Oh, What a great day..!!

working hard and loving it

enjoying helados after a long day

Wow…What a day this was..!! Our day started out as usual, (Breakfast, quiet-time, group studies, etc…) Then, it was off to Imperio de Amor for our final day there.  Before we ate lunch and began working, we spent time praying over the children’s home and the owner, Lalo (he has an amazing story, ask us when we return!)  After a good lunch of PB&J, we began the impossible.  It was concrete day for team Apex..!! This project required us to hand load a gas-powered cement mixer, literally dumping in bags of concrete, buckets of water and shoveling in sand by hand. Then after it was mixed, it was emptied into wheel barrows, then into individual 5-gallon buckets. These buckets had to be hand-carried to the 2nd floor of the girl’s dormitory and poured out onto the floor for the mason to level out. We did this all afternoon…until the floor was almost complete. We’re talking 3 rooms here…literally hundreds of buckets of wet cement…in the hot Mexico sun..!! Our team was absolutely awesome.  While pouring the concrete, others were ministering to the kids playing games from jumping rope to blowing bubbles.  A majority of the team made awesome friendships with the kids that will never be forgotten. This particular trip on this particular day impacted the team greatly as well as the children. So much so, that when we left the site in our bus, the children were all waving goodbye and chasing the bus. The bus went down the bumpy dirt road, had to turn around to get back on the highway and 10 minutes later as we passed the site while heading down the highway, we could see the children still lined up at the gate waving to us and smiling. (They knew the bus route and therefore knew that we would be passing them again…they waited all that time just to see us again.)

Then it was an hour drive back to the compound, we ate a delicious dinner, (Tostadas, guacamole and all the trimmings), showered and scrubbed the concrete from our weary bodies…then it was off to worship and singing. Afterwards, we did our usual “debriefing” time whereby we all shared with one another how and why the day impacted us collectively and individually.

Tomorrow…we will visit “Rio 3.” More on that later…