Mas Morales Mayhem

The Moraleses came to church with us yesterday! I don't remember if I put it on here or not, but Maria asked me at one point last week about coming to our church b/c she didn't want to stop seeing us once we were done working (which is taking way longer than we thought because EVERYTHING is a gazillion times more complicated than it should be), so they did yesterday! Chris and I picked her up because they don't have any legal transporation right now (their truck works just fine but the plates are expired...we would like to find a way to get them new ones if we can round up the money and the proper documentation), and she seemed to have a great time. She told me she wants to come back next week with her husband and oldest son, who didn't come this week, and she also wants to sign the 2 middle kids up for San Pablo's 1st communion classes. How cool is that?

Maybe I love this family so much because I see them as the epitome of what the mission is trying to do. We can't do everything for everyone, but we can and clearly are making a huge impact on the Morales family, both by doing everything we can to make their trailer look brand new and by building a relationship that may lead to a whole van-ful or several van-fuls of people coming to church with us on Sundays, who knows?

Speaking of vans, the mission has a new one! Stephen picked it up from a church in Austin, TX, earlier this week, and it just showed up in the parking lot today. It's green for all of you women who are like me and that's the second thing you wonder about new cars after you ask what kind it is, it's a 2005, and it only has 36,000 miles!!! Praise God!!!

Anyways, here are some pictures of what the group this week (from a suburb of Chicago) did...not bad for a bunch of Cubs fans ;) This doesn't even include the first ever VBS in Sparks that they also did, so I'll post another entry shortly. For some reason I just had a ton of good ones I wanted to put on here!

They got in Friday night and wanted to start working already on Saturday, so we put them to work in the thrift shop and the shed. They got some good work accomplished in a day (here it is Saturday afternoon), but a few of the ladies decided the shed needed a whole week of attention (which it did, badly), and it looks INCREDIBLE now! It's organized and labeled and just plain happy...it made me want to do a little dance and give Debby a humongous hug when she was showing Chris and I around. Now let's hope it stays that way...it will if I have anything to say about it!

I think we need a few more vacuum cleaners.

There was a lot of this...I think they made 18 dumpster runs or something like that.

OK the rest of these are from the Moraleses...we painted the entire outside (along with some little helpers), did a lot of plumbing stuff (which is STILL not done), and braced a section of flooring in the living room.

Alejandra was fascinated with the new showerhead...btw I ADORE this picture--look at her eyes!

Margaret, one of the group members, volunteered to rent a truck for the day so we could haul a bunch (by a bunch I mean 2.5 TONS!!!) of trash out of their yard, which we did after we got the truck un-stuck! Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to drive it around back...

There are 4 kids in the family, I promise!

What'd you do for spring break? Went to the Clint Landfill, of course!

New vanity in the back bathroom, which Maria took care of painting blue overnight.

Pseudo-landscaping with some stones that were piled in the front yard and the geraniums that the group bought.

I love looking at the house from the end of the block...it looks soooo good!

Oh go read 1 Samuel 12:16...it was part of my Bible reading the other day and I wrote it on a Post-It note so I wouldn't forget it...it's a good one!

Until next time, blessings!