We left the hotel in McAllen a little earlier today, as we were headed to Sende De Vida, the ‘homeless’ shelter on the Mexican side of the river, for morning devotions. Our food crew greatly improved the menu at the hotel this morning, with Jimmy Dean sausages, apples & bananas, and little egg muffins. It was a windy, cold morning, which made our trip to Sende De Vida even more amazing, as we witnessed the tent city that has been erected by Hector & his wife to house roughly 1200 immigrants from countries all over the world, but mostly from Central & South America. They have set the tents on top of wooden pallets to keep the floors off the cold concrete surface. I would guess there are upwards of 300 small tents, one for each family unit. How they manage to clothe, feed, stay warm and keep peace is only through God’s grace. POWER provides a major source of food through deliveries of rice & beans. Hector shared with us that when the people come inside their gate compound, they are required to work in some capacity. So they have kitchen crews, cloth washing crews, fire wood crews, etc. They also have 3 morning devotions throughout the week, and one large church service on Sundays.
Doug gave a short devotion from John 15 about how God prunes us. Then Trevor, Tom, Cody & Starkey prayed us into our second day’s projects in Reynosa.
Our crew went back to Refugio Orphanage to continue painting the exterior of two of the casas. We were able to get one casa finished, and about half of the second one, before we left for lunch at Alianza Church. I was told the other POWER group got the walls up at the Kaleo Ministry’s house that we are building. This will be at the site of another large immigrant shelter a little west from Sende De Vida. When it is completed, it will house about 500 people.
At the church there were some wonderful young translators that made us immediately feel very welcome, and directed us to a lunch of freshly made tacos, with our choice of peppers, salsa and a drink. After that, we split up into small groups of POWER men and translators to organize the various festival events. It looked like at least as big of a group of families as our last festival (about 3500). My group made cotton candy, and that was a hit! We had a continual waiting line of over 50 kids with their parents, for over 2 ½ hours. There was also popcorn, hot dogs and other food lines. There were at least 15 different games outside, where the kids could win soccer balls, basketballs, teddy bears and dolls, candy & other gifts. There was a petting corral with various animals, and merry go rounds, huge swings, and a mini car bumping derby. Of course the church had a bunch of people involved in putting on the festival, but POWER played a major role.
Daylight Savings happens tonight (Spring Ahead an hour), so we retreated back across the border to a meal at Luby’s, then to the hotel to try to get some rest for tomorrow.
Signing off at 8:45 pm