I'm Back!!!

I made it home around 11 Saturday night from Mexico. I thought I'd go through each day and our journey as we grew in our service and leadership. Thanks for all your prayers, we could feel them. I'll try to add in some pics, but I don't have very many. Well here it goes...

Day One (including the journey to Chihuahua)--
We left Edmond around 2:30 on Saturday afternoon, loaded up a 13 passenger van and drove to the OKC Police Department to pick up, yes that's right...Paco, Paco, Paco Balderrama. Next we traveled to Moore High School to pick up Beth and Laurel up from a debate tournament. We FINALLY hit the road for Mexico around 4pm. Like always, the time you spend with each other in the van are the most memorable. :) We laughed and got to know each other and around 7:30 we started asking for dinner. At around 10:45 we made it to a Sonic and stopped to eat dinner. Twelve of us ordered from one machine. Talk about hectic, but somehow they brought out all our food correct, dare I say it, the FIRST TIME!!! Paco, Paco, Paco was worried about us running late, so we grabbed our food and ate on the road. Around midnight we had, for the most part, wound down and all, expect 4 attempted to sleep. That, however, wasn't successful, at least for me. If you've never experienced me tired, let's just say the angry side of Mandy comes out. :) (sorry Chris)...anyway, just as they started to get tired, we reached the border at 2am (Chihuahua time, it was 4am OKC time). I'm sure we were a sight to see, but thankfully the border patrol who helped us was kind enough to fill out the visas for those who couldn't see straight (Laurel...). We passed smoothly and piled in the van to finish the last 4 hours of our journey. After about 30 minutes of driving, we were stopped at a military check point...talk about scary. Two men search our van (thankfully all the other students aside from Chris and me were asleep) and waved us on. We can begin our journey again. :) I finally found a comfortable spot on the floor leaning against the wheel cover. I slept there peacefully for about 2.5 hrs, suddenly awakened by a loud thud of my back nailing the wheel cover. Paco had hit a speed bump and sent me flying through the air. I fell asleep again for about 30 min awakened yet again to a thud. Man, did that hurt, but this time it was my left shoulder that hit the wheel. I decided to give up sleeping at this point and found and empty seat, propped my legs up, and miraculously rested (no more sleep for Mandy). It's amazing how just resting can replenish you with energy!! We finally made it to the orphanage, at 6 am their time...but the orphanage didn't open until 8. So...we were rushed at every stop we made, no walking time, we shoved our food down our throats, so we could sit in the van another 2 hrs...yes I am bitter. :) lol The cook arrived at the orphanage at 7:30 so we unpacked and did our own thing until the boys (all 5: Marcos, Ivan, Joel, Brian, Andres) arrived at 11. (It's Sunday now...) We played with the boys and got to work after lunch. The girls started by sanding the downstairs of the boy dorms. Next we moved to the outside and primed the outside walls of both dorms, the kitchen, and porch like around (to be painted with mac-n-cheese orange the next day). Some went inside and painted the school room white (to be covered in pink the next day), and finally some started painting the stairway. We got so much done in just a few hours. Everyone cleaned up and we headed to get ice cream with the boys. On our way to the "hot spot for ice cream" in Chihuahua, I had a massive nose bleed--and I mean gushing for 5 minutes straight, so sadly I didn't get to experience the ice cream quite how I'd like, but it was still good ice cream. Next we walked to a park (by the way, it was dark and only 7:30) and played there for about 30 min. We made it back to the orphanage and had debriefing and hung out until about 1:30 am!

If you can believe it, the days get more and more intense as we go along...tune in tomorrow for Day 2!

Here's the nose bleed.... MAC~N~CHEESE!!!