Juarez Mission Trip - Pt 2

So we arrived in Juarez! Perhaps you feel inclined to ask your Mexican acquaintance about this city. He or she will most likely wrinkle their nose and say, "ew, Juarez." Because it is, in fact, kind of a crap hole. There is a lot of crime which isn't helped by a corrupt police department. Hundreds, possible thousands of poor working women have been murdered or are currently missing. But wait, there's MORE! The police are currently at war with the drug cartels to the point where the Mexican Army has been called in to restore order. We saw a few trucks stuffed with soldiers (who, by the by are also super cute in their uniforms....drool) and a newspaper graphically displaying the bodies of two policemen who had been killed. But other than that, we didn't see any violence and we were completely protected by God.

Now that you know a little bit about the city, let me introduce you to where we stayed: Centro Vida aka "The Compound" (Picture: The courtyard at Centro Vida. To the left is the eating area/sanctuary, to the right are the boys and girls dorms)

The Compound was perfect for us. Each dorm had several different room with about 20 bunks. The girls spread out into 4 rooms so everyone could be with their friends and still have plenty of space. The boys immediately made their side smell as horrible as possible. By day 2 it reeked of dead animals and Axe body spray (which, you may argue, is worse). However, nothing smelled quite as interesting as the bathrooms. Because of the different pipe system, you can't flush toilet paper. Several unfortunate people (sadly including myself) threw the paper in out of habit and went fishing (obviously this was a lot worse for the boys...). Apparently suffering for the gospel is waaaaaaaaay grosser than anyone imagined.

(Picture: yummy yummy tostadas covered in freshly made guacamole!)

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the amazing food we had the whole time. The kitchen staff at Centro Vida cooked us some lovely authentic Mexican food as well as the best pancakes I've ever had in my life! And the lovely people at our site church made us lunch every day that was to die for!

(Picture: Kate, Amber, Mackenzie, Chelsea, Jasmine laying on the floor in the sanctuary. Why? yeah I don't know...)

Tuesday was our first "real" day of mission tripness. The construction crews headed out bright and early to the three "home" churches. Our team (Go team 2!!) was at Templo Bethel. Originally, I was the only girl on team 2 construction, but one of the girls from the VBS group asked Jeff (the site leader) if she could switch. Jenea was awesome and discovered a hidden talent for blocklaying!

(Picture: from the tops...Jeff, Jenea, Skyler. Rhett, Michael, and Rebbecca (who was not on the construction team but DID have a thing with Skyler lol))