We started out our second day in Del Rio/Acuna with breakfast at Faith Mission, worship songs, then a
short message from Clay about not always having to rely on others for spiritual inspiration, but
developing our own spiritual maturity. The main verses were from I Samuel 16:14-23, where Saul used
David’s harp to soothe his distressing spirits. After breakfast, I travel with a group back to the
Victoria Elementary School, where we continued work on the dining hall. We installed horizontal
blocking between the trusses, tar paper and tongue and groove siding on all four walls. I also got to
help Terry, a finish carpenter, to nail vertical supports from the top plates at both end trusses. The
school kids again gathered around at a safe distance to watch our progress. I practiced my rudimentary
Spanish with several of them, and we of course had more candy to give out, which they loved. The
morning went by quickly, and before I knew it we were packing up our tools, and heading back across
the border to Faith Mission for lunch and packing our bags.
While there we had the pleasure of hearing a short talk by Allen Ehlers, the original founder of Faith
Mission. Then we got our van assignments, and were on the road to McAllen. It was a long drive, which was
broken up with dinner at Peter Piper Pizza in Laredo. We heard the sad news that Randy Leyendecker
decided to shut down his lumber yard business last week. He was instrumental in helping Laredo Stepping Stones,
a ministerial retreat which POWER has helped over many years. Unfortunately he has fallen on hard times recently.
After lifting him up in prayer, we piled back in the vans, and made the last 2 ¾ hour leg of the trip to McAllen,
arriving here at 11:45 pm. Our prayer team met to review prayer requests for the day. I still felt pretty good, so I
stayed up in the hotel lobby to type up the blog for today. Stay tuned for our projects in Matamoros
tomorrow.