Casas Mission Trip July 2011 Post 5

Trinity Summer Casas Trip - Monday July 11 in Juarez, Mexico
by Mara Erhardt

It was hard to get up on Monday morning at 6am. I was very tired and sore from the first build day, but when we got to the work site and started working I felt loose and ready to go. The first few hours were spent preparing the house to be stuccoed on the outside and finishing insulation on the inside. Because we had so few people we had to stucco the houses one at a time while a team of 4ish stayed inside and drywalled. Since our house was ready to stucco first, half of Rudy's team came over and helped us. This was the best stucco crew I have ever worked with. We flew through the first house and in no time we were stuccoing the other house. The heat was a problem again today and by the time we were finished we had run out of water at the site.

In my experience, this was the longest it had taken us to finish the houses. Because of our low numbers we could not spare a few people to start collecting tools, packing them up, unloading family gifts, and other general clean up like we usually can, so that when we are finished stuccoing and dry walling everything is ready to go. We had originally planned to bless the houses at 1pm but we had to push it back to 3pm because we were no where near ready at 1.

When we bless the house, the team who built the house, Pastor Mark, the family, and the family's Pastor gather in the finished house (hopefully with a translator). Both Pastors say a small devotional (Pastor Mark impressivly delivered his in Spanish), the family has a chance to speak (generally thanking us for the work we have done), we pray with our hands on the house to bless it, and the family recieves the keys and a Bible. The most interesting part of the blessing this time was when the mother spoke: she said they would take good care of the house. None of us had ever heard anyone say that before.

When we were finally packed up and were ready to head back to the Compound, we sent out invitations to the families of Tierre d'Amor to join us for dinner and fellowship that night. When we got back we only had two hours before the families would start showing up. So, we took quick, refreshing showers, a short break to drink our Mexican Cokes, and started preparing for dinner.

Tonight, the dinner was pandemonium. There were more families there then ever before and as soon as they came in, they began to take food not just for that evening, but for the next few days. We gave away everything, even the dinner we had set aside for ourselves. By the end of the night there was only some chips, salsa, and tomorrow's breakfast left. Brent Sandau brought a bunch of donated soccer balls, baseballs, baseball bats, baseball gloves, and cleats and handed them out to the kids. Immediatly he was mobbed by kids as well as parents. The shoes were by far the most popular (and important as a child cannot go to school if he/she does not have shoes) and it was hard to see the disappointed faces of parents whose children got nothing.
Later, Pastor Mark asked us to imagine, if this was these people's response to some free sporting goods, how it must have been for the people who heard of Jesus and His miracles and came to be healed by Him, only to hear that He had left.

For dinner instead of hotdogs, chilli, chips, and brownies, I had half a Quesadilla cooked in the microwave with some salsa on top, but it was the best Quesadilla I have ever had. We were all spent after a hard day of work and a stressful dinner. However, we still had some energy left to play games together. I look forward to going back to the US tomorrow and coming home.