Dulce Refugio - Status Report

Now that we are home, the project manager in me wants to share a status report:

Boys' Dorm: the team helped mix and pour 33 meters of concrete support beams, and helped cut, bend, set, and tie 100 re-bar rings in preparation for the next pour. This represents support for the ceiling for almost half of the first floor.

Irrigation Trenches: the youth team dug 40 meters of trenches in preparation for an irrigation system for the kids playground; not only will this give the kids a safe surface to play games and soccer, but it will also help reduce the dust flying around campus!

Dorm Bathroom Storage: the team replaced slider rails, refaced, and reinforced 112 drawers in six kids' bathrooms (18 drawers per bathroom).

Window Bars: our team cut, fabricated, and painted 760 bars to make nineteen grates to be mounted on the windows of the current kids' dorm. This will protect kids from accidental falls!

Director's apartment: Part of the construction plan is building a one-bedroom apartment for Marcella, the Director of Dulce Refugio, who currently lives in a room in the Girls' dorm. Our team helped build and trim out the two custom closet organizers (from scratch....no running down to Lowe's around here!!) for her beautiful and well-deserved new home.

Kid Lovin': every day, our team invested in 54 kids' lives here at Dulce Refugio through playing soccer, pushing swings, giving piggy-back rides and sharing in their daily activites. Our youth ran four days of VBS lessons and crafts, and showed these kids that while they may feel forgotten by their own culture, God has not forgotten them. Even with all the work that our team has contributed, the relationships and the transformation of our own hearts is the most incredible part of this experience.

...And The End

The Beginning...

Day 10 - The Long Road Home

4:30 AM is for the birds. Actually, the birds aren't even up at 4:30! But we were awake and beginning our long journey home. We scrambled for last minute showers and packing, finalized the huge donation piles in our dorms, and shuffled out to the vans at 5:00 for the 30-minute ride to the airport.

Upon check-in, we learned that our flight from Aguascalientes to Dallas was delayed by about an hour. Thankful that we had a long layover in Dallas, we weren't too worried about this turn of events. We settled into the little waiting area, and many of the youth grabbed a quick nap on the floor.

The flight to Dallas was uneventful, and we passed through immigration and customs quickly and smoothly....so far, so good. Because of time and routing considerations, we were scheduled to fly next to Chicago O'Hare, and then connect on home to Fort Wayne. We all got lunch, found our gate to Chicago, boarded the plane and thought we were good to go............but it was not to be. The plane had a mechanical issue with the engine that needed to be fixed before the plane could fly. By the time the maintenance crew got a lift over to the plane, the winds were too gusty to open the engine cover to repair the problem.

When they told us to all get off the plane and return to the terminal, we knew there would be no chance of making our connecting flight to Fort Wayne, so Mike started scrambling. Because all of the flights into Fort Wayne are small (between 35 and 50 seats each), our group made up nearly half a planeload. Twenty-one open seats on the next flight? Ha. We found nine seats on a later direct flight from Dallas for Fort Wayne, and grabbed them for Brad (whose wife was showing signs of starting labor) and eight other team members. The remaining twelve of us took our chances with catching a later flight in Chicago. As the flight to O'Hare boarded, we waved goodbye and prayed for our luggage!

Upon arrival in Chicago our fears were realized, as we learned the earliest flight into Fort Wayne that American Airlines had ANY seats on would be tomorrow morning....getting us home at about 10:30. Mike negotiated at length with the supervisor on duty, but learned that American could not rent us a van to drive home because of liability issues, so we were pretty much out of luck. After great debate, the team (with input from parents) decided to go ahead and rent a van and head for home. We hit the road by 9PM Eastern time, and cruised past downtown Chicago just before sunset.

The nine team members on the direct flight to Fort Wayne arrived home around 10:15PM, and the rest of us pulled in about 12:30 AM. We are thankful that everyone returned safely, and we are all looking forward to getting back together again to celebrate the trip, remembering how God blessed Dulce Refugio through us, and how blessed we were by them in return!

The Kids of Dulce Refugio

Ken at The Grill

As the oldest father on site, Ken Batt got the honor of running the grill and flipping nearly 150 burgers!

Day 9 - Now It's Time To Say Goodbye...

The intensity of this trip has been surprising, at least to a newcomer like me. We worked hard, we played hard, but most importantly, we invested a lot of emotions in a very short time. And because of that, today was filled with laughter and tears.

We began the day with a late breakfast and quiet time before the worship service in the upstairs rec room. Worship today was centered around praise songs and some amazing testimonies of how God has worked in the lives of the Dulce Refugio kids as well as some of our team and other volunteers in Aguascalientes.

We heard the story of a teenager rescued from drugs and the streets; we heard the story of a girl whose mother was murdered by her step-father; we heard the story of a young woman whose family was destroyed by abuse.

Many of the people we have met this week have experienced such heartbreak that it's sometimes difficult to find the hand of God, but it's through our faith in His mercy that we are able to trust that He is with us in every situation. While every story is unique, the common thread of God's grace and mercy is woven through each one, reminding me of Romans 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

With this perspective, we focused the afternoon on connections with the kids at the park, and then on a very emotional "farewell" cookout. It so happened that it's Father's Day , which is celebrated in Mexico as well as the US. The kids sang a special song to honor the men who volunteer at Dulce Refugio, all the fathers on our team, and most of all, our heavenly Father who will always love us and be beside us.

With many, many tears, we said our goodbyes, held our team debrief meeting and went to sleep one last time under the Mexican moon.

Day 8 - Rest

After a long, hot week of hard work and focus on the kids, the team at Dulce Refugio blessed us with an afternoon to decompress from the intensity of our time here.

We piled into the vans and drove about two hours to Guanajuato, a historic town with strong European influences nestled in a valley between the mountains. We ate lunch, learned a bit about the town, and then walked down 275 steps to the town below.

We had about four hours to explore the town before piling back into the vans and heading back to Aguascalientes for dinner.

The highlight of the evening, though, was the opportunity to hear the life story of Marcella, the founder and director of Dulce Refugio. Her life has been filled with pain and hardship, but it's amazing how God has used her pain to bless so many children.

Marcy shared with us for over an hour, and then we celebrated our new friendships with dancing and singing around a bonfire.

Guanajuato Market

Guanajuato

Day 7 - Family Recreation Day

Dulce Refugio was blessed with an offer of significantly discounted tickets to a local waterpark, so today we were able to bring the kids for a rare treat.

The shallow pool was filled with small slides and fountains that offered a great spot for the smaller kids to play. We also found a deeper pool with a volleyball net and plenty of room to horse around for the older kids. The park also had two big waterslides and a zipline.

As we did at the park earlier this week, each of us paired up with two kids to supervise and play with, and we all hit the water. The kids played around for about an hour, then we took a break for lunch before returning to the water until about 4:00.

The kids were all exhausted from a day in the sun, and I'm sure they all slept soundly! We all chowed down a quick, delicious dinner, and then piled into the vans for the hour-long ride to watch the Dulce Refugio soccer team play in a nearby town.

We arrived in time for the boys to warm up, and as the lights came on, "our" kids took the field. They played their hearts out! One of our guys (Jeremy) filled out the team and even got in an awesome shot that made the other team's goalkeeper work hard! Even though our boys lost, their smiles shone across the field each time we shouted out for them.

Sitting there cheering these kids on, I realized how amazing it is for us to be able to participate and support them. These are kids who don't have a big cheering section. Their moms and dads aren't at every event with a video camera and team gear. They don't have community boosters who sell Nelson's Chicken to buy them all matching uniforms. But what they do have is worth sooooo much to them; they have a small band of committed adults who have *chosen* to give their lives to loving them and providing a home that their families of origin can't. And they have teams like us who partner with Dulce Refugio to come back year after year and support the leaders and construction team in their vision to help these kids that the rest of the world has left behind. We are proud to be part of the extended family for them!

We consider ourselves blessed to be a part of the physical work as well as the emotional and spiritual support for these kids! And it's through such simple actions like watching a soccer game that we learn how blessed we truly are!

Day 6 - The Final Workday

With each day that passes, we find ourselves dragging into the breakfast room a little more slowly and a little more banged up. I can think of nothing more tempting than a breakfast of Advil and coffee.

Busy schedule today! We planned another short concrete pour to get a couple more beams completed. We also had several projects underway that needed to be wrapped up, including the grates for the windows on the girls' dorm, and the trenches for the new irrigation system for the soccer field.

Another project we've been working on is reinforcing the drawers in each of the kids' bathrooms. About 16 months ago, sturdy, floor-to-ceiling wall units were constructed in each bathroom. The units provide each of the six children in that suite with three large drawer and three cubbies--to hold everything they own.

One cubbie is at the bottom and holds shoes and such, the three drawers hold clothes and other personal items. The first cubbie over the drawers are really where the kids show their personalities. Much like an American kid decorates her room, these are filled with pinups of Justin Bieber (really...just can't get away from that kid!!) or fancy cars. The problem, though, is that the bottom of this cubbie is about 4.5 feet off the floor and they are at least 30 inches deep.

Now any of you who have children know that they do not start out very tall. And while it seems that they grow very quickly based on the number of trips to buy longer pants, they do not grow quickly enough to reach this cubbie without assistance. Being the resourceful little kids that they are, they quickly discovered that drawers make convenient steps! But they also discovered that drawers that weren't built to double as steps quickly break when they are only held together with staples.

So we spent a couple days this week rebuilding the broken drawers and reinforcing all the rest of them, pulling each drawer out, removing the front, screwing and gluing support blocks in the corners, and then reinstalling the front, and putting them back. Oh, and removing the kid's stuff and the managing to put it back exactly how we found it. And today, we finished.

During our stay here, we've also gotten to know Marcella, the director of Dulce Refugio. Marcy has devoted her life to providing a home and showing Christ's love to the forgotten children of Aguascalientes. Marcy gets up every morning at 3 AM, chases kids all day long and collapses into bed when the last child is asleep...Marcy has a hard job and she loves it! She also is devoted to taking great care of the teams that come down to serve, proving amazing home-cooked meals for us all week.

To provide her a refuge inside the refuge she has built, the construction project team has designed a one-bedroom apartment for her in one of the central buildings (between the dorm and the cafeteria). Everyone here has grown to love and appreciate all Marcy has done, and in Extreme Home Makeover style (except a lot smaller and a lot slower, so, well, maybe not so much like EHM outside of providing a beautiful home for a well-deserving soul), Marcy's apartment is coming together.

This week, a couple of our guys have stepped up to the challenge of constructing closet organizers for her. Now this is not a "run to Lowe's and get a closet-tamer system and throw it together in an afternoon." Oh, no, my friends, this is 4x8 sheets of melamine and 1x10 pine boards, ripped, planes, and joined by hand into trim. But the men are gifted with creative use of power tools, and it's coming along.

This afternoon, the youth visited a house church in a poor neighborhood, where they set up a couple of tarps over the sidewalk for shade and invited the neighborhood kids and families...about 30 kids and 15 adults showed up! The youth shared their stories, performed a skit about the Good Samaritan, and then played with the kids and handed out coloring books and crayons. It was great to see so many people in the community, and for the youth to get to
experience firsthand what "need" really looks like.

We thank the Lord that we finished our scheduled work-week with no major injuries and with no outstanding illness! With temperatures nearing 100 each day and being about a mile closer to the sun than most people (well, at least a mile closer than we are used to), the thinner air and hotter sun often takes its toll on visiting teams. We are blessed that all twenty-one of us are whole and well!!!

Tomorrow.....off to the waterpark with all the kids!

Closet Organizers

How many men does it take to build a shoe-rack?? ;-)

Reinforcing Drawers

Breakfast of Champions (of the Mission Field)

Day 5 - Third Verse, Same As The First...

With the big pour behind us, today we focused on continued progress for the various projects we have going on. In addition to continuing the irrigation work, the youth spread out and got engaged in several of the ongoing construction efforts, helping with welding, grinding, painting, and carpentry.

The big event today, though, followed dinner, when we all piled into the vans and headed downtown. En Espiritu & En Verdad (In Spirit & In Truth) is a group that is very popular and plays Spanish versions of many well-known worship songs. Rather than a "concert," the event was more a mega-service, kicking off with a long worship set (including delirious?, Chris Tomlin, and David Crowder favorites), then a REALLY long message in Spanish about being a light in the darkness and focusing on the commonalites among Christians and not letting differences of opinion separate us from each other, then another shorter worship set, ending with an amazing version of "Our God."

Despite the fact that the gym we were in was boiling hot, and we were in there sitting on bleachers for 3.5 hours, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It was great to experience the familiar and the foreign simultaneously; a practical example of how Jesus is consistent everywhere, yet knows us in every language and always meets us right where we are at.

We returned to Dulce Refugio at about 10:30. The girls hung out or went to bed, but most of the guys decided that it was a good time to walk down to a nearby taco stand for a snack. What was supposed to be a two-block stroll turned out to be a marathon adventure, but they were rewarded with what was reportedly the "best tacos of the trip" from a little taco cart down the street (the marathon took them on a big loop and they ended up just a few blocks from the orphanage).

Our bodies are aching and sinuses are rebelling against the dry, dusty environment, but our spirits are great! We are getting to know the kids by name, and they are loving the attention!

Digging Irrigation Trenches

Tying Re-bar

Making Window Grates

Painting Window Grates

Day 4 - Pour, Pour, and Pour Some More

In the US, when we think of pouring concrete, we get an image in our heads of a very large and interesting-looking truck, which pulls up to the site and puts out a super-long chute and this gooey stuff oozes down and then a couple of very messy (but probably very nice and maybe we sit behind them at church) guys named Mack or Joe or maybe Menno if you live in Grabill, but then you probably don't sit behind him in church, but then maybe you do......but I digress... In your imagination, Mack and Joe skillfully wade through the goo in special boots that are meant to get dirty, and get all the bubbles out and carefully smooth the goo with more special tools, then they hose off and collect your check and you have a new driveway or sidewalk or house foundation or whatever.

Toto, we're not in Indiana anymore. And Dulce Refugio is on a tight budget. So today is Concrete Day, and that means we make concrete from stones and sand and water and concrete mix. And haul it to where it needs to be in wheelbarrows. And haul it UP to where it needs to be in five gallon buckets.

Our youth were amazing! We had three girls shoveling rocks into buckets and throwing them into the mixer. Four more girls were shoveling sand into buckets and throwing those into the mixer. One girl hauled five gallon buckets of water and pitched it into the mixer. And two more hauled and split open 100-pound bags of cement mix and threw them into the mixer by halves.

Three guys made up the wheelbarrow gang, wheeling batches of wet concrete mix where two more were using that to fill more five-gallon buckets halfway up and then Brad hoisted them up a ladder to Jeremy (one of the construction leads here in Aguascalientes) who poured it into a form and reached for the next bucket. "One must experience it to truly appreciate it..." -Ken Batt

This continued for about 3.5 hours and we poured ceiling support beams for the boys' dorm, the final hour punctuated with "We're not stoppin' 'til we're done!"

Achy and tired, we all dragged to lunch, then the youth cleaned themselves up and ran a raucous VBS session with the kids, singing and telling stories. The top hit, though, was the hand-puppet fish that each kid made from a lunchbag and a rubberband. MacGyver meets Jesus, that fish! The kids loved them, and we watched one little boy take it back to his room and place it very carefully in his drawer like it was made of gold!

While all this was going on, the adult team continued to weld and paint and cut and build.

To gain some context and understand this area better, and to get some variety, we piled into the van after dinner for a quick trip to the center of town, where we took a three-hour walking tour of the city. Aguascalientes is a thriving city, with architecture dating back to the time of the Spaniards, murals depicting the war for Mexican Independence and the Mexican Civil War, Beautiful churches, and a downtown pedestrian mall area lined with shops and sidewalk cafes. We watched the start of a 14-kilometer bike tour through the city; reportedly, nearly 3,000 cyclists take part and it's a regular occurrence!

While it was fantastic to see this side of Aguascalientes, it also highlighted the divide between the average residents of the city and the forgotten children in whom the founder and volunteers at Dulce Refugio are investing their lives. We're halfway through our work, and we're getting some amazing things accomplished, yet there remains so much work left to build out this campus and to maintain the buildings that are here...the need will continue for several years, and Pathway plans to be here and do our part to help meet it!

As we end this day of hard work, we are thankful for no serious injuries or illnesses, but we do have a lot of aches and pains and some over-do-it-itis, and the dry air and dust are crating sinus "challenges" for most of us. Pray for protection and healing for us!!

Mixing....

Over 100 pounds

The bag is nearly as heavy as she is!!!

(We did not make her do all of these herself, mind you!!)

Passing the Bucket

You can see the forms for the support beams that were poured....

Brad's a Mess!

Concrete is such a neat and tidy project!

Day 3 - Hi Ho, Hi Ho

It's off to work we go...

Today we learned that at least some of the kids here get up at 4 AM. And then they use the cool of darkness to clean the courtyard and begin preparing for breakfast. This appears to include rolling noisy carts past our open bedroom windows.....but this is another one of those reality check things.

The kids leave for school at 7. In order to get 54 of them fed, the breakfast bell rings at six. In order to cook all of that food, they have to start preparing at five. And the morning chores sure don't do themselves. So again, this is not about our convenience...it's about trying to get 54 kids off to a good start.

For us, the day began quite a bit later. The "work-week" schedule starts with breakfast at seven, a bit of time to clean up and have some quiet time before we report for duty at 8:30.

Today's work detail: for the youth, digging trenches to install irrigation for the courtyard/soccer field. For the adults, bending and tying re-bar, making grates for the first floor windows of the girls' dorm (to protect the windows from speeding soccer balls), and repairing drawers for the kids' clothes.

When the kids arrived back from school, the youth stopped their trench-digging to do VBS with them while the adults continued with their assignments.

Twenty-one very tired team members dragged to dinner at about six and ate the most delicious quesadilla-type-thing ever placed on a plate. The adult team has also begun researching a comparative study into mango-eating techniques and provided a detailed description of the texture of okra to our younger brethren. Mealtimes bring joy and laughter on so many levels!

This evening's reward for a hard day of work: a walk to the corner shop for ice cream, quick team debriefs, and then EARLY to bed!!!

Fabricating Window Protection

Tying Re-bar

Day 2 - The Lord's Day

And a beautiful day He has given!! The day dawned cool and bright. Most of the team woke up around 8:00, and we all sat down to breakfast around 9. Best of all, Marcella provided COFFEE!!!

Following breakfast, we all broke off for quiet time. Each of the teams is working through a daily devotional, so many of us found shaded spots outside to read or journal for a few minutes.

Worship service started at 11 in the rec room of the dorm building, and we were so excited to see how excited everyone is about God! Kids and adults alike sang and danced with abandon, just to show joy in who the Lord is and what He has done for them...

It's kind of hard to think about, really, when we so easily forget everything we have and we complain about what we don't have or what's going badly for us....and then we spend time with kids who can't live with their families for a multitude of reasons and with the people who are giving their lives to try to provide for them and build them a home where they can feel secure and loved.....and then to see how thankful they are for the blessings in their lives...yeah, wow. Big thought-stimulator.

After the service, we scrambled to change clothes, douse ourselves with sunscreen, and pile into the vans. On the schedule for the afternoon: a trip to the park with the kids! The staff matched each of us up with two kids, and off we went. we learned a lot today...like you really can fit twenty-five people in a 13-passenger van, for starters! And that it gets hot when that van doesn't have air conditioning!

But the kids had a blast, riding these funky bicycle-cart-like thing that I failed to take a picture of, and sliding down a giant slide on potato sacks. The smaller kids bounced their lunches away in a bouncy-house and several of them capped the day with a boat ride!

We had about an hour to rest, then our two teams headed out to dinner at Eddy's, a Mexican burger joint with really rockin' milkshakes! We ate like crazy and were treated to feats of engineering prowess from our own Brad Bullock, who balanced two forks on the tip of a toothpick stuck in a salt shaker balanced on three knives set on vintage Coke bottles. Hmm, yeah. Should have gotten a photo of that, too.

We are all thankful for the opportunity to sleep in a bit today, as the workweek starts in earnest tomorrow. Beginning on Monday, breakfast is at 7, and we are expected to be covered in sunscreen and ready to work at the construction site by 8:30.

Praise for the team staying healthy...no sunstroke or altitude sickness so far! Pray for our strength and for us all to have servant's hearts with no complaining or grumbling as the hard work begins, and for protection and strength for us to do what needs to be done...which is very likely to involve wheelbarrows and five-gallon buckets of concrete.........

Cafeteria and Office Building

Childrens' Room

Boys' Dorm Project

Day 2 - The Rooster Crows

....At 5:42 CDT

I have officially become a morning person. Those of you who have known me for all time will not believe this. But right this very moment, I am sitting in the dark on a bench in the courtyard of a
Mexican Children's home listening to the roosters in this million-person-city with nothing but the company of the "guard dog" that trotted up, climbed in my lap, and licked my face to say good morning.

And I'm discovering that I like morning. The peace. The noises of birds (including roosters) and animals, rather than the noisy hustle of the city. The dusty German Shephard that believes he is a Shi Tzu. The Mexico that is asleep is a different and equally beautiful place, and I'm glad I am experiencing it.

Note: our internet access is very limited and I'm writing on my blackberry...please forgive typos or mistakes, and forgive the short posts!!!

Day 1 - Travel and Orientation

Four-thirty came very early for the Aguascalientes team, as we all met at the Fort Wayne airport! Luggage check-in went smoothly and we circled up for a prayer with the team and family members.

Twenty-one of us boarded the 6:00 flight to Dallas. We transferred to another two-hour flight into Aguascalientes, where we were met by Jeremy and Duane, our hosts for the week. We are all thankful that out travels were smooth and our flights were on time!!!

Upon our arrival at Dulce Refugio, we received the Grand Tour...the facilities here are amazing and very unique, and we are honored to be able to serve here and help the permanent team expand their campus to provide a safe and healthy home for the children here.

Currently, Dulce Refugio is home to 54 children, and the new dorm we will be working on will house approximately fifty more. The office building is nearly complete, and will provide office space for the Director as well as a psychologist, medical staff, and several other workers. Dorm space for work teams are on the ground floor of this building, and are in the process of being finished.

The main children's dorm was the first building completed, and is home to 24 children on each of the first two floors--six to a room. The third floor is a large rec room that also serves as a school room for some of the kids whose educational needs can't be met in the public schools.

Children's homes are frequently pressured to move beds closer together or add bunk beds to house more kids. But the construction planners at Dulce Refugio have been very deliberate in their desire to maintain a very high quality of life for these kids, designing the structure in such a way to ensure the kids have personal space and that they can never be overcrowded.

Our service this week includes helping pour concrete support beams for the future boys' dorm, but the plan for Dulce Refugio goes much further. The team here is currently in negotiations with the city government to take ownership of a plot of adjacent land, where they plan to build a school, covered gym area, and a greenhouse and vegetable garden. All of these things will further help the kids of Aguascalientes and give them an opportunity to experience Jesus' love!

The biggest request today is that you please join us in praying that the government will transfer this land to Dulce Refugio! We'll share more over the coming week about the specific projects that we will be working on!!

23 Hours....

Two teams are going, one team is coming back—oh, wait, that's the movie version (d'oh!). Seriously, we have two great teams traveling together to Aguascalientes, Mexico tomorrow, and we couldn't be more excited!

GenONE, the High School ministry at Pathway, is fielding a team of ten teens and two adults. GenONE is prepared to reach the children of Dulce Refugio through games, crafts, VBS, and acts of service that may or may not include pouring concrete and laying pavers, but which are guaranteed to get them very, very dirty!

The family missions team, checking in with two more teens and seven more adults, will focus on practical tasks supporting the construction of the Boys' Dorm, which will provide a home for 100 boys when it is complete.

We thank you for your prayers for smooth travel and safe arrival in Aguascalientes, and for the Lord to provide each of us with clear focus on Him and on His children.

We thank the Lord for using us as His hands and feet!