Chido.

I cannot believe that it has been almost a month since I first got off the plane in McAllen! It has been an exhausting, amazing few weeks around the border.

So far, I have spent time with teams in two orphanages in Reynosa. The experiences were both wonderful and trying in their own ways. At Benito Jaurez, a team from Kansas participated in work projects and led an evening family ministry side by side with a group of awesome people from Monterrey. It was incredible to see these two teams come together and reach across any linguistic or cultural barriers to serve and develop new relationships. I end up being thrown fully into translating, so that the people from both Kansas and Monterrey would be on the same page during group meetings. I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with kids and growing increasingly more comfortable speaking Spanish.

The week at Pilar de Esperanza Children's Home was very different from Benito Juarez - the organization of the orphanage, the composition of the group (this one was largely composed of youth), and the visibility of unfamiliar creatures being just some of those differences.

Dying dogs, huge tarantulas and their babies, spiky lizards, a cat eating a rabbit under my bed are just some of the lovely animal occurrences I had the privilege of witnessing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I became acclimated to the heat and humidity at Pilar after the first couple of days without AC. I am looking forward to spending another week and a half or so getting to know the kids at the children's home and working with 2 more groups there starting July 3rd.

So I'm back in Texas this week, hanging out with my Merge buds. We are in the middle of an awesome week of VBS with kids from the San Juan community in Texas, where I play a brave (and super rad) lion in our skits. I'm not sure what our plans for next week will be, but we may have some time to just relax and hang out. We have been talking over the past couple of days about how well we all get along. It truly is amazing how we have all come from such different situations and work so wonderfully together. I think that God has really brought us together to do some cool things, and I greatly appreciate all the prayers for us as we continue to live and work together.

Love to all!

McAllen

Greetings to all!

I am currently sitting in an apartment in McAllen, Texas, getting ready to depart on my first trip of the summer with a team from McPherson, Kansas in the morning. We are going to be ministering at the Benito Juarez Children's Home just over the border. The location and projects for this team have been switched around quite a bit in the past few weeks due to the precarious situations in parts of Mexico, but they have been incredibly flexible and willing to serve wherever they are able.

I am super excited to get this summer started! The past week has been filled with trainings and a decent dose of relaxation. We've been staying at a church in Mission, TX for most of the week and have also begun planning a VBS program for the end of the month to be hosted at a Covenant Church in nearby San Juan. I have greatly enjoyed getting to know my fellow summer staffers and really think that we are going to make a good team!

Thank you all for your prayers and support! I will try to update you all as regularly as possible, as internet access is available.

Till next time...