The "CO"!!!

      Matt and I had the opportunity to go volunteer at 3 orphanages in Mexico this past week and loved it! While neither of us had much time to actually play with the orphans we did do a lot of work that will help to bless their lives, and has blessed ours in more ways then can be expressed.
 
       Our first day in Mexico we were sent to work at an orphanage called Casa Hogar Buena Vida. We just called it Buena Vida, which means Good Life. While we were there Matt was able to help do a lot of cement work as well as help with the building of a new "House" that will soon be filled with 14 teen girls. I was able to do some sanding on a "new" vanity for the bathroom as well as play with some of the kids. (I had the huge advantage of being able to speak Spanish with them and could work/play with them easier then most of the other 60 ish volunteers, only 5 of whom (myself included) spoke actually spoke Spanish). I was also able to help Matt with the mixing of the cement, which I quickly learned was not an easy job. But, it was nice to be able to work along side of my husband and help him in what few ways my knee would let me.

      The second day, Matt and I were both pulled from cement work and asked to help design and build 15 benches for Door of Faith Orphanage. We were working with two other men on this project, however the first day was just Matt, Dave (a volunteer from Canada) and myself. We started out by using the measurements of another bench the orphanage already had, made one and then Matt (being the engineer that he is) tweaked it a little in order to make it easier on all of us building the benches. He did this by eliminating 5-6 cuts per bench. Which doesn't seem like much, but when you're making 15 benches that really cut down on a lot of work for us. For every cut that we made for the first bench, we marked a board with a pencil line so that we would know where to make the cuts for the other 14 benches (this also saved us a lot of time because it made it so we could assembly line cut all the boards we needed to, which is not easy to do with wet wood). It took us two days to completely build all 15 benches, sand and stain 3 of them. The others that didn't get stained are still waiting for someone to finish, which will probably be DJ the Orphanage Director.

       After we finished the benches up to that point we were all pulled to go to another orphanage in a neighboring town, the name of which escapes me right now. This orphanage was home to about 50 children, some of whom were mentally handicap. One was affectionately deemed "The Walker." She was called this because she would take hold of your hand and walk with you all around the orphanage grounds and never got tired. If you were boring you were left for someone more interesting. She was a really sweet girl, but she didn't seem to communicate with anything other than screams or body language.

      When we first got to the Orphanage I was soon the favorite of a little girl name Raquel. She was the cutest/tiredest thing I've ever seen. She looked like she was about 5 or 6 and wanted to be held the whole time or pushed on the swing. But if I ever walked away she would catch up to me and put her hands up so I would pick her up. I wanted to bring her home with me so bad!! But unfortunately, Mexico won't allow Americans to adopt their orphans. I was told it was because the government wants more money, which doesn't surprise me. Mostly it just makes me angry because they are making the children suffer. We also found out that most of the orphans in Mexico aren't even in orphanages, and most who are in orphanages aren't real orphans. Most are children that were taken from their home because of severe neglect or some form of abuse. You'd think the government there would do something more then just place them in an orphanage... But for whatever unimaginable reason they will only allow other Mexicans to adopt them. Which makes no sense to me because there are countless people in the US that can't have children and want to adopt, but by the time they've seriously looked into it every government has made it so expensive that they can't afford to go through with it. Yet if they would drop the price, more people would be able to adopt and the governments would be getting more money. Why they haven't figured that out yet is beyond me.

       But it's about time for me to get off my soap box about this so I'm going to go start some homework!

Always,

Melanie