Friday, October 14, 2005

Volunteer Opportunities

As I said, I was so disappointed about the response I got from the orphanage. I began to doubt if I had heard the Lord correctly...I thought, "Maybe I heard it partly right"...I wasn't sure what to do. I did an internet search for other orphanages in Mexico and put out the word to some other people about what was going on. I found a few orphanages that seemed like something I would like to be involved in and emailed them, but didn't hear back. Many said they needed 3-6 months notice for volunteers. I spoke with some Rotary friends.

Sierra and I were getting pretty bored just hanging around the house all day. School wasn't taking very long and we were spending too much time watching tv. I was praying a lot, asking God what He wanted from us. I still felt that the mission field is where we belonged, but it didn't seem to be working like I had planned.

We went to a birthday party one Sunday for a woman who was turning 88. There were probably 300 people there!! It was as big as a wedding. I found out that her kids throw her this big of a party EVERY year! I ran into some friends I had met from last year...they had been in Rotary but aren't any more. I had really connected with them last year and was disappointed I wouldn't be seeing them at the meetings. I spent quite a bit of time visiting with Jose Luis and Angelica..in fact, they were the ones who had introduced me to the Mother Superior and the orphanage the year before. I told Angelica what was happening and she said we should have lunch the next day and she would tell me about some other places I could do some work at. She told me her sister is a missionary for the Catholic church and just left to go to Africa to work with children there.

The next day I met with Angelica and we spent the morning with her showing me the best places to shop....bread at this store, meat at this one, fruit and vegetables another, cheese at yet another. Shopping is a major undertaking here in Mexico!! Next she took us to a school for disabled children. I could tell she had been there before as everyone knew her and paid her a lot of respect...she told them we wanted to volunteer and we were told we could come 2-3 days per week in the mornings. Next we went to a pre-school, with the same results. In a short amount of time we had 3 jobs and were plenty busy 5 days a week.

We had lunch with Angelica and her family - they are really wonderful people and I am so glad they are our friends. I was happy to have work to do, but a little nervous, too, because it had been such a whirlwind! I figured we'd take it day by day to see how it went.

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