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.