Hi Everyone,

Well, I your authoress have now contracted this team cold that has been going around.  Very honestly I'm feeling pretty sick and depleted.  But I just wanted to write a few things about today.

Dave is doing better.  Lupita has a friend who works in a close-by clinic where they took him to get his Tetanus shot this morning, and just to be on the safe side he saw a Doctor too, and got some antibiotics.  I am amazed that in both times we've had to go to see Doctors here in Mexico they haven't charged us.  His foot is still quite sore so we've put him on "partial duty".

We had a beautiful sunny day!  Our first full-day of sun since the beginning of the trip.  It was perfect for doing construction.  The rain did come back though, but not until we were back at the Becerra's home.

Today was a day where we hauled up 3 yards of sand, 3 yards of rocks, and 36 50KG bags of cement mix (we have 24 more to go) up on the roof for laying concrete hopefully tomorrow.  The team and Nationals and leaders rigged up 2 pulley systems to the top of the church and then worked together to fill buckets or haul up the bags to then arrange them on the roof where they will be needed.  This is heavy heavy work, using lots of muscles!  Terry loved every minute of it! And got to show that he's still strong as an ox.  (LOL!).  They call him Chief in his red hard hat.  :)

Jesse was a huge blessing these past few days.  He commented earlier in the trip that from his perspective he hadn't quite found his place yet where he could serve most effectively on the trip.  Well, Jesse is an electrical engineer and Pastor Jaime had him develop a plan for the electricity in the new area and write/draw it all down and convey it to Edgar and the rest of the nationals.  They either today or tomorrow will/or have run conduit, pulled wires etc to prepare for electricity.  How cool is that?  Such a beautiful thing of God to allow Jesse to come and do something he knows how to do that would make such a difference for them.

We laid a second layer of re-bar and many students did all the tying down of each section.  The Nationals showed them the proper way to do it and were really pleased with the work.  It was neat for Drew as he is interested in architecture and got to see things from another perspective here.  He worked so hard today!  Actually all our students did.  I'm so very proud of them.

Tonight at 5 pm, we invited families in the community to come to the church for a Spanish version of a Veggie Tales video that we had brought along.  It was fun, the team purchased snacks and juice for the families too.  Most of them have never heard of Veggie Tales.

Truly our team got filthy today!  And I know they will be very tired, we bought take out pizza for them tonight and gave them their favourite chocolate bars from home for dessert that we had brought along (thank you Evelyn!).

Tomorrow is going to be a very early morning (5am departure from the house), the Nationals want us to get as much as possible done as it is our last day here before we leave on Thursday afternoon.  Please pray for the kids.  I know their energy is down and it's the last big push before we go.  We've really made a big difference here in this project.

Please pray for Erin and I, and it looks like Ethan as well.  We're the ones currently in the beginning stages (I call them the yucky stages) of this cold.  It's the sneezing, coughing, stuffed up, achy stage.  Erin took a break and rested this afternoon, and I really did not do much today either.  I'm in that "I don't want to feel crabby but do feel crabby stage right now!  So frustrating!)

Pray for the students ....the re-entry is on their minds and we're trying to prepare them a little for it.  It's a big challenge to sort though all they've learned and experienced, and then try and determine what has changed it them, and what they want to live out as they come back.  And it's going to be hard for them to articulate it all to all of you.

Pray for Edgar, our friend here in Mexico City.  Today while working he pulled something in his arm and it is causing him some pain and a lack of mobility.

Praise for safety, outside of Dave's injury and some minor cuts and scrapes no one has been injured.  Please pray for continued safety for the team.

Alright friends, time for me to take my medicine and go to sleep.

Love to all of you!

Christine