Well, I survived another New Years trip down at CdE! I am moving down there in 3 days, and it is a very exciting and nerve-wrecking time in my life. I will try to give the updates on everything as briefly as possible. :)

Friday.

I went down with Jessica early to do all sorts of errands in Nogales. We got them all down and then got to the orphanage at 2:30. It was weird though because we got stopped by US border patrol before we went into Mexico. They asked us what we were doing down there and asked us where our protection was. It was really weird and I just said that we would be fine. He creeped us out. I wish I took the chance to witness to him a bit.

We got down there and we just played with a bunch of the kids. They all asked if we brought down Under Dog and I told them that I couldn't afford it this trip, so we didn't get it. I spent a lot of time with Adrian as he was going through some processing funk and he needed to talk it out to someone. The rest of the team got there about 7 and it was great to be able to tell the kids "They're here!". They were asking for the others all day, but it was great to be able to get some good ol' quality time without having to think about everyone else.

I played "Fire and Sun", their version of freeze tag. We usually play boys against girls because it's just easier that way. Well, as we were playing, Junior ran into one of their mini palm trees. He got stuck on it due to one of the thorns so I had to push his skin off of it to get him out of it. The look on his face and doing that freaked me out like no other. I screamed for Elsa and made her look because I just couldn't handle it. He was fine, and so I cleaned it and bandaged him up.

Saturday.

I spend a lot of time with Jesus and Mikey. Adrian has been in charge of Mikey, and he needed a break. I played a lot of football with Mikey and Jesus joined in as well. He's so good with him.

It was also the official day of having "heart to hearts". It made it a little draining, but it was good. It went from Dulce to Guadalupe to Manuel de Jesus... There was a little drama there, but it all got straightened out. The next one was with Crisel and how I wanted to help her with her reading and writing. Finally... I had one with the team. I felt like they were spending too much time with each other and their iPods and Zumes that I put more restrictions on them. After a conversation with Adrian, it totally confirmed it and I had had enough... It was probably due to the emotional draining aspect of the day, but I had no idea what the two days ahead would entail.

The highlight of my day was taking Lolita (5 years old on Sunday), Edgar Jesus (6), Elyot (14), and Jesus (13) to Superval and to Super San Jose for tomatoes for the Nana and for candy for the pinata. It was so fun seeing the little ones freak out about everything. Lolita wanted everything of course, but Edgar just wanted toilet paper (besides his normal snack). He also asked the cashier where the tomatoes were and gave the old lady that bags the groceries a tip and said "thank you".

Sunday.

Where do I start? Well, we bought stuff on Saturday with money from Dave (Keith's blogger friend) to make for the kids. We got up 20 minutes after we were supposed to meet the Nana in the kitchen. Thankfully, she was late. We made the kids chorizo and eggs. They each got lots of it with two tortillas, cheese, and lots of hot sauce. I would say half of them got to have seconds and we still had over 100 eggs and 4 packages of chorizo left over that we didn't use. The kids kept saying "que rico" and they loved every bite... Let's just say that there wasn't a single bite left on any of their plates. :)

Later on we had church, and they asked me to pray for it. I freaked out because learning "Christianese" in another language is hard. I really need to start practicing praying in Spanish more, and so I just prayed in English because I was so nervous.

There was a couple (Tracy and John) that came after church to do massages on the kids. Jesus didn't eat lunch because he wanted to get worked on. After waiting for an hour and a half, it was finally his turn. The lady worked on him. I didn't realize it right away becauase I was on Mikey duty while Adrian took a nap with Jared. By this time, Keith had already shown up, so he was due to have some Mikey or Lolita time. :) Any who, back to my boy. So, I get over there and I was asking her about his muscles. She said that his muscles are very abnormally tight and wound for his age. It took her a long time to loosen them and it wasn't very willingly. I told her a little bit about his life and then she decided to have her husband work on him.

When he worked on him, he did this thing called Cranium Seco. It opens up the pathways so that some of the fluids can flow that have been blocked. It causes you to get in such a relaxed state that your brain goes to the deepest parts of it where you hide all of the bad stuff. Sometimes it's unconsciously, but with Jesus, it wasn't. I could see it in his eyes how nervous he was and how they were filled up with water. Unfortunately, there were too many kids around for him to allow himself to let it out. Yet, it was good. He let me just sit there and hold his hand and be there for him. John continued to work on him more after I explained to him what his wife had said. I think he ended out getting worked on for probably 45 minutes to an hour. He didn't really want to talk about it, but he said it helped. The next day, his right arm felt better, and his left one still hurt a little bit.

After that, I tried to keep him with me as much as possible, and he helped me help Crisel with her reading and writing. She's 15 and she doesn't recognize all of her letters or even her numbers 11-20. I worked with her for a while as I was shooing everyone away. Everyone probably thought I was a beast, but she gets really embarrassed about it, so I was doing it for her sake. Next time, I'll do it in her room. :)

Monday.

I decided to help the kids with their chores. First, I helped Ramon Abdiel and Manuel de Jesus with their trash duty. It's fun pushing it in the back part of the trailer with a rake. Then, I helped Jesus de-thorn the mini palm trees. We kept fighting over whose turn it was to use the clippers. So many kids wanted to join in on the fun... It was great.

Then, later, Anthony was kicking all of the kids out of the apartment (like a good rule follower) and he ended out accidentally hitting Jesus in the face. Jesus went off and so I had to go on a hunt to find him. I found him in the back of Manuel and Gaby's house sitting behind their water heater. Anthony apologized and I asked Jesus if it hurt a lot, and he said no. Then, we sat... and sat in silence for a really long time.

He started picking at his hand, but I then grabbed it and sandwiched it inside of mine after I realized that he made himself bleed. He kept fidgeting, but he sat there and processed for a long time. It was really good. There were a few kids that tried to disrupt it, but we sent them on their way. It was then time for lunch and of course he didn't want to eat. Adrian made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and so he ate that. He ended out eating a lot more later, so I was happy with that.

After being exhausted from de-thorning, watching everyone on the pogo stick, breaking up fights, playing 2 person kick ball with Rosa Adriana, swinging Sofia, and almost having to play basketball with Macario, I was all up for a trip to the store. I took Elizabeth (13), Wendy (9), Luis (9), and Juan Ignacio (8). We got the drinks for the party that night and they all wanted juice. I got 3 5-gallon jugs of orange juice for $1.65 a piece. It was so cute watching them stare out the windows in silence. This time, I had Wendy give the same old lady the tip and say thank you.

By the time it was time for the party, I was more than ready to go to bed for the night... but we persevered. We had a fire pit in the baseball field, roasted marshmallows and put them between cookies. Then, we had a pinata, watched Under Dog (Keith brought it down), had soda, juice, popcorn balls, and of course all the candy. Then, we went outside and did the fireworks, had more fires, and then had poppers with confetti at midnight. It was so stressful trying to watch all of the kids and worry about everything - wondering where all the Americans were while trying to put out fires the kids were starting (mainly my boy) and keeping Juan Manuel from rolling Roberto in a dolly over the hot ashes... But, it was good. I hope everyone had fun, and I think they did.

Tuesday.

I had a good talk with Manuel and I decided to leave my car down there since I will be returning on Friday night. I figured out all of my accommodations for my two weeks before I get my house, and it's good. It's very good.

Well, sadly, that's as brief as I can make it... If you're exhausted from reading it, just think how exhausted I should be from doing it... but I'm not. I wouldn't have it any other way. I love those kids and these are the things that make me joyfully over blessed. :)

Happy New Year everyone... may this be a year where God blesses our socks off and amazes us more and more everyday. :)