Casas Mission Trip July 2011 Post 4

Trinity Summer Casas Trip - Sunday July 10 in Juarez, Mexico
by Mara Erhardt

I apologize I did not get this up on Tuesday morning, once we had crossed the border back into the USA. I will get the rest of the posts up today (Wednesday) and hopefully in a few days be able to add some pictures.

On Sunday morning, at 5 am, the alarm went off in the hotel room. We all met outside in the parking lot of the hotel in El Paso at 5:45am by the van and trailer to load all of our gear. We had a quick breakfast and then we hit the road. First we stopped by the Casas compound in El Paso to meet the foremen who will direct us in how to build the house. Usually Pete Dockery and Josh Crabbs are our foremen for Pastor Mark's and Rudy's teams respectively, but Pete had just got back from building in Guatemala so Jason Roth was the foremen for Pastor Mark's team instead. Also for the first time we discussed the plan of what to do should we run into any trouble at the site while building.

Trinity no longer uses the downtown border crossing from El Paso into Juarez, so instead we swing east to the Bridge of the Americas. Getting into Mexico was no problem, we were not even pulled over in the church van like we usually are. (There is a big problem of guns being smuggled into Mexico from the US that fuel the violence, so big vans, trucks, and trailers are usually pulled over and opened up.) After the crossing we drove southwest out into the "kilometers" to the build site on Tierre d'Amor. As many of you may know the church owns property called Tierre d'Amor on which 15 families currently reside. There are 19 housing lots total so we still have four more houses to build. The first few times we built the land was mostly empty and open, now it is full of houses with makeshift extensions and fences around individual property. It is great to see the families taking ownership of their house and their land.

The rest of the day was a pretty standard build day for Day 1 on site. When we arrived we unloaded tools and then set to work leveling the site and cutting wood. Immediatly the heat started to be a factor. The concrete showed up around 9 am (we had ordered a truck of concrete) and we poured it into the form we built out of 12 footers that are later used to build the roof. Nothing is wasted; every last bit of material is used to build the house. After the slab was poured we started building the walls. We took a break around 1pm and went to the Casas Compound which is conveniently a few blocks away from the site. We unloaded bags and food, ate lunch, and packed dinner. We returned to the site around 3pm and continued to work. By the end of the day the walls were up with weather proof black board covering the frame, the chicken wire (used to hold the stucco on) was covering the black board, and the roof was on and finished. It was starting to really look like something!

Because of our small numbers (18 total, 9 per house - ideally we want around 24 total, 12 per house) we were all constantly working. On Pastor Mark's team we didn't even eat our dinner: I was so busy I didn't even notice and so tired I didn't even care. Today was hands down the hardest, sweatiest, busiest day of Casas I have every experienced. When we got back to the compound I instantly hit the showers. My cot felt like a feather bed when I layed down to go to sleep.