SummerScope

SUMMERSCOPE

Let me start with what SummerScope is: Every year we pick one week during the summer and invite everyone we know (churches, individuals, youth groups, etc…) to come down to help out at El Pozo and in the community for a week. It’s a great time for lots of work to be done and for others to gain a better understanding of what we do down here in Puebla, Mexico.



Last week we hosted 22 people from 4 different churches and it was INCREDIBLE.

It was incredible to watch the 11 youth and 11 adults work on projects together.

It was incredible to see all the different people from different backgrounds and churches build friendships with one another.

It was incredible to watch our Mexican students work side by side with ‘the gringos’ and to give up their entire week to help improve their ministry.

It was incredible to see the love and thankfulness pour out of one of our students after we installed a much needed bathroom door on their house.

It was incredible to watch 28 people get on an already overcrowded bus and truly experience public transportation.

It was incredible to look at the end result of the week and see the sense of accomplishment in everyone’s eyes.

It was incredible to watch the rain pour down and see our brand new drainage system actual work. (no puddles were formed in the walkway or yard… hurray)

It was incredible to baptized 2 of our Mexican students at the end of week and for everyone down here to experience and participate in such a joyous occasion with us.

It was incredible to see lives changed by people giving up one week of their summer to help others.

It was incredible to see a 65 year old woman shoveling gravel all week.

It was incredible to hear everyone at the end of the week singing a praise song in Spanish that they knew by heart.

It was incredible to see the tears of joy for what had been accomplished and the tears of sadness of having to leave what became so comfortable.

It was incredible see the joy that came at reaching the top of the pyramid and the various reactions to eating the traditional grasshoppers at the top.

It was incredible to see the reactions from people experiencing their first cathedral.

It was incredible to watch our summer interns (who are only here for a month) work so hard.

It was incredible to see God work in and through everyone who participated in SummerScope… it was a truly INCREDIBLE experience for all involved.

Casas por Cristo

Casas por Cristo: Juarez, Mexico

So I've been on Juarez trips lots of times before, having experienced four with Georgia Tech CCF, one with Southwest Christian Church, and then an entire summer of Casas when I interned there in 2006 (I'm returning this summer and for the future to work there as well). But to lead a trip from El Pozo...that's never been done before...across Mexico...this was going to be an adventure.

We left Sat. March 15th, the first day of Spring Break here, and return Easter Sunday, the 23rd. After taking off in our 11 passenger van that treated us very nicely, we made it up to Juarez from Puebla in two days, stopping in Torreon along the way. Once in Juarez, we met up that Monday with our friends from GTCCF in Atlanta and built two houses for a couple of families that really needed them. I led the construction of one of the two, and Michael West, a Georgia Southern alum and former El Pozo and Casas intern, led the other. By Wednesday, two more houses stood in Juarez (along with 27 more, actually, a Casas single-week record), and the students at El Pozo had gotten a taste of humbling yourself for others, getting multiple days of good hard work, and roughing it for a bit by sleeping on the hard floor in a church in inner city Juarez and eating foreign food, including the first peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for some of them, if you'd believe it!

On the way back from Juarez, we stopped by the beautiful city of Chihuahua for two days, the magnificent Copper Canyons in the SW corner of Chihuahua state, and the gorgeous city of San Luis Potosi. Some amazing stories came out of the trip, students talking about how this changed their perspective of how the view "necessities" in life, how others live - even in their own country - and even one person, Malena, decided to apply to intern at Casas this summer! THANK YOU SO MUCH to those of you who helped to support the trip; the students already can't wait to go on next year's trip...and that's exactly what we needed, was to get a group of students at El Pozo motivated about it to make it a yearly tradition.

Make sure to check out the video from the trip (in Spanish) online at YouTube! Here's the link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLg4o8ruf1U. Harold