Angels watching over us

God is so good!  I'm sitting on the build site, and we have a wifi connection.  Joe's phone is picking up a tower from El Paso and he is able to tether the computer to it to connect online.  We're outside of Juarez (in a smaller subdivision area up in the mountains) and its pretty amazing that we are still getting the service. 

We've had a really eventful day.  We got up and moving at 5:30 and had the vans packed and loaded, our host church cleaned, breakfast and were at the Casas compound early (first time in 13 years!)  Jason met us there and we left for Juarez.  

Crossing the border was pretty easy.  Poor Jim and Melissa were already freaking out about crossing the border, and when the border guard came over to our van and asked to look inside, those two were the ones right by the door.  Both of them panicked and could only give the guard a blank stare, even when the guard asked them to open the door.  All of us were teasing them for the rest of the day, especially when Jim kept jumping every time there was a loud noise or a police car passed us. 

We were merging onto the highway in Juarez when Joe's van was sideswiped by another car.  No one was hurt and it's mostly cosmetic damage on the van.  We lost the sideview mirror, but everyone is fine.  Praise God!  Scott, Baleigh, Megan and Kate took the rest of the students up to a gas station so that we were off the road and not in the way, while Mitch and Joe stayed and worked out the details with the police.  Casas sent Miguel, one of their workers who is fluent in Spanish and knows enough English to help translate, to help interpret.  There was no ticket and everything is taken care of on this side. One hour and $20 later, they'll have a new mirror and everything is set.  We'll deal with insurance when we cross the border again. 

About 10 minutes later, on our way to pick up our tools at the SHOC, the hitch came undone from the truck and Joe and Jason had to cross 3 lanes quick to get off the road. Jon and Mitch helped them get the hitch back on fast and the trailer connected again.  The other drivers on the road for both accidents were really good about moving over with plenty of time and all of us were safe both times.  We've never had a morning start out like this before!

We finally made it to the SHOC (about 1.5 hours behind schedule), loaded all of the tools onto the trailer and left for our building site, about a 45 minutes drive.  The scenery is beautiful here since we're up in the mountains and the breeze has been perfect for us to work today.  No sandstorms, but enough to keep us cool. 

We haven't been to our host church yet  Normally, we go unload all the food and our stuff at the place we stay at, but since we were already behind schedule, we came straight to the work site.  All of the vans are a royal disaster inside at the moment because all of our stuff and the food are still here and we had to rummage through to find out tools and work shoes.  It's been working fine though and as soon as they finish these wall sections, we'll be starting to clean up our site and head to the church. 

The students have been awesome!  We have a lot of first-timers, but most of the guys have at least a little building experience. They've made a great team and are ready, willing and eager to do anything and everything.  We had 2 hours to get the foundation frames built, leveled and the dirt ready for concrete for both houses and they were done before the cement truck came. Heather, Jon, Jim, Nate and Brett had the frames made quick and after the concrete came,  Joe, Nate and Matt all worked on spreading the concrete out while Kevin and Scott got a tricep workout in doing the rough smoothing.  Ryan, Brett and Mitch made up the floating crew and Emma and Hannah can edge like pros!

The others have been working on cutting the boards and assembling the wall sections or sifting the sand for stucco.  Faith, Kayla, Kelly, Jenny, Kevin L., Becca and Andrea have already finished all of the sand that we'll need for the week!  Cassie, Cassie, Trista, Hannah and Jennie have the trim all painted and Casey got the chicken wire cut into sections for the stucco as well. 

We are building for Martha and Maria and their families.  Maria has 4 adorable little kids and there are several other neighbor kids here playing too.  Casey, Emma, Drew, Ryan and Jim have all taken turns playing soccer with one of the older boys and the kids love building castles with the wood scraps and playing in the empty trailer. 

Everyone seems to be doing really well.  There haven't been any major injuries at all, Baleigh is our water bottle police and making sure everyone is hydrated, and everyone is working together as a great team.  There's a lot of us on a work site, but they're doing really well! Having the kids to play with definitely helps!  We may not know a lot of Spanish (there's already been a few giggles from the kids when we try), but it doesn't always take words to make a kid smile.  We have a bunch of soccer balls that we get to give to these kids and they think it's the coolest thing ever.  They also found that we have food in our vans and there's been a few questions asking for chips or fruit :) 

Lauren P. is our fantastic photographer for the week, and she's taken some great pictures. I wish I could share some of them with you, but our connection isn't fast enough.  I'll upload a bunch of pictures as soon as we can and we'll try to update this everyday if we can!

Hope this post was a nice surprise to your day!  It's been a long day for all of us, and we're going to sleep hard tonight, but we're all happy, healthy and starting to tan :)