Good morning from Juarez!
Things are going well here. The heat is still hot and the sun is still el sol but God is sustaining us and giving us strength. Believe me, we desperately need it. The kids never seem to run out of energy and I drain real fast when the kids use me as a taxi service (by climing on my back and hanging on to my feet). The other activity of choice is "dos manos" which translates "two hands". For this game, a kid will hold on to my hands and lay on the ground. I then count to 10, in Spanish of course, and launch them as high as I can. It's very tiring, but the kids need all the love we can possibly give them, and so much more. Sometimes I have to sit down and say, "Estoy consado" which means "I'm tired". At this time, a few kids will usually crawl into my lap and wait a minute or two before yelling, "dos manos".

Last night we heard the testimony of Paco, a 63 year old man who works here at the home. It was incredibly powerful. I could write a paper about his life but I'll tryt to keep it short. He grew up experiencing neglect, near starvation, alcohol, sexual abuse and drugs. He was essentially fathering several kids at the age of 14 because they all had nowhere to go. His mom gave him away when he was very young and his new mom was an alcoholic among many many other things. Such problems have plagued Paco for most of his life. Everything he learned as a kid followed him wherever he went. Josue, the founder of the children's home that we're at, took Paco in over 40 years ago and taught him that God loves him and that he can be a kid. Paco was encouraged to dream for the first time. He loved sports so Josue had him organize a soccer team from the home. It took many years and many screw ups to finally get to where he's at now, but he is loving the Lord. He said it was an honor for him to to talk to important people. It's stunning to think that we're important people to most of the world simply because we are in college or graduated from college. He encouraged us to love this kids with all we have because most of them have similar stories to his... some worse. He told us that we are Jesus Christ to them. Just typing that almost brings me to tears. I could talk for a long time about this but I'll save some for when we get back to share when we're face to face.

This morning we left the home at about 6:00 to hike up a small mountain with a big cross at the top. The hill overlooks most of the city and you can look out and see El Paso, Texas not too far off. We took pictures, had a time of praise and worship, and took about a half of an hour of quiet time before heading back. God is so good! He definitely met us up there. I hope whoever gets on here next talks more about this morning because there were also some funny moments.

This is already too long so I'll sign off for now. Keep us in your prayers, please. We need strength to keep going. We need bigger hearts to love these kids. We need God to meet us everyday. Thanks!

Hasta Luego,
Steve