Biggest Outreach EVER at Rio 3

Several weeks ago, a group of about 60 middle school students from CHCA came to serve alongside our staff for a week. I'm not gunna lie - these 7th and 8th graders worked HARD! It never ceases to amaze me how much of an impact middle schoolers can make at the children's homes and the rio communities we serve.

One day during their week, the students split into 2 different groups and one half went to Rio 3 and the other half went to the Caderyeta to do an outreach of EPIC proportions. The students had raised extra money before coming down to Monterrey in order to give away the largest amount of anything B2B has ever given away in a rio since I've lived here. They were able to purchase groceries for 150 families in both areas - for a total of 300 families that day. I went with the group who went to Rio 3. The photos describe the day...

First, we made sure everyone had a hot meal. There were over 200 children on this day.

Then the students organized clothing, toy, and candy donations and outfitted each child with something in their size. As you can imagine, with literally hundreds of kids - this took a while.

Afterwards, the students organized all the food that was to be given away to each family into a big trash bag.

Pictured above is a rare photo of yours truly in action. At one point, in the heat of the chaos of trying to organize 30 middle schoolers, TONS of donations and food, and figure out the exact plan of how we would go about distributing it without causing a riot upstairs or in the neighborhood, I got out someone's phone and did some math to determine exactly how many eggs each family would receive. The calculator told me everyone should get 30 eggs. But for some reason, I proceeded to then cut all the egg crates in half so everyone got their 15 eggs?!??! About 75 families into the giveaway.... i realized what i had done and laughed a bit. However, in the end it was a blessing because we ran out of grocery bags full of food due to the incredible number of people who showed up to the church and were able to at least give them 2 dozen eggs and some clothes.

Each family received about $30 usd worth of groceries: 15 eggs (which somehow did not break), beans, oil, rice, flour, sugar, a frozen chicken, some taco meat, a box of cereal, some milk, pasta. And a new bible for their family in spanish.

After the outreach, we were able to walk through the neighborhood and see where and how the people live. We made a house call to the home of 2 sweet Christian women who can't really get out of their house much.

In the photograph above is a sweet woman in the rio named Linda. Whenever we bring groups out to serve here, we always try to walk to her house and bring clean water and some food to Linda and her middle aged daughter. Both Linda and her daughter have amputated feet due to poor circulation and lack of treatment for their diabetes (incredibly common in Mexico I'm finding). We bring clean water to help treat the wounds near these amputations. And we come to visit them, pray with them and listen to them sing. During this visit, I was just overcome with the obvious JOY in the Lord that Linda has. She radiates JOY and HOPE and LOVE and PEACE in the midst of circumstances that would cause many to despair. I was humbled to even be in this woman's presence on that day. To me, she looks absolutely beautiful in this photo - she is truly beautiful in the Lord.

All in all, it was an AWESOME day and I've never seen people in the rio - THAT happy and thankful and gracious. The church is once again, providing for their needs. I love it when Jesus gets a good name in a community like that. Jim (another B2B staff member) kept saying over and over again how awesome it was going to be when all those women brought home all those groceries (some needed help carrying them due the incredible amount of groceries) and their husband or boyfriend asked where they got the money for all the food and they could answer with, "the church gave it to me." You can tell people all you want about Jesus and what He did for us on the cross, but other times, you can SHOW people what Jesus has done for them and continues to do for them. On this day, I know some seeds were planted.

I often bring candy with me whenever I walk through the community there because I know some parents refuse to let their kids go to the church. I give them candy and say hi and give them toys if I have them sometimes. And there is this family of little kids that I often literally throw candy to all the way up some hill on the side of the river and dump. But on this day, they asked me if I could climb up and hand them the candy --- so I did. I wasnt really sure where I was going but I found them and emptied my backpack of candy for them. Their dad was sweet and wanted to know where I came from. So I gave him some tracks in spanish with the gospel on them and told him all about Olga's church just over the river and the classes and meals she provides for kids throughout the week. He was super excited to talk to me and said he'd look into her church. And all I needed was some candy.