Hola Amigos y Familia!!

Buenas noches! I am sitting in a coffee shop in Ensenada, which is about 45 minutes to an hour away from our home town of Porvenir. We just finished our first shopping day...can I just say stressful. I am team leader for the next two weeks, which just means that I pretty much am in charge of budgeting, passing along information from the leaders to the students, locking up the compound at night, and making sure everyone obeys the rules. Ugh. Its alot of responsibility, but I suppose its good for me, right? Every other Monday, the girl's house recieves 320 dollars which goes towards two weeks worth of gorceries and utilities, which include water, electricty, and propane. We get an allowance at the end of every month if we do our campus and house chores, and this will either go towards utilities or our own personal stuff, depending on how much our bill is. Its my first experience with budgeting, and since I am team leader, it all fell to me, but I successfully added up all our bills, and we saved 140 dollars after buying all our food. Crazy.

But now I 'm done with the boring news and will move on to the more exciting things....us Ventaneros went to Casa de Gabriel for the first time today. Casa de Gabriel is an orphange that we will be volunteering at every other Monday during our stay here. The children in the orphanage are all handicapped in some way: most are in wheelchairs, some are autistic, some have Down's Syndrome, and a few are HIV positive. I met so many special children today, and am almost brought to tears remembering them. There are four sisters who have a progessive disease that stemmed from the pesticides sprayed over the field while their pregnant mother was picking the produce. There was a young man named Raul who lived in a cage for most of his younger years because his parents didn't have the means to watch after him. There was little five-year-old Marisol who is completely normal except for the fact that she is HIV positive. I can't wait to post up pictures of them in the future weeks. This orphanage is run by an American couple who started rescuing handicapped children thirteen years ago. They currently have 38 children (slash young adults) in the orphanage, and have three adoptions pending. It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen, not because of how it looks (honosetly, its a little small and they have hopes of expanding so they can take in more children) but because of all the love and ministry that is going on. Their staff is mostly made up of single mothers who had nowhere else to turn. They pour themselves into these children twenty four hours out of every day. Some of the children are in very extreme conditions. One boy, Teddy, used to be so week in his lower body that every time he had to poop, his intestines would come out as well. So Irene, instead of taking him to the hospital every time he had to go, learned how to put them back herself. Now, praise the Lord, his muscles are strong enough, and he is healthy as he possibly can be. Please be in prayer for this ministry and the awesome works they are doing.

Going back a bit more in time, we spent three days in Tijuana for cultural training. This consisted of training classes and cultural excursions. We were sent out in pairs along a certain area of TJ and were told to just watch certain things about the people. i.e. how they greeted each other, what they wore, who talked to whom, how close they stood to each other when talking etc. It was really interesting and really beneficial if not a bit crazy. We stayed safe, no worries. During our visit, we stayed at a place called El Castillo, which is a castle (small for a castle, but very bonita) that is being transformed into a Bible school. The staff there was AWESOME and they are coming down to visit us sometime.

We went to our first church service and it was so amazing...but long :) Church in Mexico is a bit longer than in America...we were there from 9:30 until 2:15. We are getting to know the locals a bit and have had several pick up games of soccer and volleyball with some of the boys in Porvenir. We will be attending the church's high school and college groups that meet during the week. We will also go to an early morning prayer time every Wed. (We have to be ready at 5:45 in the morning) as well as go to a service that takes place later that evening. We have our first youth group coming down this weekend from Southern California, and us students with be directing everything during that...leading the devos, leading the service projects, hanging with the kids, cleaning the dishes, etc. Its gonna be crazy, and we are going to have five straight weeks of it later in Feb. and March, I believe. After this group leaves (on Monday) the Ventaneros will be preparing for our two week excursion into Culiacan where we will be bringing the gospel to over a thousand migrant workers. Please be in prayer for that since the devil will be attacking us in many different places. Its going to be hard to stay together as a team, and to keep energy up during the intense times. Hopefully I will have many cool, God-centered stories to tell you when I get back.

Sorry this was so long, I just have so much to tell you guys! Its been a busy past week. I will be on my computer every Monday afternoon, and will fill you all in on whats happening at that time. I hope everything is going well for all of you, and I send you tons of love from Porvenir!
Mikaela Alexander