Saturday, March 22, 2008
Juarez, Mexico, Amor Mission Trip
The Bridgeway Church youth group had a mission trip planned to build a small house in Juarez for a poor family. This is part of Amor Ministries. The whole story is kind of long, so I will just put the short one up here. Philip and Cara were signed up to go, and somehow my name got on the list as well. I wasn't real excited about going but since Philip is a senior this year I thought this might be one of the last chances I would have to do something like this with him. So, we got up about 0400 on Saturday and went to the building where we loaded up two vans with trailers and headed to Ciudad Juarez. We got to the camp site by about 6 PM Juarez time -- 8 PM Dallas time. We cheerfully set up camp and had a campfire. You can see one of the vans with a trailer behind it in this picture. Also, please note the pretty blue tent in the background -- that is the one I slept in the first night.
The next day, Sunday, we framed up a couple of the walls while the majority of the group (there were 20 of us) hand mixed and placed a 22' x 11' concrete slab.
This went fairly well for the first part of the day, but then a nasty dust storm with winds up to 60 mph came through and it was hard to see, breath, walk, etc. Then the electricity went out in the area from the high winds, which meant that the water went out too. And that is a problem for mixing concrete. We were eventually able to get more water, but it involved loading up one of the trailers with barrels, getting the van stuck in the sand twice for about 45 minutes, etc. Here is a picture of the sky after the dust storm had settled down for the most part -- that is dust in sky, not clouds.
When we arrived back at the camp site we found that one of our tents had blown away with all the stuff in it (later rescued and re-erected), but the tent that I was sleeping in was pretty much trash. The main support poles had broken in multiple places, the fly was ripped up, etc. We threw it away and borrowed a cabin tent from another group. Here are some pictures of the destroyed tent and the amount of dirt inside the other tents from the dust storm (tents that were closed up, by the way).
I managed to go to bed with a migraine headache that night, too. That is only the second migraine that I have had -- not a good day. Oh, and I managed to lose my right contact lens during the dust storm. A hard contact that I had been wearing for 20+ years. So, for the rest of the trip I wore glasses that worked less and less well while my eyes started reshaping from not wearing contacts. I could barely see by the time we headed home.
The rest of the trip went much better. We got the walls and roof put up on Monday. Tuesday we installed the windows and door and mixed the stucco and put up the first coat. Wednesday we put on the second coat which is the end of our house building. We turned the house and keys over to the new homeowners and headed back to the US.
We spent Wednesday night in Van Horn and got back to Dallas about 5PM on Thursday. Short trip, but eventful!
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The next day, Sunday, we framed up a couple of the walls while the majority of the group (there were 20 of us) hand mixed and placed a 22' x 11' concrete slab.
This went fairly well for the first part of the day, but then a nasty dust storm with winds up to 60 mph came through and it was hard to see, breath, walk, etc. Then the electricity went out in the area from the high winds, which meant that the water went out too. And that is a problem for mixing concrete. We were eventually able to get more water, but it involved loading up one of the trailers with barrels, getting the van stuck in the sand twice for about 45 minutes, etc. Here is a picture of the sky after the dust storm had settled down for the most part -- that is dust in sky, not clouds.
When we arrived back at the camp site we found that one of our tents had blown away with all the stuff in it (later rescued and re-erected), but the tent that I was sleeping in was pretty much trash. The main support poles had broken in multiple places, the fly was ripped up, etc. We threw it away and borrowed a cabin tent from another group. Here are some pictures of the destroyed tent and the amount of dirt inside the other tents from the dust storm (tents that were closed up, by the way).
I managed to go to bed with a migraine headache that night, too. That is only the second migraine that I have had -- not a good day. Oh, and I managed to lose my right contact lens during the dust storm. A hard contact that I had been wearing for 20+ years. So, for the rest of the trip I wore glasses that worked less and less well while my eyes started reshaping from not wearing contacts. I could barely see by the time we headed home.
The rest of the trip went much better. We got the walls and roof put up on Monday. Tuesday we installed the windows and door and mixed the stucco and put up the first coat. Wednesday we put on the second coat which is the end of our house building. We turned the house and keys over to the new homeowners and headed back to the US.
We spent Wednesday night in Van Horn and got back to Dallas about 5PM on Thursday. Short trip, but eventful!
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