The Language of Music

Music is so much fun! We have a bell choir that is practicing and performing — the name of the bell choir is Casa Coro De Campanas (The House Bell Choir).

The choir members have performed for several birthdays this week plus are teaching the children how to play.

 Evening include large group singing with a great group of musicians. Isaac (with the guitar) grew up at the orphanage. He is now married and has a little girl and a new baby boy. He and his wife live at the Volu and oversee the older boys dorm. He has been joining his friend Andrew to play for the evening singing with children.

 Each evening we have an worship devotion focussing on our theme of Soak it All Up. 

This evening we thanked God for the ways we are all connected through the living water that Jesus gives us. To symbolize this connection, we all made bracelets made from tie-dyed fabric.

The children LOVE songs with hand motions — we are singing, in Spanish and English, some of the  songs our All Saints children sing in Sunday School.

Pizza Night!

 Pizza night was such a big hit last year that we decided to try it again.

Casa Hogar has a bakery so we were able cook the pizzas that Ken provided — then we had special  pizza delivery persons who carried them over to the dining area where hungry children were waiting.

As you can see, the pizza night was a huge success. We cooked approximately 50 pizzas for the children, staff, and older boys from the Volu.

Church Service at the Volu

This year, because we flew to Mexico, we were able to be at Casa Hogar on Sunday morning for church.

The church service is held at the Volu which is the location where the older boys live. We traveled the short distance from Casa Hogar to the Volu where the church is located.

 The service was in Spanish but we had an interpreter who translated into English. Mama Lupita's message was on the story of the Good Samaritan and taking care of our neighbor.

After the church service, we got a chance to tour the Volu and see the Tilapia Farm and the boys' dorm. The boys at the Volu have a foosball table — the competitors in the group had fun playing.

Our Food Ministry

 An important part of our ministry at Casa Hogar is feeding the children and staff 3 times a day. This is a huge undertaking!

We divide our team into servant groups — each servant group is responsible for one meal prep or meal clean-up per day. In addition, there are many times when members of a servant team are working on a critical project, so our motto is, "jump in and help wherever you are needed."

Here you can see two team members mixing milk for cereal with the cat supervising their work.

 There is a lot of conversation that takes place over the 2+ hours that it takes to prepare or clean up after a meal. It is amazing what you can learn about each other when you are washing dishes together.

We are so grateful to the members of All Saints for your generous donations to provide theses meals. The children are so excited to have foods that are special — favorites include pancakes, pizza, and spaghetti. You see grinning faces throughout the meals.

Making New Friends . . . . and Keeping the Old

One of the best parts of finally arriving at Casa Hogar is seeing old friends that we love!

Many of these relationships go back many years and we always look forward to seeing how the boys and girls continue to grow up.

In addition, there are also new children and new team members — so the first day is all about making new friends and greeting our old friends!

Getting Ready to Cross the Border

 After a very short night, we got up and started getting organized for our border crossing.

This year, because we flew, our logistics for everything we do is completely different. As always, we tried to create a really solid plan for getting everyone across the border, but then knew we might have to be really flexible.

Part of the flexibility is making sandwiches to take on the border crossing in case we ended up sitting on the bridge for a couple of hours.

We had a very carefully thought out plan — we had a group of about 16 walkers that got dropped on the US side to hang out in a park.

Then a group of 15 people drove across the border in the van all the way to Casa Hogar. The van crossed relatively easily and got to Casa Hogar by about 1 pm. The van then called the walkers and told them to "start walking across the bridge — the van then drove back to the Mexican side of the border, picked up the walkers, and delivered them safely to the orphanage.

A final small group drove to Sam's Club to pick up the big food order of all the food we will be preparing this week.

Some photos we took sitting outside Latin American Lutheran Mission while waiting for the van to drop the walkers of on the U.S. side of the border.

Brenda, Nancy, and Breckyn in the truck just before leaving for Sam's Club.

Our Flight

Our first flight from Minneapolis to Houston left on time — about two hours into the flight, however, we were informed that there were lightening storms near Houston. So we were diverted to Corpus Cristi, Texas for re-fueling and waiting out the storm.

While flying to Corpus Cristi, we got a spectacular view of the sunset with a background of beautiful clouds.

They didn't let us off the plane in Corpus Cristi but did serve us complementary fruit juice drinks and cookies.

We finally made it to Houston and then had to wait until 11:30 pm to catch our 55 minute flight to Laredo. Of course, all the food courts were closed at the Houston airport by the time we arrived so we just munched on trail bars.

By the time we arrived at Latin American Lutheran Mission it was about 1:30 am. Luckily for us, John, Ken, and Joel had a pizza dinner waiting for us! It was a late night and a short sleeping night!

Waiting at the Airport

This is the first year that most of the team has flown to Laredo. We arrived at the airport extra early due to all the publicity about the long lines. However, we sailed through security without too many issues and then spent some time waiting to board — waiting was spent making "name necklaces," meeting new friends, finishing up work, etc!

On Our Way to See Our Amigos in Mexico!

 We're on our way! Mexico Mission trip team veterans, John and Joel, took off on Wednesday morning towards Texas taking with them  carefully-selected (definitely downsized) supplies.

Because the majority of the team is flying today for the first time ever, the logistics of this trip are new and challenging. The Mexico Leadership team has spent months meeting and planning how to transport our team members across the border without a bus, feed about 140 people a day, and have adequate supplies for our work projects.

As we always say, however, we make our plan and then just trust that God is in charge. And He might have some different ideas than us! :-)

Miss Kitty and her other puppet friends got to travel along with John and Joel. They spent Thursday night relaxing in San Antonio and enjoying the nice warm weather! They were overheard saying, "Why do we live in Minnesota?"

The remainder of the team is meeting at the airport this afternoon — we will travel today to Laredo and spend the night at Latin American Lutheran Mission.

Soak it all in!

Our theme for the week is "Soak it all in!"
 
The theme is all about water, and is based on John 7:37-38.

We will be sharing stories about water with the children at Casa Hogar — Penny is planning some fun VBS activities to go along with the water theme.

Mexico Mission Team Leaves March 28th!

The Mexico Mission Team is in the final stage of preparing for our trip to Casa Hogar Elim orphanage.

On Friday, March 28, a team of 34 individuals will be traveling to south to Mexico to spend time with the children and staff.

Watch our blog for information about what we're up to each day.

Thanks again for your prayers and support for our trip!