Este fin de semana

This past weekend I along with several others from local churches went on a trip to Reynosa, Mexico. This was my second trip to this colonia and yet it varied greatly from the past one. Last time we were freezing cold and this time we were burning up. Last time I went with people mostly from my church. This time people from 7 churches united together. Last time I played a lot with the kids and this time I spent more of my time on construction. Actually this past weekend was the first time I’ve ever constructed a house (really a glorified shed). I loved it!

The first day we walked around the colonia to meet and pray with families and then I helped out with the VBS. Afterwards, I helped to pour the concrete slab for the second bath house. Helping consisted of shoveling large chunks of gravel and sand into buckets which were then thrown in the mixer. It also consisted of bringing up grimy water from the Rio Grande tributary to the work site. At the end of the day I took home a huge bruise on my thigh to commemorate all our hard labor.

The second day we went to a Pentecostal church and stayed for the first half of the 4 hour service. The worship was awesome! We were able to recognize some songs which had been translated into Spanish. After lunch a small team of us began to work on “Granny’s house”. It was actually more of a dilapidated shed. Guadalupe, an 89 yr old women, was living in the shed attached to her son’s house because her house had burned down. The shed’s tin roof was caving in and becoming quite dangerous for her. So we drug out all of her prized possessions including of bags of old clothing, scrap pieces of metal, barbed wire, a toilet (a full toilet I might add) and a well worn mattress and we piled them in the yard with more “junk”. Afterwards came the demolition of the existing structure. Thankfully we demolished it with no resulting injuries including granny who kept coming out to try and help us. The emptying and demolition of the house took us half a day alone. Near the end of day two we finally began constructing which was also no small task. We were worn down from the past 24 hours of work and oftentimes didn’t have the sufficient tools and so we absconded them from different work sites. ;) But Granny kept encouraging us on from the house, shouting “Si, se puede!” (meaning: Yes, I can do it!)

On day three we finished the framing, tacked on the tin roof and one side wall as well as tacked up mesh under the house and near the roof to keep unwanted visitors out. We actually had power tools to work with this time and Peter showed me how to use them all. I felt pretty powerful holding a (20 lb) nail gun shooting 4 inch nails right through tough pine. It sure beat all the hammering we did the day before!

At the end of our project we had to say goodbye to Granny. She was so thankful to us and was praising God. Tears welled up in her eyes as she gave us all one last hug. As we drove off I saw her standing in the doorway, crying and lifting her eyes up to heaven as if standing in awe of His provision and her answered prayers that gringos would come to build her a house. It was awesome to be a part of the impact God made upon her life. Praise Him!