Well we just got back from pre-outreach. On our pre-outreach we go to the different areas that we will be spending our outreach part of our DMT. We visit the area ministries and just get a feel for the environments in which we will be ministering in. This year we will be spending our outreach time in El Higo, Veracruz (where the orphanage is) and on la Isla de Viejo Soyaltepec. For Cathy and I, this was not necessarily a new experience. We had both visited the orphanage many times and had lived on the island for several months. It was however a different experience to do this with our DMT family. When you are part of a team, your daily experience is very different in any location. It was good to see what things will be like when we will be in these locations with the team.
Our first day of travel took us down to El Higo, Veracruz. It only takes around 7 or 8 hours to get there from la Haciendita, and the driving was nice. We got into the orphanage that evening and set up house. Marcus and Vero Palmer are the American side co-directors of the orphanage and they live in the upstairs portion. Laura and Marcelo are the Mexican side co-directors and they live in nearby San Andreas. Laura is the mother of one of this years students, Gabby. The rest of the team set up hammocks in the part of the orphanage that was under construction. The bare stud walls were easy to attach hammocks to. Marcus and Vero gave us a room off of the dining room to ourselves. We slept in sleeping bags on mats on the floor. It was not too bad at all.
During our time there we helped out with a work team that was there. I took the guys out to the dirt piles and we worked on fixing various drainage problems on the property. Cathy and the girls painted and cleaned. While we did this the work crew was sheet rocking in the orphanage. We worked hard in the heat and our hands had the scars to show it. In the afternoons we would clean up and minister in one of the local churches. It was busy but fun. After a few days we headed farther south, about 11 hours south to the island. On the way we stopped at Costa Esmerelda and took a break by the gulf. For some of our group it was their first time to see the ocean. We made great time down to the island, got all of our stuff on the boat, and got everything set up before night had fully set in.
On the island we showed the other DMT students around and let them just get accustomed to the environment. It is a harsher life on the island and most people need time just to get their daily rhythms down. You have to bath in the lake, wash clothes in the lake, and build a fire for a meal more than few people. When we got there the weather turned very cold. Most of us were expecting warmer weather, so we shared what warm clothes we had. We looked like even more of a rag tag bunch. Fortunately the cold weather enabled us to fudge on daily showers here and there. We visited homes while we were there. One of the families which Cathy had visited with many times during our time on the island, accepted Christ! We also had a church service, where Cathy and I were able to see many of the people we had not seen since we were there last. We past out baptism pics that I had taken in November and they were so happy to have them. One of the families mother told me “thank you” in English with tears in her eyes. Those were the only English words that she knew. That alone was worth the whole trip.
At the end of the week we pull up our stakes took the boat across and packed the van up again. This time we were headed north. That evening we were back in El Higo where the work team had finished most of the sheet rocking, so we all slept in the dining hall. One more day in the van and we were all very glad to be back home in La Haciendita. God blessed us greatly during the trip and brought us even closer as a family. I am praying and looking forward to our outreach time coming up. I hope that you are as well. Thanks for reading this and keeping up with us. We feel your prayers daily. We love you.
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