Mexico 2010 Part 2

I went to bed on Sunday night excited and ready to get to work on the house. Monday morning we had chapel and breakfast @ the camp. Then we split into our teams to head out to our building site. I was excited that both of the Real Life teams would be building right across the street from each other, but I was also nervous. We had a lot of people on our team that had zero construction experience including myself and I really couldn't picture inside my head how we would complete an entire house (albeit a small one) in four days.

We made it to the job site. The concrete had been poured...an empty slate...We all got out of the van. The drive to the site had been sobering to say the least. I've heard people say that we in America don't know what true poverty really is and now I can see why people say that. Stray dogs roamed the streets, children too....little kids who may or may not have had an older child looking after them. Fences were pieced together with cardboard, leftover bits of boards, old wooden pallets, and wire. Outhouses sat behind houses that were slapped together with a hope and a prayer. And in we came....A line of trucks, and white cargo vans. Despite our intimidating presence everyone waved to us. Several houses in the neighborhood had been built by EOC crews in years past so I'm sure these people knew why the gringos had arrived.

As soon as we were out of the van the work began. I was shocked at the way our small group came together in that moment and formed a true team. We had split up into a framing crew, painting crew, and cutting crew the night before. So me and the other paint crew members immediately began painting the exterior house panels. Larry and Trae King turned on the generator started cutting all the boards...The kids from the neighborhood came over to check out what was going on. Many kids grabbed paintbrushes and started helping. We met Lydia and Kenya that morning (the mother and daughter we were building the house for). Kenya was a quiet girl with a sweet smile. I noticed Lydia quietly observing us and after a few minutes she grabbed a paintbrush herself and started to help. That morning we met not only Kenya and Lydia, but some of the other neighborhood kids: Antonio, his brother 'Berto, their older sister, and her ten week old baby, Carlitos, and several other kids who wondered back and forth between the two job sites.

'Berto in particular, touched my heart. He told me he was 12 and he seemed to understand everything we said to him even though he didn't speak English. Me and Katelyn ended up using him as a translator to the other kids that morning. He worked and he worked hard. He painted, lifted, carried, and translated the entire day! We found out from him that he lived in the house behind the one we were building and that his house had been built by EOC a couple of years before. So he understood the significance of what we were there doing.

The next couple of days were a blur of working, sleeping, eating, playing, worshipping and falling in love with the families we were building the houses for. I had some humbling moments for certain and I conquered many of my fears. The biggest of which is (well, was) my fear of heights....Jim, our crew foreman came over and told me and Katelyn he needed a couple people on the roof to secure the plywood. I panicked, but I didn't come on this trip to say no so I told Jim I would get up there. Larry held the ladder as Katelyn climbed up and got on the roof before me...And now, my moment of truth. I asked Larry if he thought I could do it and he swore to me I would be fine and that he would hold the ladder for me. I took the first step of the ladder very cautiously and took a gigantic breath and just climbed...I got to the top and looked up @ Jim who was on the roof. I had successfully climbed that dang ladder, but now I had to hoist myself onto the roof and I was scared....like, almost hyperventilating scared. I don't even remember what in the world Jim said to me in that moment, but I do remember feeling completely comforted by his kind words of encouragement and I took a deep breath and I did it!! I made it on top of the roof! I wasn't quite ready to stand up and say, "I'm king of the world," but I was up there even if I was clinging to those pieces of plywood for dear life.

Katelyn and I worked that afternoon on the roof. There was a moment when I took a break from my hammering and I just took it all in. The neighborhood, my team mates, the mountains in the background, and I started to weep for the beauty of it all...I was sitting on a roof of a house that didn't even exist two days before. And I was in God's presence up there. I felt Him like I have never felt Him before. I couldn't believe that a year and a half ago I was dealing with cancer..the lowest of the lows.... and now 18 months later I was at the peak of my life both literally and figuratively. What an amazing feeling to be in God's grace and to feel it, know it and appreciate it....I am a blessed girl...