May

Hey Everyone!  The camp is back in full swing after a week of vacation! This weekend we head up to Rosarito for a Staff retreat, then go to the States to pick up some friends and family and a team arrives Sunday kicking off our summer season.  The last 2 weeks of ministry then vacation were awesome & I have tons of pictures to share!

Ministry week day 1:  This week many people had left camp for vacation so the interns that were still at camp had a week were we went to different ministry outreaches of our choice.  But the first day we went to do something fun together to start of the week.  Our RA, Lexa (left) took Anahi, Matt & I to go horseback riding!  We went horseback riding on a beautiful beach near La Bufadora for an hour and half. It was such a fun thing for us to do together :)

Ministry week day 2:  Tuesday was one of the coolest things we have gone out to do.  Lexa took Matt and I to visit families that we have built for.  We all had families we wanted to see in the community of El Zorrillo as well as a food box to deliver and a package from a friend of mine to give to a family we built for a few years prior.  The main reason I wanted to go to El Zorrillo was to find my precious Florecita and her sisters.  Florecita is a little girl I met through a VBS last summer and she has had such an impact on my life.  I had been told that she might have moved to a different house in the same community so along with my parents and Maddie began to pray that whenever I had the chance to go to El Zorrillo that I could find her.  We had to drop off a food box on the street right next to Florecita's house and once we found out this other family wasn't home we decided to go to Florecita's house just in case.  As we pulled up it was obvious that no one was living in their Pallet "house." Lexa suggested that we asked the neighbors of they knew anything. As soon as Lexa asked about Florecita the girl yells "Flor...someone is looking for you" and she came from next to their house and ran up to me.  Raquel!!! And she gave me a huge hug.  She took me to a concrete house on the same property as their old pallet house and led me inside.  She told me that the other house had flooded and that they were now living in this one.  She called to her older sister and I got to be reunited with Flor's 2 younger sisters as well as the now 9 month old baby niece who was only a month old the last time I saw them.  It was such an incredible thing to see them all again and I cannot wait to go back to see them soon with my friends Maddie & Holly.  We also stopped by the house that another intern had built on his first trip to Mexico. After searching for it for 45 minutes we found it and the lady invited us in.  She showed us the bible that all the team members had signed at the house dedication and we were able to pray for her and her daughter.  It was an amazing day.

Wednesday we had a staff training day ALL IN SPANISH.  It was a really good training time about character but it's safe to say my brain was pretty exhausted by the end. Afterwards new staff members Len & Sarah organized a little cook out at the camp. We ate hotdogs and made s'mores. It was a fun time of community!

Thursday Lexa and I went to help our good friend Yadi with an event that took place last Sunday.  Cosecha (Harvest) 2012 was a huge community outreach done at a ministry called village of hope.  We helped fill bags of beans for the despensas (give away food bags) and afterwards went to visit friends at a local orphanage we had visited a few months ago.  Later that night Yadi took us to her favorite place to eat sopes, which is our favorite Mexican dish.  After dinner we headed to a cute coffee shop in downtown Ensenada.  It was such a great evening spending time with 2 amazing and encouraging ladies in my life. :)

Friday was a day of cleaning, laundry, relaxation and dinner at the Bartells.  On saturday we headed to a local surf ministry.  I was able to see some good friends and after we made quesadillas on the beach.  Later Lexa came to the beach with some girls from a local church and we spent some time hanging out with these girls.

Sunday I went to a church a few blocks from the camp and later Lexa & I headed to Village of Hope with Yadi for a Cosecha meeting and afterwards went out for burgers...burgers are Lexa & I's staple meal hahhaa.

The next week was our vacation week.  Monday we just hung around camp but on tuesday Rhonda, Lexa, Anahi and I went to a local resort called Estero Beach.  We spent the day swimming, laying by the pool and eating amazing food at the resturant.  

Thursday some of us went to a local water park, Las Canadas.  Friday, Saturday & Sunday were spent getting ready for and putting on Cosecha 2012.  There were between 3,000-5,000 people that attended and we had more than enough food to give out which was such a cool blessing. 

Time for an update!

Sorry for being such a lazy blogger lately, time gets away from me while I'm here!  Since I posted last I have worked on one house and have done tons of local outreaches.  The last couple weeks there have not been teams at camp so all of us interns have been doing lots of classes, devotionals and activities around camp.  

        The second house I built was with a team from California and we built for a family with 4 daughters and a baby boy.  It was a fun week where I spent lots of time learning how to frame, and try construction that I didn't try last year.   It was a crazy build because it was only 3 days instead of 4 but we had an amazing, hard-working team.  I found out that I went to the same high school with one of the girls on the team for 2 years! Small world!  They did some really cool things for the family, they built a kitchen and brought in many things to make the house a home.  During the dedication the dad shared of his struggle with drugs, saying that he did drugs sometime, but not a lot, only a little.  Later in the day he accepted the Lord!  

        As interns we were all assigned outreaches to lead.  The outreach I was leading was to a place called Casa de Gabriel and my friend Perla was the other intern assigned to lead.  Casa de Gabriel is a children's home for  handicapped and disabled children.  We planned to put on a puppet show, made cupcakes and planned to spend time with the kids.  This outreach was emotionally very stretching.  It was such a good and eye-opening experience but also a very hard one.  The workers there work incredibly hard and have such huge hearts for these kids.  It was an extremely humbling outreach and one that took us out of our comfort zones and made us take on new perspectives.  The second outreach I helped lead was to an orphanage in Uruapan, about an hour away from yugo.  We went and spent about 2 hours playing with the kids there.  

      Since there aren't teams in, we went camping 2 weeks ago!  It was SO fun.  We camped about 40 minutes from camp at a really cool "secret" location.  We played games, ate around the fire, saw whales and climbed around all the rocks.  It was one of the prettiest places I've seen and it was so fun to have time with all the interns away from camp.  

         This last week has been pretty busy around here.  A new family arrived here from Canada and we helped them move in and painted inside their house.  Last saturday we had a party for Sandy and Mark who are getting married in a few months in Canada.  We helped at a mother's day event thursday and a local church had an event here today.  

        That's it for now :)