So Many Opportunities to Serve and Learn

-El Cine (the movies) - Karate Kid
This past month has been such a blast down here in Guadalajara!
We have had so many different opportunities to take the kids out and really spend one on one time with them and bless them!  We took all of the kids to the movies to see Karate Kid.  It was a lot of their first times at the movies and they loved it so much!  I have also had the chance to take a couple of kids every week to the centro (downtown) to run some errands.  This has given me time to really get to know the kids more and to hear their stories.

-Repairs around the Casa Hogar
We've also been working a lot around the orphanage in terms of repairing, cleaning and organizing.  Here are a couple pictures of the things we have been doing:
-painted/organized the office

-painted/organized the kitchen

-created a dining room by putting up walls/painted

-painted upstairs bedrooms/ bathrooms

 -put in grass/drain

We also hosted a team from Buffalo, New York to come to the orphanage to volunteer for a couple days.  They spent the first day with the kids and took them to the park.  The second day they put on a couple skits and sang songs.  They also donated a bunch of diapers, food, toilet paper, soap, the basic necesseties that the orphanage was lacking.  It was a great time!

-Conference for Non-Profits in México


We were invited to attend an international conference put on by a branch of the government (IJAS) for non-profit organizations in México.  It was a 2 day conference where basically every non-profit from Guadalajara as well as other cities and countries attended.  They supplied us with very useful general information during main sessions and in the breakout sessions we were able to get to know the other organizations better and even make a couple contacts to help with some of the kids in the orphanage!  Above is a picture of our team that attended the conference with a woman who is one of the directors of IJAS- the sector of the government that we go through with our organization in México.


The Lord has truly blessed us down here with all of these different opportunities to serve in this orphanage and to learn through doing all of these things and really getting our hands dirty.  Pray for strength as we start a new schedule with the orphanage as they are not used to having a schedule, rules, organization, etc.  Pray that the Lord would open these kids hearts to the gospel.

"Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me."  Psalm 51:12