Neighbors and Friends

This week we built 6 houses and tomorrow one more starts making our Spring Break 2010 total 7 homes for families. That alone is a pretty successful venture, but let me tell you about something that participants don't necessarily get to see when they come down.

Yesterday Gold Canyon Community Church finished a house for Pablo, Yolanda, and their family. After they finished the house we all gathered outside for a group picture. After which everyone hugs, says their goodbyes, and gets in the car to drive back home. Usually these hugs take place between the volunteers and the locals. This particular time I saw Yolanda hug one of her neighbors, Alma Rosa. Yolanda told Alma Rosa how awesome it was to meet her and get to know her this weekend and then she thanked her for helping build her house.

These were two neighbors that didn't know each other at all before. I know I've written about this before so this is obviously something that gets me excited. Every time it happens so tangibly and visibly it completely confirms our mission here and encourages us to keep going. Thats only two neighbors. How many of these interactions do we not get to see?

Thank you to Gold Canyon and all the other churches and groups that came down to help build more hope in a hopeless part of Puerto Penasco.

One Mission Community Care Team

As we gear up for our pretty busy spring break season I thought you'd like to know about something that's been going on for a few weeks now. In order to receive a house each family has to volunteer in their community. In order to provide families the opportunity to volunteer we have begun a Community Care Team. Every Saturday morning our care team goes out to different parts of town and helps out in whatever way they can. This Saturday our team spent the morning volunteering at a local elementary school. It was pretty cool to see the people working along side each other laughing and actually enjoying their work.

A few of the teachers from the school came and worked alongside our volunteers as well. We trimmed palm trees, painted trees, dug dead trees out of the ground, painted a library, built benches for their basketball court, and raked/swept the whole property.

Our care team has been going out every saturday for three weeks now and already our numbers have grown from 5 the first week to 20 this week.

After all the work was done our volunteer coordinator explained to everyone that what they were doing was a good thing. Whether they received a house or not helping their community was a productive way to spend their time. We are happy to be able to provide people with shelter but without them taking initiative in their community our impact won't reach its full potential.