Cinco De Mayo!

May 05, 2011

In honor of Cinco De Mayo, I thought I'd share some old pictures of me in Mexico!

I spent much of two summers there back in 1998-1999. I was a missionary who helped build houses, worked with children, ran VBS programs, visited prisons, visited orphanages, drove vans full of youth group kids around, and even helped a dentist who was there to pull teeth and do dental work. The hours were long, there was no monetary pay, but the blessings were tremendous. And, I loved every minute of it.

My first trip there was just for spring break during college. My group built a house for a woman living near a landfill. Her old house is that cardboard shack on the left.

Here's her new blue house that we built for her & her son:

This is a church I worked with in a very poor neighborhood built along a sewage canal:

Here are some of the girls from the church:

Here I am at a government-run orphanage. The kids don't get much attention there so they loved visitors:

I drove youth group kids around a lot. Driving there was crazy:

Here I am holding a scorpion. My friend took the stinger out, so he said. :)

This is a neighborhood I worked in that was in the middle of a landfill.

I crossed a river with my supplies to get to one particular neighborhood where the kids had never seen white people. They were so close to the ocean that their neighborhood was built on sand.

This is probably my favorite picture. The police there tend to be difficult and we had several run-ins with them, to say the least. I eventually found some nice ones who supported our work and they allowed me to take a photo with them. I got to wear their hat even. Notice all the big weapons.