Hard Labor Under the Scorching Mexico Sun

My daughter is home from Mexico, hoarse and strung out from the road but fulfilled. For the second consecutive summer, she joined a church youth group in the border town of Acuna. There, they constructed a new home for an impoverished family.
The stories she tells are compelling, particularly when she recalls the gratitude of the families she and her fellow missionaries have served. While she had fun with her traveling companions, this was far from a pleasure trip.
They stayed in a rural church, where they slept on air mattresses and there wasn’t enough water for everyone to shower. Restroom? Forget about it. Outhouse? Even that’s a bit of stretch.
It must be worth the trouble, though, because she didn't hesitate to sign up when the opportunity was presented again this year.
Life’s small pleasures take on a different meaning when you are deprived of them even for a few days. A Mexican soda pop was one of the highlights of the week.
It’s all about service and gaining a different perspective on your place in the world. She’s gratified that she made the trip again; but make no mistake about it: she’s happy to be home. We’re happy to have her, too.

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A Texas Two-Step

After a quiet month of June, during which the family mostly sat around the house, things are starting to heat up a little. Our son has fallen in love with Austin, Texas and is tearing up the road between here and there as often as he can. I wouldn’t be surprised if he moved there by the end of the year.
Since our daughter is just a month away from moving to Ft. Worth, it seems we will be spending a lot of time in the Lone Star State in the years to come.
Both offspring are in Texas today. Our daughter is in the back of a van with some of her friends and a goofy kid or two, bound for the Mexican border town of Acuna on a mission trip.
This is the second year in a row that she has joined a church youth group on this journey. Obviously, she found it rewarding. There’s a big white van caravan crossing the Rio Grande. The young people and their older escorts will build a house for an impoverished family. The camaraderie is noteworthy and so is the sense of accomplishment.
This continues the long good-bye for us as our daughter makes final preparations to start her studies at TCU. We won’t see much of her between now and move-in day. She will be home from Mexico for just a few days before she’s off to Colorado for an intense, small-group TCU orientation adventure labeled “Frog Camp.”
As leaving-home day draws near, she seems genuinely excited. She’s had a sense of certainty about where she wants to go to school for more than a year, and there’s great comfort in that.
Well, comfort for her. I don’t know who will comfort her mother and me when all this finally gets here. Get the IV bag with tranquilizers and antidepressants ready.

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My Daughter the Difference Maker

My daughter is home from Mexico where she had been on a mission trip to build houses for underprivileged families. We were approached by several of the adults who went along on the trip, who described her in glowing terms. "A force," "A blessing," "A joy" were just a few of the comments we received. What a wonderful thing to hear about your little girl.
She became adept at drywall, we are told. The "force" part came from her work ethic.
The credibility of our feedback was underscored at a church service dedicated to the enterprise. Two of the young people were chosen to address the congregation, one young man and one young woman. Guess what? Happy Couple II were the ones. They spoke separately with no reference made to their romantic entanglement. Both were eloquent and passionate. It was a proud moment for a parent, to be sure.
The crew made an easily identifiable difference in the lives of at least one family. They had been living in a corrugated tin dwelling with no windows or doors. Now, thanks to the efforts of my daughter and her companions, the family has a solid roof over their heads along with real windows and doors.While they were doing admirable work, they did have time for some good fun, morphing from missionaries to tourists as quickly as they could slap on a silly sombraro. Or, if you're a guy who thought long and hard about going to an actual outdoor Mexican wrestling event, you could hide behind a mask.There was time for fun and games, too. There was plenty of pick-up soccer and a little game called broom ball.He said the only regret he had was that they didn't bring enough soccer balls to leave one behind for everybody. They had to randomly choose who got to keep all the things they donated.
With just three weeks left until she starts her senior year, my daughter's "summer of service" seems to be winding down.
The romance seems to be going in the opposite the direction. After spending a week in one another's company in impoverished conditions, Happy Couple II seem to be even closer. I'm thinking that's an entirely different kind of "force" to be reckoned with.

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Hasta la Vista, Chica

As the sun rose over a Southwest Shreveport church this morning, my daughter was among three dozen or so missionaries loading supplies into a trailer soon to be headed for Mexico. The group, equally divided among adults and teens, is bound for the border town of Acuna where they expect to join others like them to build houses for impoverished residents.
Interestingly, we have been advised there is only one romantically involved pair on the trip.

You guessed it: Happy Couple II. This works out well for them. Their many travels have kept them apart most of the summer. This also works out for two sets of concerned parents because HC II should be well chaperoned by many devout Southern Baptists.
We're not so naive to think that Young Love can't find a way to evade the glaring gaze of the warily watchful, but we're as good as we can get given the cicumstances. They are certain to be sweltering in the Mexican heat doing manual labor for a week. Plus, from what we've been told to expect, there won't be a lot of comfort at the facilities where they will be housed. She would seem to be well prepared for the Spartan accommodations, having recently returned from a weeklong wilderness outing where snow was used on occasion to perform the function typically reserved for soft tissues dispensed from cardboard rolls. On the other hand (Wow, careful with that expression in this context), she might struggle with the climate. A week ago, she was trudging around in snow and ice. This week, she will be toiling in triple-digit misery.
This is the last scheduled event in her self-titled "summer of service," during which she has also worked cleaning cabins at a church camp, among other activities. Remarkably, she passed up a chance to spend a week with friends in a beachside condominium to go on this mission trip. Now, she just needs to get home safely and catch up on her rest.

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