Mexico Mission Trip, Day Four

From my journal

December 31, 2009

Sheesh, I can't believe it's the last day of 2009! It feels so weird - I can remember just what I was doing a year ago today. I prayed for today to be a wonderful day, a good last memory of '09.

I decided to wear my beanie pretty much all the time. My hair's a wreck.

A girl from Canada, Jenn, asked me if there were cowboys where I lived. I said maybe in Lubbock or some town out in the panhandle, but not in Dallas (except the football team!) Then she asked, "Do you guys really shoot rattlesnakes?" I laughed at that and said I'd never even seen a rattlesnake, let alone shot one!

It's so gorgeous here. I think Tijuana may be a valley, or multiple valleys, 'cuz everywhere we look there's mountains.

Also everywhere there's stray dogs! We saw 2 cats, too, and a family of chickens!

VBS was totally awesome. They won't let us take pictures till the last day, 'cuz we don't want the parents to feel like their kids are just sort of being exploited, like the Americans want pictures to show their friends how poor the Mexicans are or anything like that. So we're waiting till they trust us more.

It was really ridiculously windy today, and sand was flying in all of our faces and eyes, but we worked through that. We played Mexican duck-duck-goose (pato pato ganso!) and freeze dancing and stuff, and gave all the kids candy! Then was lunch again, and then we moved to building the house, which was so amazing!

I actually used a hammer today!

I worked in the house, nailing drywall in,

(my first nail...which, yes, I pulled out and renailed - straight!)

and on the roof, nailing shingles in!

We shingled a whole roof in about four hours. I got to do the last shingle. 8-)

The view from up there was incredible, and the sunset on the way home was just...amazing.

I felt so awesome building stuff, like I was doing the exact same stuff Jesus did 2000 years ago.
Traffic, of course, is ridiculous here - no one follows signs!