hello my friends!
joe and i are heading off on another whirlwind adventure. this time we are prefacing our mexicali mission week with two weeks in puebla, mexico. for those of you who don't know where puebla is . . . it is southeast of mexico city. it appears to be surrounded by massive volcanos (like antigua, guatemala was).
historically it was started by the spaniards as opposed to being taken over by them :) puebla served as the stop-over from mexico city to vera cruz, a major port. it's also where the famous battle was won that is celebrated every year on cinco de mayo.
as usual we will be going to language school and living with a family in puebla during the week. on the weekends we will stay in san lorenzo with our young family we adopted here in the states (they recently moved back home to mexico). their oldest son is our godson, rubenito.
from puebla we will fly to mexicali where our church will pick us up from the airport and take us to the base camp to join the mission team of about 75 people (about 40 of which are teens). joe and i are actually part of the seniors team because we go to the elderly orphanage and work on the home and spend time loving on the elderly residents.
this year is special because we hope to involve another church from mexicali for the first time. we would like for jose and daisy to have some support from their own town. i see from reading this that i ought to tell you about the home. usually i'm lucky to get one e-mail off during that busy week in the past, so i've neglected to give details.
jose decided to break away from his prison and gang ministry several years ago. understandably he was worn out from that type of work. he decided to open an assisted living facility as an income to someday retire on. about that time he decided to married daisy. jose and his father set to work renovating an old delapidated building. one day while they were working, the police showed up with a very old person and said they had jose's first customer! jose politely explained that he wasn't ready and it was to be for paying customers not homeless medically afflicted people. besides, jose didn't have enough money to feed anyone . . . he could barely feed himself. the police insisted, and if you've been to mexico, you know what that means.
so for the last 3 or 4 years he has taken care of up to 20 abandoned elderly at a time. the place is still delapidated, but it's clean and so are the patients. the police usually remember to drop off food, and jose has a lady to work during the day while he works 40-50 hour weeks as does his wife at a day care center to pay for the supplies.
this visit will bring a new face. daisy had a baby this month. we are planning an american bbq for them and the patients. that should be fun.
today i went and bought the lotion for our project this year. we are going to clean old feet and massage lotion into them :() we are also going to try and stucco an entire (long) wall in 4 days. the ladies dorm may get a fresh coat of paint this year too. we'll see what God has planned for us when we get there!
wish us luck or pray for us . . . whatever suites you :) i will write again when we get there. until then, via con Dios.
heidi and joe (aka jairi y pepe)
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