Liz and Dana Sweet

Never having taken a team to Acuna before, I was a little apprehensive about how everything would work. After all, there’s the culture, the schedule, the new students, there’s us and how we react or respond to each situation. All this hits you between the eyes, not to mention things never go as planned.

Our first brilliant move was to hire Dana Sweet of Wide ministries to be our ground support during our stay. He and his wife Liz and their daughter Joanna run a dormitory facility for teams to stay while they work in Acuna. It is a walled off old Montessori school that had been remodeled into a dorm. They accommodated us so well and with such grace and style it made it easy to work all day in the heat. Each day we were able to go back and eat dinner, prepared by two local women and hang out and laugh,

Fun Learning Spanish and English

sing, play cards, journal, and process our day together. We knew we were in good hands.

From the renting of the giant 12 person van (nicknamed the marshmallow) all the way through to its return without a scratch, this trip was very successful. The project at the school was well planned and all of the materials purchased and ready to be taken on our first morning there.

Much time was spent trying to communicate, learn names, learn Spanish, and laughing and playing. We still exceeded the expectations of the school’s project list. In the end we painted the entire inside of the school twice to cover the purple and blue that was underneath. Patched a multitude of holes in walls, and cleaned up the grounds or at least tried to. We built two walls

Students Sign the Wall

and wired an entire classroom so it could be used for their expanding population.

This year was the biggest graduating class ever and with the building open from 8 am to 11pm, the wear and tear was showing. In the end we all stamped our hand prints on the wall entering the school grounds. It will be a great reminder of our time there.

The team worked so well together I can’t help but think spending time at our planning and training meetings helped start the process early. It was cemented by the experience of traveling and working and serving others together. We knew we were in good hands.

I know we will go back next year, so mark your calendars for next summer.

Diane

The Wall

I was standing on my balcony this morning and noticed how beautiful it was. I felt the sun but it wasn’t searing hot.. There was a cool breeze coming off the water, and I thought about the contrast to where I had just been. There were no cool breezes to take the edge off– just hot winds blowing dirt and dust everywhere. Our lives are so different from those we visited in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico It is challenging to step into their world.but as any of on our team would say, “well worth it”!

These trips are, at the very least, a reminder about how lucky we are; of how blessed our lives are. It seems that I take more time to stop and savor the moments of my life– more than I did before I went to Acuna. I even notice running water over the tooth brush in the morning, watering my garden and flushing my toilet. All these simple tasks seem luxurious. Certainly being clean is a luxury.

Our 8 day trip to the Alpha y Omega School epitomized who Global Support is. It was certainly a mission trip in that we helped the students paint, patch and build walls and even showed them how to work with running electricity. The kids were extremely interested in learning and many of them gained some minimal skills in carpentry and painting and lets not forget patching drywall.. More importantly, they were the ones that helped us to help them make their school better. Vandalism is alive and well in that part of town. It is the second poorest Colonia in Acuna. These kids know more about making holes in walls than patching, and more about tagging and graffiti than painting. Having them see what it takes to repair their holes and paint, perhaps they will think twice before doing it at the school. I don’t think paint is often used on their homes as most are made out of concrete block or worse yet cardboard and tar paper. Paint is a luxury.

We made friends there. Kids that helped us every day, all day. Octavio, Marco, Héctor, Luís, Deya, Ofelia, Patti to name a few. We took 4 teenagers with us and they enabled us to quickly relate to the kids at the school. Being that they were cute Americans only helped us get the local students to participate! Especially the boys. Many laughs were had over failed attempts at Spanish and English. We all lived with our Spanish- English dictionary by our side ready to figure out just the right word, often resorting to pantomime and charades to help. We would sit in the shade together trying to communicate about our lives. Those impromptu moments were some of the most meaningful. This was bridge building between cultures at its best.. Maybe we helped these kids to see beyond their world of hopelessness. Perhaps the door of possibilities became open in those moments?

I have found that God is in the unexpected and often the spontaneous on trips, and this one was no exception. I fell in love with two little girls at the Orphanage next door to the school. I pray for them everyday as their situation was horrendous. We would go over to the orphanage for lunch each day, prepared by two wonderful Mexican women we hired. We loved on those two children and watched them glow and laugh… They, of all of the children we met remain on my heart.

There was another surprise encounter with a young women that we had noticed working with us, yet clearly not a teacher nor a student. We discovered she was the custodian, a local who had dropped out of school and this was her job. Jessica, from our team, and she hit it off and there was a connection that allowed us to notice and acknowledge who she was by inviting her to lunch and giving her rides home. By paying attention to her we watched her emerge from a quiet, in the background, even marginalized person to someone laughing and engaging with us, even trying to speak English. We bought her a birthday cake on her 19th birthday and sang happy birthday in Spanish that we learned the night before. From her reaction I wonder if she had ever had a cake before?

These are the moments that we savor from our trips. The moments where we see God at work, calling out people to tell them they are important. And that they do matter.

The Acuna Team left SeaTac Airport on the 23rd of June at 7 a.m. in the early morning. By 11 p.m. (CST), they were finally at their destination in Acuna, tired but excited for the beginning of a big week in Mexico.

First day on the job was controlled chaos, Diane Ellis, team leader, reported. Thirty plus students from the school in Acuna joined our ranks and together everyone began attacking the tasks at hand. Our team was very prepared with projects, jobs, supplies and energy. So, in spite of the spike of 104 degrees on the thermometer, the pasty white NorthWesterners worked very hard and felt great at the end of the day.

There were walls painted, some walls repaired and sheet rocked, others treated and repaired from smoke damage, shelving built, some electrical work done, among other things.

We brought four teenagers with us on this trip and they are doing terrific, Diane states. They are working hard and along with the Mexican kids becoming friends with each other, trying out Spanish words, English words, in fact our team is learning the many construction words like hammer, paint, etc., not to mention “hola” and “muy bueno”–and feel’n pretty good about it.

Will report more as we get the information. Stay tuned.

We want to especially thank EVERYONE who contributed to our 2008 Auction. It was a terrific success. Now more kids than ever can now be helped.

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer
Sun Apr 20, 6:46 PM ET

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — “On the day he decided to run away, 9-year-old Coli awoke on a filthy mat. Like a pup, he lay curled against the cold, pressed between dozens of other children sleeping head-to-toe on the concrete floor….” Read the rest of the article here.