Friday, April 20, 2007
Nessisito mas pesos por favor.
Continuing my report on my trip to Mexico...
Wed. and Thur. were similar in what was accomplished. We had finished with the digging and we were filling up the trenches with rocks and cement. Funny thing about the rocks was that we didn't have half the amount we needed. I realized this realatively early in the process and made a mental note to ask Dave to purchase some more materials for our work site. As we continued working (at break-neck speed) I began to realize that we were going to run out of gravel, cement, and water as well (pretty much everything we had). I had been expecting Dave to stop by, as he normally does, but he never did. Having no way to contact him, I took the libery of ordering truckloads of supplies to be delivered to the site. The fact that I had no funds with which to do this detered me not. So I ordered a dumptruck load of large rock, a load of gravel (to mix in the cement), 20 bags of cement, and a tanker of water. I also purchased 100 gallons of water to fill the barrels we already had. All in all I spent about 4000 pesos (roughly $380) with absolutely no guarantee that I wouldn't have to swipe my own Visa to pay for it.
After we returned to camp and resumed normal evening activities, I approached Dave and said:
Adam: "Hey Dave. Do you think there's any money in the budget for more supplies at Castanos?"
Dave: "Well, what do you need?"
Adam: "Well, we're running out of everything. We need a load of rock, a load of gravel, about 20 bags of cement, and a tanker of water."
Dave: "Wow, you guys must be working really hard!"
Adam: "Yeah."
Dave: "Yeah, I think we can handle that."
Adam: "Whew, that's good because their being delivered in the morning."
Dave: "Oh?"
Adam: "Well, I couldn't get ahold of you to ask so I went ahead and ordered what we needed."
Dave: "So how much is it?"
Adam: "About 4000 pesos."
Dave: "Hmmm."
So Dave gave me the money and I didn't have to explain to Angela why the Mexico trip cost me an extra $380 dollars.
A summary of the rest of the trip... We finished all the footers for the wall and got some of the wall poured. Excellent work. It was rewarding to see how much got done. We ate some good food that was preparred by the preacher's wife. We took more people every day we went out to the site and everyone worked hard to serve the community of Castanos.
That'll pretty much wrap up the series on Mexico 2007. I may pop in with a few more stories from time to time but that's all for now folks.
Praise God.
Wed. and Thur. were similar in what was accomplished. We had finished with the digging and we were filling up the trenches with rocks and cement. Funny thing about the rocks was that we didn't have half the amount we needed. I realized this realatively early in the process and made a mental note to ask Dave to purchase some more materials for our work site. As we continued working (at break-neck speed) I began to realize that we were going to run out of gravel, cement, and water as well (pretty much everything we had). I had been expecting Dave to stop by, as he normally does, but he never did. Having no way to contact him, I took the libery of ordering truckloads of supplies to be delivered to the site. The fact that I had no funds with which to do this detered me not. So I ordered a dumptruck load of large rock, a load of gravel (to mix in the cement), 20 bags of cement, and a tanker of water. I also purchased 100 gallons of water to fill the barrels we already had. All in all I spent about 4000 pesos (roughly $380) with absolutely no guarantee that I wouldn't have to swipe my own Visa to pay for it.
After we returned to camp and resumed normal evening activities, I approached Dave and said:
Adam: "Hey Dave. Do you think there's any money in the budget for more supplies at Castanos?"
Dave: "Well, what do you need?"
Adam: "Well, we're running out of everything. We need a load of rock, a load of gravel, about 20 bags of cement, and a tanker of water."
Dave: "Wow, you guys must be working really hard!"
Adam: "Yeah."
Dave: "Yeah, I think we can handle that."
Adam: "Whew, that's good because their being delivered in the morning."
Dave: "Oh?"
Adam: "Well, I couldn't get ahold of you to ask so I went ahead and ordered what we needed."
Dave: "So how much is it?"
Adam: "About 4000 pesos."
Dave: "Hmmm."
So Dave gave me the money and I didn't have to explain to Angela why the Mexico trip cost me an extra $380 dollars.
A summary of the rest of the trip... We finished all the footers for the wall and got some of the wall poured. Excellent work. It was rewarding to see how much got done. We ate some good food that was preparred by the preacher's wife. We took more people every day we went out to the site and everyone worked hard to serve the community of Castanos.
That'll pretty much wrap up the series on Mexico 2007. I may pop in with a few more stories from time to time but that's all for now folks.
Praise God.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Mission trip to Texas
On Tuesday of my trip to Mexico, I did something that I had never done in my 4 previous trips. {pause for dramatic effect} It all started Monday night. One of the sponsors received some bad news about a couple of friends of hers. Without getting into any details, the short story is that she had to return to the US. Now thanks to some sweet new border laws, you have to have a passport to fly into the US. So because this lady did not have one, we had to drive her back to the border. I volunteered to go with Dave to take her back and keep him awake on the drive. He accepted my offer and it was set that we would leave at 5:00 am Tuesday morning. The plan was to drive up, get her a rental car and head straight back, returning to camp about 1:00 pm.
The drive to the border was good. We chatted about stuff (and anyone who has chatted with Dave knows that this is good) and drove. We made pretty good time to the border. About 45 min from the border we began making calls to try to find a rental car or plane ticket to get our fellow traveler back home. We called everyone we could in Eagle Pass (the US side of the border where we cross) and we found nothing. We stopped at Colegio Biblico and used their phones and phonebooks to continue our search. The local rental car place had no one-way cars for rent and there are no real flights from Eagle Pass to anywhere. There was a bus but it didn't leave until late in the afternoon. So we began calling around to other cities in the area. Finally I located a rental car in Del Rio, about an hour away. I confirmed that they would keep the car and of we sped up the border. One cool benefit of being back in the good ol' USA is that my cell phone worked again. I was able to call Angela and she sent me some awesome pictures of Braden. This was perhaps the best part of the trip to Texas! We arrived in Del Rio and were able to get our friend on her way.
Since we were in the States, Dave decided it would be a good time to check on some vehicle parts to repair his turn signals. We went to O'Reilly's and the dealership, but no one could really help us much (by this I mean, they wanted us to take off the steering collum and we didn't want to). So we headed back down to Eagle Pass on the return trip. Needless to say, this little side trip to Del Rio added a significant amount of time to our estimated time of return.
We had also planned to go to Wal-Mart while in Eagle Pass to get some food and supplies we needed back at the camp. So we stopped in for a quick shoping spree. We divided the list and agreed to meet back at the registers ASAP. I was in charge of the food items. I went searching for these items only to find that I was in the worst stocked Wal-Mart in the world. It was bad (apparently Dave had a similar experience). I felt like I was in a K-Mart or something. Anyways, I finally scraped together things similar to what was on my list and returned to check out. Dave and I got out of there. We then went to Whattaburger to grab some lunch before heading back into Mexico. I've got to say, Whattaburger has some pretty tasty burgers, can't say much for the fries though.
We got back on the road and returned to camp without incident (except Dave getting out of the van to relieve himself in the middle of the desert).
Praise God.
The drive to the border was good. We chatted about stuff (and anyone who has chatted with Dave knows that this is good) and drove. We made pretty good time to the border. About 45 min from the border we began making calls to try to find a rental car or plane ticket to get our fellow traveler back home. We called everyone we could in Eagle Pass (the US side of the border where we cross) and we found nothing. We stopped at Colegio Biblico and used their phones and phonebooks to continue our search. The local rental car place had no one-way cars for rent and there are no real flights from Eagle Pass to anywhere. There was a bus but it didn't leave until late in the afternoon. So we began calling around to other cities in the area. Finally I located a rental car in Del Rio, about an hour away. I confirmed that they would keep the car and of we sped up the border. One cool benefit of being back in the good ol' USA is that my cell phone worked again. I was able to call Angela and she sent me some awesome pictures of Braden. This was perhaps the best part of the trip to Texas! We arrived in Del Rio and were able to get our friend on her way.
Since we were in the States, Dave decided it would be a good time to check on some vehicle parts to repair his turn signals. We went to O'Reilly's and the dealership, but no one could really help us much (by this I mean, they wanted us to take off the steering collum and we didn't want to). So we headed back down to Eagle Pass on the return trip. Needless to say, this little side trip to Del Rio added a significant amount of time to our estimated time of return.
We had also planned to go to Wal-Mart while in Eagle Pass to get some food and supplies we needed back at the camp. So we stopped in for a quick shoping spree. We divided the list and agreed to meet back at the registers ASAP. I was in charge of the food items. I went searching for these items only to find that I was in the worst stocked Wal-Mart in the world. It was bad (apparently Dave had a similar experience). I felt like I was in a K-Mart or something. Anyways, I finally scraped together things similar to what was on my list and returned to check out. Dave and I got out of there. We then went to Whattaburger to grab some lunch before heading back into Mexico. I've got to say, Whattaburger has some pretty tasty burgers, can't say much for the fries though.
We got back on the road and returned to camp without incident (except Dave getting out of the van to relieve himself in the middle of the desert).
Praise God.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Dirty...not like Christina Aguilara
The first real workday in Mexico went well. I was assigned to be the co-leader of the group at Castanos (the 'n' is supposed to have the little ~ above it but I don't know how to do that on my computer). I had never worked at this site in previous years (because they just started working there last year). It was the site farthest from the camp (about a 45 min drive). We took 14 people out the first day. Our task was to dig a trench around the perimeter of the property for the footer of a wall. Then we were to fill it with large rocks (as filler) then with concrete to finish making the foundation for the wall. If we finished all that they wanted us to pour the forms to level off the foundation for laying cement block. The trenches were about 8 inches wide by 28 inches deep (24 X 30 at the posts) and about 200 feet long.
First day summary.... Everbody dug.
We got about 70% of the digging done the first day, that was incredible. As you might imagine, spending the entire day in a trench made us quite dirty and disgusting... so we all piled into the van with our nastiness and drove the 45 min back to camp.
At camp we ate dinner, had praise time, had small group meetings, and then the old people, such as myself, went to bed.
Praise God.
First day summary.... Everbody dug.
We got about 70% of the digging done the first day, that was incredible. As you might imagine, spending the entire day in a trench made us quite dirty and disgusting... so we all piled into the van with our nastiness and drove the 45 min back to camp.
At camp we ate dinner, had praise time, had small group meetings, and then the old people, such as myself, went to bed.
Praise God.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Once upon a time in Mexico (without Brad Pitt)
So I covered the driving to Mexico and back and left out everything in between. [a tactic to build drama and suspence] In this post I'll cover Sunday.
Sunday we got to sleep in a little (breakfast was at 8:00). After that we had a church service with the Christians in the village. ___Sidebar___ To tell you a bit about Somberete... It is a small Mexican village of about 200 people. Most do not have indoor plumbing (but the camp does now, thanks to previous CCH work trips). ____End Sidebar____ That was a nice service, we kind of outnumbered them, I'd say about 109 to 15. However, their enthusiasm at least equalled that of our large group. They sang out loudly and worshiped along side us. One of the more amazing thing is that when they read scripture, they would all say it together...from memory. Yes, many of them had all of the scriptures used in the sermon memorized! Amazing.
Following the service we had a quick lunch and went to visit the worksites that we would be at all week. A general description of each worksite follows: dig, pour concrete, paint occasionally, the end. After an afternoon of driving around Mexico, it was time to eat. As per tradition we ate at a nice restaurant in Monclova for diner. They have awesome fajitas that we preorder (you could imagine this being necessary for 109 people) and stuff our faces with. Having done this 4 times in the past I was looking for something new to try. So I ordered a cappuccino from the bar. ___Sidebar___ Many of you may know that I'm a bit of a coffee snob. Not a snob so much as a conasuir...conasuor.....conawhatever. Anyways, I have an appreciation for good coffee. That being said ___End Sidebar___ I hadn't ever seen a cappuccino made the way this was. They steamed the milk in the glass it was to be served in and then poured the espresso through the milk. The frothyness stayed in tact and this created and layered effecct. From the bottom: espresso, milk, froth. It was beautiful. Of course you get a face full of froth when you try to drink it unless you stir it up...so I hear... As for the overall quality I would give it a 7.2 on the GCS (Guatemala Coffee Standard) Scale. For comparison purposes Folgers Breakfast blend ranks at a 2.6 on the GCS, standard Starbucks ranks at a 7.0 on the GCS, and Posada Organic Guatemalan coffee is a perfect 10 on the GCS. So overall it was a pleasant cup of java in the land of Mexicana.
We then returned to camp to wrap up the evening with praise time and small group meetings.
Next post...we get dirty!
Praise God.
Sunday we got to sleep in a little (breakfast was at 8:00). After that we had a church service with the Christians in the village. ___Sidebar___ To tell you a bit about Somberete... It is a small Mexican village of about 200 people. Most do not have indoor plumbing (but the camp does now, thanks to previous CCH work trips). ____End Sidebar____ That was a nice service, we kind of outnumbered them, I'd say about 109 to 15. However, their enthusiasm at least equalled that of our large group. They sang out loudly and worshiped along side us. One of the more amazing thing is that when they read scripture, they would all say it together...from memory. Yes, many of them had all of the scriptures used in the sermon memorized! Amazing.
Following the service we had a quick lunch and went to visit the worksites that we would be at all week. A general description of each worksite follows: dig, pour concrete, paint occasionally, the end. After an afternoon of driving around Mexico, it was time to eat. As per tradition we ate at a nice restaurant in Monclova for diner. They have awesome fajitas that we preorder (you could imagine this being necessary for 109 people) and stuff our faces with. Having done this 4 times in the past I was looking for something new to try. So I ordered a cappuccino from the bar. ___Sidebar___ Many of you may know that I'm a bit of a coffee snob. Not a snob so much as a conasuir...conasuor.....conawhatever. Anyways, I have an appreciation for good coffee. That being said ___End Sidebar___ I hadn't ever seen a cappuccino made the way this was. They steamed the milk in the glass it was to be served in and then poured the espresso through the milk. The frothyness stayed in tact and this created and layered effecct. From the bottom: espresso, milk, froth. It was beautiful. Of course you get a face full of froth when you try to drink it unless you stir it up...so I hear... As for the overall quality I would give it a 7.2 on the GCS (Guatemala Coffee Standard) Scale. For comparison purposes Folgers Breakfast blend ranks at a 2.6 on the GCS, standard Starbucks ranks at a 7.0 on the GCS, and Posada Organic Guatemalan coffee is a perfect 10 on the GCS. So overall it was a pleasant cup of java in the land of Mexicana.
We then returned to camp to wrap up the evening with praise time and small group meetings.
Next post...we get dirty!
Praise God.
