Pastor's Breakfast

Yesterday we had about 40 local pastors visit our campus for a breakfast. We talked about what we do here at Back2Back and how the local churches can partner with us in orphan care both here in Monterrey and around the world. This breakfast was a full year in the making and an exciting day for our ministry. It took a lot of work from the development team and a bunch of other staff who are passionate about local churches being involved, and the team effort really showed. It was a smooth morning with great food and great connections. Now I'm praying for some of those people to come along side me at Del Norte to mentor the older girls.

The development team ladies: Tere, Hannah, Me, and Pris. Pris has started calling us "los angeles", or the angels, because we're like Charlie's Angels. It's 4 of us and just one guy, poor Antonio!

The pastor's breakfast crew. The development team's to the left and then Maru, Cathy, Hope, and big Antonio were major players in the morning's events.

Maru cooked up some great food, chilaquiles with eggs and beans. Delicious!

The finished product, yummy!

Hope did a ton of work for this breakfast, it was exciting to watch such a big dream of hers unfold!

Antonio ran the show for the morning giving a campus tour and talking about our ministry.

Pris talked about the 6 different areas that local churches can plug in.

We put together a lot of material for this breakfast. We had a great group who worked hard at translating and recreating all of our materials for spanish speakers.

Gaby

Gaby isn't the friendliest of the little ones, but she sure is sweet! She'd rather play pretend by herself, but she's becoming more and more social each week. This morning she pretended to put on makeup in a little cookie mirror. It easily occupied 30 minutes, and was so cute to watch. I love that little girls are little girls no matter what country they're from.

School Plays

This morning Kelly and I were lucky enough to get to see the kinder kids (3-5 yr olds) spring program at school! I am starting to understand that mom thing where you think your kids are awesome, but really they're just walking in circles and jumping around. But seriously, these little guys are awesome! So enjoy some video and pictures of our morning.

This was the 3 yr old boys class. Our two boys, Ramiro and Cristian, have the big neon green heads. Cristian was super into the dancing, he's kind of going nuts!

All our kids with me, Kelly, and Ana Luisa who takes care of them.

Below is Ramiro, Sarahi, Ricardo, Juanita, and Cristian

Me and Ramiro, my very handsome tree

Tostadas

I needed a break from all of the heavy, emotional blogging. So I thought I'd share my favorite thing to cook living here in Mexico. If I was like my family I would take some professional pictures of my food before I eat it, but I was hungry and alas I forgot. I like this recipe because it's easy to make for one person, really quick, and for an added bonus it's National Nutrition Month in the States and the theme is to eat your colors which this definitely does. You'll get a good dose of protein, fiber, healthy fats, and veggies. It's more tex-mex than mexican, but it's what I like and a little variation on most group's favorite meal...tostadas. I like it with a side of raw jicama, but that's just me!

So here's what you need:

Baked tostada shells (like a taco shell but flat)

Refried beans

Shredded chicken

Cheese

Avocado

Onion

Red, green, and yellow bell peppers

Poblano pepper

A few seasonings (I like red pepper and garlic)

And here's what you do:

Roast or saute the onion and all the peppers with your seasonings

Take a tostada shell and layer on refried beans, chicken, cheese, and avocado

Heat up the tostada shell and then top with the onions and peppers

Enjoy!

Missing Mom and Dad

I don't often think about the parents of my little ones at Del Norte. It's difficult for me to understand dropping them off in a children's home as babies. I love them so much that it's hard for me to say goodbye every Monday and Thursday, and I'm not even their mom! This week little Edgar reminded us how much he misses his parents. He kept pointing to the windows and doors saying mama or papa. On one hand, I was excited to hear him saying new words since his own name is usually the only thing he says. On the other hand it broke my heart to know how much he misses them and wonders when they are coming back. Here's Edgar and his older brother David, keep them in your prayers as they're missing their mom and dad so much right now.

Milestones

On Monday little Alexis took his first steps! What I love most about this video is Alexis's face, doesn't he just look so happy and proud of himself?! He has come so far in the last few months, and it's exciting to watch him grow. When I first started working with him in November, he couldn't crawl, stand up, or even sit up that well. He's made so much progress in just 4 months! He's still pretty severely delayed, and so I talked with several of the doctors that are here on the middle school group this week about it. They confirmed that something is "just off" with him, but couldn't know what it was without running tests. So now we're looking into what kind of testing and resources are available here in Mexico for him and how we can fund it, and hopefully we can find out what's going on with the little man!

Rio 3 craziness

What a crazy day with these 60 middle schoolers from Cincinnati! They wanted to bless the people at Rio 3, an extremely impoverished squatter village next to the river in Monterrey, in a big way. The kids raised money through penny wars at their school, and part of that made today happen. We served arrachera tacos, which is a really fancy kind of beef, to over 500 people. That means we made over 2,000 tacos! I can tell you that because I had to cook all 2,000+ of the tortillas and it took almost 5 hours. And the men had to grill 220 lbs of beef which took almost 6 hours. Besides the meal they also handed out groceries to 125 families who are involved in the church there, which included milk, cereal, rice, beans, eggs, pasta, oil, a whole chicken, some beef, and clean water. They also had a bunch of clothes and so several hundred people were able to pick out 4 new items of clothing. What an amazing afternoon with those kids! I love how God is using these kids to meet so many needs here in Monterrey.

Provision

Yesterday was a great day at Casa Hogar Del Norte with one of our groups. There's a group of 60 middle schoolers here this week, and one of their chaperones is a doctor and the director of an emergency room in Cincinnati. God used him yesterday to provide for the immediate needs of several children living at Del Norte. One of the 4 year olds had a severe allergic reaction to an insect bite, and the doctor was able to treat him in the moment and provide us with instructions and resources to manage his severe allergy. And one of my little guys, Edgar, was definitely sick when we arrived and was just laying on the floor. Turns out he had strep throat, and we had antibiotics and children's tylenol for him. One of the caregivers had also injured her knee in a soccer game the night before and he was able to examine her knee and give her some instructions to care for it. I love that God places the right people in the right places to provide for the orphan child!