these children.  What will become of them when they grow up?  How old will they be when they leave their casa hogar?  Where will they go?  Where will they live?  Will they choose to continue their education and graduate from high school or college?  Statistics say that 90% of orphans end up in some form of prostitution or the black market.  There are 143.5 million orphans in the world right now.  According to that- about 130 million of children just like Juanita will get lost in that horrible mess.  For these kids however, I see something else in their future.  God is pursuing these children- to give them a hope and a future and I love see Him move in that way.  
This past week i got to spend a lot of time with these super cute kids at Rayitos De Luz (Little Rays of Light children's home).  It's the rainy season here (actually i think the 40 days of rain just ended) so there is a lot of mud and water all over.  
Meet our first group for the year:  Family Christian Stores - James Fund sent 8 of their employees from all over the states to serve with us for this week.  I loved spending the week with them! (and if any of you want to challenge us again in the song game- i'm ready and this time i might actually sing)
To the right--> Some FCS-JF group members cleaning and painting the soon to be homework and tutoring room at this casa hogar.  2 teachers nearby have volunteered to start coming here to tutor the kids 2 days a week to help them succeed in school. 
2 blog posts ago, i said i'd put some photos of the new Rayitos De Luz home-- well here are two.  The house is about 4 times as big as their former home and the yard here is HUGE.  It even has a pool in the yard.  Clothes lines are everywhere- but you'd have clothes lines everywhere too if you had to do laundry for a bunch of little kids who like to play in the mud outside.  
One of the new bedrooms at the new Rays of Light Casa Hogar --->  Thanks to private donors from people like you, each room has matching comforters and sheets.  The girls and boys who live here are soooo proud of their new bedrooms and their beds.  They hold your hand and drag you into their room so that they can show you which bed is theirs.  They love it and you absolutely can not help but love them.

What do you do for FUN in Mexico?  Well... this week on my day off, I went hiking with 2 other B2B staffers at Parque Estanzuela which i think is less than 10 miles from my house here.  It was AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL!!!  It is now my new favorite place in all of Monterrey.   
All 3 of us had to cross in knee deep, freezing, super fast moving water to get up and around the river.  This is Kenzi crossing/surfing in mexico.
Pretty sure the trails and well.... this entire park was covered with poison ivy.  I'm hoping none of us break out soon with rashes but even if we did, this place was so beautiful- it was worth it.  Okay well... maybe i can make that judgement IF and when i get the poison ivy outbreaks in the first place.  I'll get back to you all on that one.
To the left is a beautiful pool of water that we hiked up to.  They bottle drinking water from this river.   Me and Kenzi have already decided that the next opportunity we get (hopefully this month) we'll be able to go again and explore some more of the waterfalls!!!  i've tried several times to upload some video of the falls but have been unsuccessful thus far.  Look for them in the near future.  You can click on the photos in my blog individually and they will enlarge.

This past week, I had the privilege of spending an afternoon at Rayitos De Luz- a children's home that B2B has been involved with for only a short time now.  This is little Fany- clearly she's so cute you could just melt when she jumps on you and wants you to hug her.  more photos and info to come on this home... i'll be there a lot next week.  The children here are absolutely beautiful, so sweet, respectful, cute, and really really smart.  
To the right is a photo of the outside of the old Rayitos De Luz casa hogar which means "little rays of light children's home."   if you'd like to hear a little more, check out their website:  www.littleraysoflight.com
The inside of their old home.  The conditions were so bad, some of the biological parents of these children started to threaten to take the kids back from the casa hogar if their living conditions did not improve.  In a lot of situations, that might sound like the best thing for the kids- to be back with their biological parents.  However, this isn't always the case with many of the children we serve.  Their parents are abusive or simply do not have the means to feed them and look after them.  Often, a Christian run casa hogar is the best option.  But God had a plan all along and it's a beautiful story of how he demonstrates his love for us. 
This is Fany one year ago playing with me in the park by her old home.   With B2B's help, this casa hogar was able to rent a better home on their same street until money could be raised to build them a new home.  A recent Family Christian Stores - James Fund cruise fundraiser raised over $100,000 for their new home.  I got to go to their new home this week.  It is beautiful and they call it "the promise land."
Again, Fany 1 year ago at her first home.   We blew bubbles all afternoon and read mexican appropriate books for a 3 year old like "feliz cumpleanos martin luther king."  do they even know who MLK is?  well they do now because we read it a lot.

Prayer Requests:

-  safety for a worker's family who does construction on this newer home

- my comprehension of 4 and 5 year olds speaking spanish would improve

- that i would live in the moment and take advantage of opportunities

FELIZ CUMPLEANOS PERLA!!! This is me with the birthday girl on the night of her party.  Whenever one of the teens who lives on the B2B property in the Hope Program has a birthday, they can throw a party- whatever theme they want.  Perla's party was a costume party and it was a night filled with mexican snacks, games and a lot of salsa dancing. 
To the right are several of the teens in B2B's Hope Program at the costume party.  They are all my neighbors and are much better salsa dancers than me- go figure... someone dances better than me.   haha
It's football season, it was a Saturday night costume party and Kenzi had the bright idea to dress up as Gator fans for Perla's Birthday party.  Of course, i LOVED this idea and left the party periodically to check the score of the Florida domination over Miami!  I don't know what Beth Guckenberger's team was (she's in the red) but it doesn't matter because she is one of the coolest people ever.  You should read her new book called "Reckless Faith."  I'll talk more about that later I'm sure.

Last Saturday, the B2B staff women went over to a girl's home called "Manatial De Amor" which is home to about 20 or 25 girls to throw a combined Birthday party and baby shower for the director Conny - she is pregnant with twin girls.  You will hear me refer to this home in the future as "the princess castle" because the directors of this home call each of the girls "princessa."  They tell them all the time that they are God's princesses and should be treated as such.  These directors are true angels and it was a privilege to spend the afternoon eating cupcakes and drinking coka light with princesses.
These cupcakes were actually brownies with frosting and were seriously the most amazing tasting thing ever!  Rosa (one of the B2B staff here) says that the recipe is secret.... let's ALL start hoping and praying she lets me have the recipe so that the next time YOU see me, i can make them for you.  ;o)
I'm starting to get the idea that it is tradition at any and all mexican birthday parties or celebrations that involve cake to put the frosting on your face- or at least that's what happens to me everytime icing is around?

Funny story... since I've been in Mexico, every time I go to the grocery store, I buy just about everything because I want to try everything out.  I'm "experimenting" to see what flavors I like and what I don't like.  I love yogurt and I eat some yogurt about once a day.  I decided to grab a drinkable one just in case I needed to take one on the go sometime soon.  As it turns out, I did!  I was on my way to a baby shower/birthday party combo for one of the caregivers at a children's home we serve and hadn't eaten lunch so I grabbed my yogurt and an apple to eat in the car.  Halfway through drinking this supposed pineapple yogurt, I told Kenzi that my yogurt tasted like vegetables.  Then I decided to at least look at it and see what flavor it really was- problem solved!  What I thought was simple pineapple was pineapple, celery and CACTUS!  with chili powder just to make it more Mexican!  guess I should read the flavors before I just throw them in my grocery cart!?  haha

Some photos finally....  this is where I live.  3 staff families live in the 2 story yellow house.  The orange building is the school called SMCA (Sierra Madre Christian Academy) where my roommate Hope teaches staff kids.  

Here is the LDM (Lugar de Misericordia which is spanish for "Place of Mercy").  I live in this building- my apartment is to the right in this photo.  5 staff families live in this building and when American groups come to stay for a week or so- they sleep in dorms in this building.  Apparently, it used to be an old thread factory.

This is my front door.  

I live with Becca and Hope.  Becca is on STINT like me and Hope is a teacher at the school.  They are both really good cooks and I already love living with them both.  

Check out our kitchen!  Clearly.... this is where I hang out most of the time.  You know... drinking coffee and eating chocolate.  The stairs/ladder near the fridge is how you get up into Hope's loft.  And grandma and grandpa didnt want me to leave the states without my Tim Tebow poster.  So I put it up in mine and Becca's bedroom.  

Kenzi who is also a STINTer wore gator shirts with me and Becca for game day.  And you know that this made my day!  They are awesome!  I thought I'd have to ask people to wear Gator stuff and listen to the game with me for my birthday or something but no!  They volunteered on the first game.  We sat in my living room and listened to the Gators destroy Hawaii on the radio through my laptop.  

WORK:  First, I'd just like to say that I love what Back2Back does as a ministry!  It takes a lot of people to build houses and medical clinics, show around 500 orphans a lot of love, invite teens to come live with your family, host over 1500 americans on short term mission trips each year, and maintain a large property.  There are tons of things to be done and tons of people working each day to make it all happen.  I'm just a small part of the team.  Together though, we do some big things in the name of Jesus.  This week my days resemble the following:

-  make a lot of coffee at 7 am!

-  meeting at 8 am with the property workers to get a list of what I need to do and then me, Becca and Kenzi just go down the list until it's done

-  break for lunch and attempt to catch a 10 minute nap  <- yeah right!  but i wish

-  Then work till around 4pm

Sunday after church,  we drove to 3 orphanages so that we'd be confident enough in knowing their locations that we could direct a bus driver to the home in spanish.  This was a lot of fun!  We got a little lost a few times but we found them, those 3 at least.  At the first home, Manatial de Amor, a sweet sweet woman named Momma Conny prayed for the 3 of us and our year working with B2B.  After several failed attempts to locate some of the homes, I know understand why this country does NOT have any sort of postal service.  Tons of streets do not even have names!

Monday the most time consuming and back breaking thing on our to-do list was to take apart 20 bunk beds and moved the frames and mattresses into another dorm for storage.   It was hard but we had a great time trying to make mattresses stack up 20 feet in the air.  We've exterminated bugs, washed several hundred bathing suits that kids wear when we have pool parties, cleaned things, cleaned things, cleaned things, you get the idea.  Today though, we got to paint doors in the medical clinic.

Here is the clinic.  It will be finished soon.  It is huge and will be used for some amazing things- office visits, dentistry, surgeries, and screenings.   The first medical group for the year comes down in October.  We have a month to finish it.   I think I will be working in here quite a bit for the next few weeks.

Or you might be able to find me working in either of these houses on the property.... these are the last 2 Hope Program houses that need finishing.  16 more teenagers from the orphanages - we call the orphanages "casa hogars"  - will be able to move in when these are completed.  Please pray that the funding to finish construction comes in.  Things are coming to a halt because of funding.  

In other news, I love this city!  Living here feels so normal in so many ways.  Packing and moving made me so nervous and scared and anxious but now that I'm here, I feel at ease, at home.   I am SO thankful for how much fun I have had in the last week.  I am making a ton of new friends.  All of the staff came back to Monterrey from the states today and I'm sincerely looking forward to our first staff meeting.