I am having a lot of fun in Mexico!!

I am having a great time with the kids here. Playing and being with the kids is part of what I do here and I have a lot of fun with them. There are a couple of kids that really stand out to me and are around me a lot. The first is a five year old little boy named Said. He is very clingy and likes me to help him with many things throughout the day such as getting ready in the morning and washing his hands for meal time. He and his brother Alejandro were neglected and were living on the streets on and off before coming here. The next kid is another five year old little boy named Raul. My parents tell me that I was a lot like him when I was his age. He has bound less energy and it is hard to get him to sit still. Also he is very curious, inquisitive and persistent. Then there is his six and seven year old sisters Maria and Yari who are always very joyful and laughing. Whenever we sit down to watch a movie she is one of the kids who is sitting with me most times.

God has been helping me a lot with learning Spanish here. A big thing I needed a lot of help with is listening well to what someone is saying. Often times someone will tell me something and I will misunderstand or completely not recognize what they are telling me even though I know what someone is saying. Now I am getting lots of practice with that. I am also getting lots of practice with things like sentence structure, proper phrasing of words and vocabulary, just to list a few. Also being able to speak Spanish has become a lot easier and a lot more proficient than before. God has been very good to me and been helping me a lot in this.

I am really glad to be back in Mexico; God is teaching me a lot through this time here. This part one of my overview of my first seven weeks in Mexico

This has been a very good first few weeks in Mexico. I have seen God through this time in ways I never imagined. God has always used Mexico to bring me closer to Himself and that was one of the things I was looking forward to the most about this trip. But this time God is really working in me more than I had expected by this time.

It was good to see the kid’s excitement at the arrival of my family and I, especially considering we hadn’t been to the orphanage for more than five months. But when we stepped out of the car about five kids ran and greeted us. It was really good to see everyone again and to be back in Mexico. At the beginning of my first week I had mixed feelings about being here and whether God really wanted me here. But as that week went on God gave me peace, comfort and joy about being here. On Wednesday of my first week I wasn’t feeling well and that evening I threw up. Right after that though I felt better again and I have felt well ever since. Kristina told me that it was probably just my stomach getting used to Mexico again because everyone she knows who has stayed in Mexico from other countries for a while has gotten sick the same way their first week. One thing I have really enjoy is that Kristina and Emmis have put me in charge of the kids while doing an activity with them a couple times. Another highlight has been that Emmis and Kristina are giving me more work to do and more responsibility and I am very glad for that. My job here consists of keeping the outside of the orphanage clean and supervising and helping the kids as they do different activities during the day.

My First Day in Mexico; God Does What Honors Him Most in His Timing

Today was my first day back in Mexico and I am very glad to be back. God delayed me for two days, but He allowed me to be here for four days. God is very wonderful and he has showed that in the delay and by the trip so far. Today I arrived at about eleven this morning after leaving home at four thirty. When I got here we started helping the kids with their homework so that they would be ready for school tomorrow. That was interesting trying to help Spanish kids with their grammar when I probably understand less than they do. Then we ate a very good lunch of Mexican meatball soup with pineapple juice. After lunch we did a couple of puzzles with the kids, which was rather interesting because the kids have very short attention spans. Then they took a nap for an hour and thirty minutes during which time we got ready for school tomorrow and finished putting the Christmas decorations away. At about four the kids got up and played random games until diner; about an hour before me and my Canadian friend went on top of the roof of the orphanage and took pictures of the sunset. It was a lot of fun. For diner we had gorditas with beans, it was very good. After dinner we played a few different games with the kids and got purified water for cooking and drinking and just did random things. The kids went to bed around nine but the helpers stayed up for a while playing hearts, drinking coffee and laughing a lot!!