Vamos a Pintar

today we helped a local church here in puebla repaint there church building, which is inside a mall in downtown puebla. this is the first time this church has ever partnered with an american church. they started out on their own and do not recieve any money from the states. they do this because when a church is planted in mexico by americans and they provide monetary support for a while the mexicans dont think that they need to tithe and then when the american church stops giving them money, they fall apart. this church is totally self supported. we had a great time painting their church and hanging out with them and attempting to communicate. i think we did a pretty decent job too, better than sharefest. we are going back tomorrow to finish it up. afterwards we went out for tacos together and i had a delicious taco arabe and a griga pastor. yum!

this evening we went to two orphanages in a row. the first one was all girls from about 5 to 15. they were so nice and sweet. i was befriended by yolanda and she showed me around their place: their bedrooms, dining room, study room, etc... i think she was 10 years old and i was able to communicate with her pretty well. we made bracelets together with them and then showed them our skit that interprets the bracelets and then showed them part of the jesus film, we didnt have time for the whole thing. when it was over we gave them some presents and then we had to leave. when we were leaving yolanda asked me when we are going to come back to visit them again. it broke my heart and i just had to tell her that i didnt know instead of telling her that it was probably never. i think that is the hardest part of going to the orphanages.

they are playing some sweet monster ballads in the internet cafe right now.

the second orphanage we went to was a very poor one in a bad part of town. this one was much harder to go to. i havent seen much like this before in my life. the boys were pretty cool and nice. all boys, ages about 7 to 16 or so. they had three level bunk beds and the place wasnt even entirely closed in. they had some make-shift roofs and the place smelled pretty bad. we all had a bad feeling when were went in there as well. a depressing, heavy feeling. there were also a couple homeless guys that were hanging out there. our leader eddy told us after we left that there have been reports of suspected physical and sexual abuse in the place. it was pretty sad and hard to endure that place. i hope that justice is brought to that place.