Monday, August 3rd Journal

It was a little bit harder getting everyone up and ready this morning.  The long days of travel and the full day at the orphanage and the shops yesterday tired everyone out, I guess.  But we managed to get everyone up and together for a second day of devos.  Again, I was encouraged.  We really do have awesome students!

After breakfast, our group split into two teams.  Ours went back to the orphanage for a day of scraping and painting and the other team went into the mountains for food and supplies distribution to the Tarahumaran natives.

Our team got together at the meeting room to load supplies into a bus and rode up to children’s home.  Upon arrival, we unloaded and sorted the goods into their storage areas on the corrects shelves and spaces and then split into two more teams: one two play with and love on the kids and another to start work on the painting project.

It was quite the project, especially with limited ladders to reach the second story.  But with many hands and many dedicated hard workers, lots was accomplished – and quickly.  Here’s some pics from our work day…

My feet were incredibly swollen and hurting after a day of standing on ladders or supporting them from the bottom.  We walked back and when I lay on my bed before supper, it was HARD to make myself get back up!  I decided to take a shower to see if that would help.  It did.

Supper was a fabulous combination Mexican plate (which I’ll probably be paying for later).  So good!  And after dinner, we had our nightly group time of discussion and sharing.  This night was especially good – getting to hear stories from both teams that were both touching, challenging, and inspiring.  Almost all of our students were raising their hands to share and many of them did.

After Cynthia got up and shared a little about her experience in foster care, Barry asked me to stand up and share about how Deanna and I came to adopt Autumn and Cynthia.  I wasn’t raising my hand to share that evening, because I was already tearing up through everyone else’s and knew that if I got up – especially to talk about adoption – that I would lose it.  Regardless, I got up, LOST my composure immediately and stumbled my way through sharing my story.

I think part of why this experience is so overwhelming to me is because of how close my family is tied to the idea / thought of adoption.  And seeing how Lupe and Lino love and call these orphaned children their own, really floors me emotionally.  I think that their ministry and life-calling is so special and so near to the heart of Father God and I am so thankful that so many of our students are getting to experience this close-at-hand with me this week.

This evening is the first that I made it to the Internet Café and was able to post my daily journals so far.  I only had a half an hour, so I didn’t have time to check e-mail and do much else – other than send out a couple of tweets on my Twitter account.  I’ll probably try to get away for a longer time some other night and upload a few more posts.  Pictures and video will probably have to wait until our return to the states. (UPDATE: As you can see, I’ve embedded pics and video upon our return.)

I called back home and found out that Deanna was at a softball game with Kella.  She’s doing much better after her fall (with the help of meds) and all is well – so good to hear her voice.  I’m missing her and my too little ones a lot – especially after just browsing through some pics on my laptop.

I returned back to my room and I’m listening to a conversation going on between two young men outside of my room right now, and it is blowing me away.  I can’t share anything else because it’s a sensitive situation (involving tears), but I just want to say that I am SO PROUD of our students – across the board.  We have students that are really serious about loving God and loving others.

Advertisement