missionaryMAC

As promised, pictures from the ACTUAL reason I went to Chihuahua! The clinic ran from Monday through Thursday, and we were able to consult 804 people. After registering at the door and then waiting their turn, everyone first passed through, in this order, the nurses' table, the reading test, and the distance test. Then, they came to where I was working all week: dispensing. This is where they actually tried on several pairs of glasses to verify the accuracy (or lack thereof) of their prescription and select an appropriate style (as you can maybe guess we were WAY more flexible with this towards the beginning of the week!). The last step was the fitting station, where each person's glasses were molded to the shape of their face and cleaned, and they were given a case for each pair as well. Maybe a few pictures will help that make more sense: Jardin del Abuelo, the location of our clinic...some sort of government run senior citizens' center I think. It was crazy some days but...

Chris and I got back this afternoon from Chihuahua City, where we spent the past week interpreting for an eyeglass clinic--more about that later. We took a charter bus from Juarez 4 1/2 hours and arrived late last Friday night, where we were thankfully picked up at the bus station by Pastor Tovar. We were a little worried about the trip seeing as though it involved getting a ride across the Zaragoza bridge, being picked up on the other side and driven to the Juarez bus station by Pastor Hernandez, the bus ride itself, and then being picked up by Pastor Tovar and taken to he and Blanca's house, where we stayed, at 10ish pm on Friday night, but God was watching out for us; everything went swimmingly, and Pastor was the first person we saw when we walked in. Due to a change in flight times, the group didn't arrive until Saturday night (half of them didn't wind up getting there until SUNDAY night!), so after breakfast of quesadillas de asadero y barbacoa (a little strange to gr...

This week I got to see another mission site that is new to me, San Pedro y San Pablo. Chris and I built a house--our last one in J-Town for the summer--with a group of 5 from Arlington Heights, IL. Genaro told us that it was waaaay far away which gave us the impression that it is in the middle of nowhere, but it's really only like 5 minutes (and 8 speed bumps) past Mision Martin Lutero, on Calle Zorro. Currently there is no regular ministry but Pastor Hernandez goes out there when he can--he hopes to make his visits more frequent but is in need of additional funding--and our eventual hope is to build them a church building. It would go on the empty lot next to where we were building, and would cost $6000-$6500 to purchase the land plus $700-1000 to secure the ownership rights above and beyond the construction cost. Here are some of my pictures from the week...enjoy! The actual mission site is currently that nice looking gray building in the center of the picture. The pastor from th...

It's not what you're thinking...I mean FLEXIBILITY!!! This is something we tell every team at orientation (it is slowly working its way into my anal, orderly, structured bloodstream with every passing day that I spend in El Paso/Juarez) and also something that my group this week from Belvidere, IL, and I REALLY put into practice. We stopped by to see the site on Sunday after church and...there was no slab. Typically, the slabs for YLM houses get taken care of by the families/Genaro the week before a group is going to come build, but this week there was some confusion. We were building at Cristo Rey, on the back patio where we THOUGHT there was already concrete everywhere. Of course, though, they picked the one spot where there WASN'T to put the new Sunday school rooms! So, we poured a slab on Monday, Mexican style (see below)! It was obvious that God knew what He was doing the whole time though, because we even had time to paint on Friday, and Rosy said they are going to ha...