Hey everyone! Here's a little update on what has been keeping me busy the last couple of weeks since our first house build! About three weeks ago we started going through applications to decide who would be getting a house in March. During the month of March we will be building 12 houses in a community called Padre Kino, which is about 20 minutes from our house. There will be around 6 groups coming down from Canda to build with us and 150 people will be here all at once! Needless to say, it's going to be a very crazy and busy month, but I'm looking forward to it so much! Especially after what we've been doing the last three weeks!

After a long process of interviews, we finally determined which 12 families we would be building for and got to go to their houses to tell them the good news. Every family we met had something special about them and we've already gotten so attached, but one family in particular has made a huge impact on us already. As we were at the land office three weeks ago discussing which families could be potential Hero Holiday recipients, in walks in a 17 year old girl with an 8-month old baby boy on her hip. Her name was Katheryne and her and her boyfriend were living with their baby boy, Abdiel, in a tiny cement house with her mother and her older brother and they used an old RV as their kitchen. Two weeks before, the family had lost Katheryne's step-father in a drowning incident while he was trying to save his other son. The day we met Katheryne she was 6 months pregnant with her second child. We knew right away that this would be a worthy family to build for.

The next day on our way to teach English at an elementary school, we got a disturbing phone call. Katheryne had lost her baby just a few hours after we finished talking with her. We were devastated. We had only known this girl for less than 24 hours and already we were so attached to her. As hard as it was, we still pushed our feelings aside for an hour or two and put on happy faces to teach the kids at the school. A few days later we attended the funeral for baby Paloma Michelle. It was so hard to watch Katheryne's and her husband, Jesus (pronounced "Hey-zeus"), pain as they gazed upon their unborn baby being barried in the ground and covered with a pad of cement. It was definitely an emotional day, but to add to the craziness, we still had to go back to Padre Kino that same day and tell 12 families that they would be getting a house, one of those families was Katheryne and Jesus. Talk about a mix of emotions!

We decided to wait until the next day to tell Katheryne and Jesus because we didn't want them to be overwhelmed with emotions and boy were they happy to hear the news! The land lady decided to donate a piece of land to the couple so that they could start off their lives on a new step.

In the past two weeks, we've started preparing the houses by pouring the cement pads for the floors. And not just pouring ... Cement trucks do not exist here in Mexico, so everything is mixed in a small cement mixer at the site. First you put in two and a half buckets of water, then one bag of cement mix, and a whole bunch of gravel! Us girls were in charge of shoveling the gravel into the mixer, and BOY was it a hard job! Within 12 days we poured 10 cement pads.

I hope reading this post has gotten you as excited for these families as I am!
Please feel free to check out this video-montage of our cement pouring fun! It's amazing and makes me tear up every time just re-living the excitement!

Adios for now!
God bless,
Cynthia :)

One week down, So many more to come! :)

Well, I have survived my first week here in beautiful sunny Mexico! So far, I've built a house, fallen in love with a Mexican family, explored our town, played charades with the man at the meat counter at the grocery store to explain "ground beef", watched the sunset on the ocean, attempted to tan my pasty white skin, eaten goat, shark, and lots of authentic Mexican food, and gotten to know so many amazing people in our community including the seniors at the old folks home we volunteer at, and the kids at the schools we teach at!  Everyday is a new adventure and it's so exciting to see what the next day will bring. My spanish skills are improving daily and I'm beginning to be able to carry on full conversations with the Mexican people!
I'm learning so much and having a blast.
Thanks for checking in on me!
I'll post again soon.