becoming angelina

New life plan: Find a husband who hablas espanol, get married, adopt Mexican orphans.

Last weekend I went with a group of about 30 people on a ward trip in conjunction with the Kaiizen Foundation to volunteer at an orphanage near Ensenada, Mexico. It was amazing!! I am so in love with those kids and their amazing spirits. Some of them have come from awful situations and just the thought that none of them has parents brought me to tears on several occasions. But they are so happy and so well behaved and very well taken care of. It was so fun to spend time with them and feel of their love. Awesome kids!

We set off on Thursday evening in cars packed to the brim.

Lissa and I before we hit the road.
Me and Lissa in the back of Bishop Z's navigator. We had so many supplies, food and gifts to take down. The drive from Vegas took about 6 or 7 hours. I'm not really sure since I spent most of the drive reading (Twilight!) and sleeping.
We camped out on the beach at Playa Saldamando on Thursday night. We didn't get to sleep until about 3:30am by the time we got there, set up tents, etc. The lull of the ocean waves was so relaxing that Lissa and I slept in until 9am, long after everyone else was up eating breakfast and swimming in the ocean.
Some of the cars in the caravan as we were getting ready to leave Playa Saldamando and head to the orphanage.
Josh- Master and Commander- is one of the co-founders of Kaiizen. He's pretty much amazing and every girl who's ever met him is in love with him. But really, how can you not love him? He's too cool. Here he's giving us info about what to expect, how to behave and what we'll be doing.
We went to an orphanage called Rancho Milagro. I was pretty nervous when we got there just because I wasn't sure what to expect with the kids but once we met them all fears dissipated. They were so sweet and I didn't want to waste any time NOT playing with them. The children there range in age from about one year to 17 years old. Most of the kids are between 5 and 10 years old. This particular orphanage is a Christian run orphanage and therefore gets no funding from the government. They depend a lot on donations and volunteers and will pretty much take in any child who is brought there. Some of the kids are just dropped off by families who don't want or can't afford to raise them, others are brought in by family (govt) services if they've been in abusive situations. I was really impressed by the people who run the orphanage. They love those kids and take such good care of them. All the kids go to school, are assigned chores, have homework time, etc. They are so clean, so smart, so well behaved.
When we got there we set up our tents in the area where the volunteers stay (the kids aren't allowed to be in this area). There is an area for the tents, a cooking area and bathrooms for the muchachas and muchachos (painted in an Adam & Eve theme). It was crazy trying to get used to NOT flushing your toilet paper (amazing how that can throw off your routine so much) and using as little water as possible to wash your hands.
Friday while the kids were at school we did some landscaping work. These are the "Hoes". Eight of us gals raked, shoved and hoed for several hours in the hot sun and counted how many times (a lot!) we got honked at. We were so tired but we were really excited about how good things were looking after all our hard work. Some of the other volunteers worked SO hard mixing and pouring concrete. They did a little porch by the laundry room and a stair landing down at the school that Kaiizen is building for the orphanage. Others installed toilets at the school. There was a lot of hard work going on and we were all so tired and so satisfied at what we were able to accomplish.
I absolutely fell in LOVE with a couple of the kids there. This is 4yr old Luis. He has the most amazing big dark brown eyes! He was so mellow and so cute. I seriously want to bring him home.
This is Nicholas, the other boy I fell in LOVE with! He is probably 10 years old. He understands a lot of English and we had a lot of fun playing with him. I was so impressed by him because he just seems to know who he is and isn't apologizing for it. Really cool kid and really beautiful light brown eyes. There was just something about him that absolutely intrigued me.

So, as soon as I find a Spanish speaking husband I'm going back to Mexico and bringing these two boys home.
We played jump rope with the kids for hours and they loved it! They were really fun. We would count to see how many times they could jump or see how many of them we could fit in at one time. Some of them were so good! Others were endearingly bad at it.
This is little Louis, about 4yrs old. He was one of our favorites because he had the most engaging smile and the cutest little boots! It was funny to watch him (and several of the other boys) while they were jump roping because they kept having to pull up their pants. It was hilarious.

We managed to have a little fun too while the kids were doing chores. It'd been years since I'd jump roped but I was so good... even at double dutch. FUN!
Here's Louis making play dough flowers. It was really neat to watch how artistically talented some of these kids are. One of the younger boys was coloring with crayons in a coloring book and SHADING! Man... at his age I was just working on coloring within the lines! Others were really great at freehand drawing.
Me and Elizabeth. She was my Spanish teacher and translator for the weekend. The most useful phrase I learned was "No estoy loco. Estoy apreniendos a los espanol." (sp??) I had to learn to say that because some of the kids would look at me like I was crazy because either I couldn't understand what they were saying, they couldn't understand what I was trying to say or I'd just instinctively break out in french trying to speak to them. They were really great at helping us non-Spanish speakers learn and they knew a lot of English words so we were able to communicate without much problem.

We made dinner for the kids and got to eat with them on Friday evening. It was fun to just chill with them. We had fun eating with Jessica, 17 yrs old. She was loving being with 'the grown up girls' and we had fun getting to know her. Sadly I didn't get a photo with her.Bishop Z and Luis eating dinner. A couple of us had to laugh when we realized that a lot of the volunteers we'd come down with were drinking the lemonade we'd made for the kids. It was made with the Mexican water we weren't supposed to drink due to risk of... well, you know. We were worried everyone was going to be sick but we didn't hear of anyone getting the runs (so to speak. sorry.)
This is Ian, 20ish yrs old. He's from Oregon (I think) and had previously been down to the orphanage with his church to volunteer. Now he is living there for a year doing an "internship/mission". He'd just arrived a few days before us and was still trying to acclimatize but the kids had already welcomed him right in and were totally attached to him. He's a neat kid.
Friday night after dinner we got to just play with the kids for a few hours before they had to go to bed. We had so much fun with the little boys. They were fascinated by our digital cameras so we let them go crazy with them. We got A LOT of VERY close up photos and lots of photos of little fingers covering up the lens or just nothing. It was so sweet to watch the boys with the cameras.
Me and Luis.
Me, Lissa and Heather with Luis and Tito. Tito is hilarious! Such a fun boy.
Tito and Luis had fun taking pictures of each other taking pictures. So cute.
We all fell in love with little Juan. He hasn't been at the orphanage for very long and previously spent most of his life forced to live in a closet. He doesn't speak using words but makes noises to get peoples attention and calls everyone "Ma". They are having a speech psychologist come in to work with him to see if they can get him to start speaking. He was such a happy boy. He was entertaining us by acting like a monster.
Darling Sonya with my little reading friend whose name I can't remember. She and I read a book (Yes! I can read in Spanish!) about people from all around the world. It was so fun to read with her.
The kids REALLY wanted to play dodge ball and they had a pretty fun game going on. Too bad my camera couldn't get a good picture because of the darkness/flash because it was a great game.
Darling Nicholas. There was a "fatality" in the dodge ball game. He's an actor, that one.
Lissa and I were in charge of planning crafts for the kids. Actually she ended up doing everything to prepare the crafts but I gave excellent supporting advice ;) So, Saturday after breakfast and chores we did lots of crafts with the kids. We had finger paint (which was a mess! because the kids were trying to use it like play dough), notebooks to decorate with paints, stickers, markers, etc, friendship bracelets and paper bag puppets. I did puppets with a few of the boys and they turned out so cute!! I can't remember this little guys name (David maybe?) but he was super fun, had a winning smile and was a good little jumproper.
This is Daniel and he was so endearing!! Very serious and a total perfectionist! He made a frog, a panda bear, and a dog. He just kept wanting to make more. He was so sweet but I think he was getting annoyed with me because I kept asking him, "como se dice 'eyes'?" But he was good to try and communicate with me.
I can't remember his name either (maybe this is David?) but he was so cute. We had brought little puffy sticker things. Here he's stringing a bunch of little fish on a string. He was holding them as if he'd gone fishing and had a very successful day. Darling!
Laura got to give a ton of haircuts! The boys sat and drew while she cut their hair. It was hilarious to watch the difference between Louis and Luis. They are little buddies. Louis was grimacing and acting like it was just the worst, most painful thing in the whole world to have to get his hair cut. Luis on the other hand was just sitting so calmly as if he'd had a million hair cuts in his day (which he probably has!) No big deal!
Juan, Lissa, David (?), Nicholas and I. Not sure why I'm making that face!
This is our "after" shot of the area the "Hoes" weeded.
This is the departing shot of the orphanage. I was in tears leaving! Right before we left all the kids and all the volunteers gathered in a circle and held hands and a few of the kids and volunteers were able to say thanks. I could NOT hold back the tears!! The kids were so, so sweet and so appreciative of the time we spent playing with them. They LOVE the attention. I wanted to tell them how much I loved them but couldn't get a word out because I was crying too much! Finally before leaving, sweet (ok, he was very high-spirited!) Norberto said a prayer for our safe return home. SO MANY TEARS!!!

Our drive home was long because we were so tired and dirty. We had a little problem getting to the boarder (signs aren't so helpful down there) but we crossed with no problem. We stopped to use the bathroom at a gas station in San Diego and were so happy to flush our toilet paper and used so much water to wash our hands! We got home around 1am and the only thing I wanted was a shower. It was wonderful to feel clean again!

Overall it was an incredible trip! I miss the kids! It made me so much more appreciative of all that I've been blessed with and I was able to see just how much each person can make a difference in this world. I learned that no matter what our situation is we can be happy and make the best of it. These kids will always be in my heart. I can't wait to go back and see them!