Day 5: New Faces

Pastor Hernandez leading worship.

We visited a community center in Juarez today. The church is called San Pedro and San Pablo  they do not have a brick and mortar church, but services are held at this community center. The center is owned by a women in the community, who opens it up several times a week to the church, other moms to cook food, and a place for kids to hang out after school. The center is located at a place just referred to as "Kilometer 30," meaning it is 30km from the border. The topography is very different from Anapura, where we had been the last two days. While the other community was hilly and surrounded by mountains, this area is flat and vast.

The Church is a one room building, so it had a more interment feel to it. Pastor Hernandez made us feel right at home by welcoming us to their community; leading us in a series of hymns in Spanish with his guitar. During class the team was able to answer more questions and get more information about their particular community. In this community a government water truck drives by once a week, and that is all the water that they have access to. The water is not potable either, so it needs to be boiled or they have to purchase water to drink.

Mark with the water filters.

Health and hygiene class.

The children's group was all preschool age kids, so we were able to play a lot of games with them, and share a brief Bible story of the women at the well. These kids really wanted to interact with us, and were eager to play and see pictures that we had.

We were able to go and do 3 home visits to give out the filters in this area. Just like the other community these people were so happy and appreciative to get their filter. As previously mentioned their is no running water in this community, the water truck delivers it all; but it isn't safe to drink. The filter will make this water drinkable, and they will no longer need to travel, and purchase water to drink. While these home visits were being conducted, other members of the team stayed behind to assemble the remaining filters for distribution tomorrow.

We came back a little early, and had a little more of a relaxing end of the afternoon. After dinner some of the ladies that we were serving in Juarez came to the mission to sell homemade bags and trinkets, which some members of the team bought in order to support them.

Water truck that gives out the weekly water supply.

The team outside of the community center.