Monterrey, March 11 — El Retiro Juvenil
Today, we spent a more relaxed day, though still very long, at the El Retiro Juvenil children’s home about 45 minutes south of Monterrey. It is a home of about 25 children, mostly boys, that is in a much more rural environment. The home sits on about 12 acres of land with lots of fruit trees and a ropes course that Juan (the B2Ber that is the lead person for that home) says they have big dreams for. Now, they mostly use it for groups like our’s to learn teamwork, and offer a short break from the work.
We spent an hour or so in the morning doing some general stuff around the property. Joshua and I set up two very old computers (white box brands, 400Mhz, 64 MB of memory and Windows ME on them) in what appeared to be a study lounge or classroom of some kind. This is the kind of computer I wouldn’t even think of trying to use and yet this is the best they have. Others built additional elements to be used in the ropes course, others cleaned up fruit that had dropped from the trees, others used wheel-barrows to move piles of medium-sized rocks and still others cleaned up around some of the buildings. Because they had so many fruit trees, they encouraged us to pick up fruit to eat and take back to the B2B facilities with us and many of our kids obeyed them very well and filled their shirts with oranges and tangerines :).
After a short lunch and some play time with the kids that weren’t in school, we spent a couple of hours in two teams going through the ropes course. Our team, name by Juan the “Best Team,” went out first with Antonio as our guide. Then Juan took the other team, the “Perfect Team,” out to some different obstacles. Juan’s dream is that eventually this ropes course will be used by corporations, churches and other organizations as a team-building facility. Juan just passed his exam to be qualified to do adventure guiding, including mountaineering, rappelling, rafting and other things like that. The monthly needs for this children’s home is about $5,000 and they think they could easily make that much renting out the facility and train others to be guides and facilitators. Juan clearly thinks big for these children.
The first exercise we did was very interesting because we all just jumped onto the rope (cable actually) and began trying to do what we needed to do. Over time, Antonio told us we needed to stop thinking as individuals and think as a team, we needed to let those at the front of the ropes, let those in the back what we needed. We needed to consider our surroundings. We need to take into account each person’s strengths and use those to the benefit of the group. We then did other obstacles that were all close to the ground but included some aspect of climbing across, around or over ropes and/or cables. After each, we spent some time discussing the parallels of what we had done both from a team perspective and working together, but also from a spiritual perspective. The entire exercise was a great learning opportunity for all of us, especially our kids.
The final stop on the ropes course was the high-wire section where each of us got fitted with a harness and connected to a belay with a carribeaner. The kids were fearless. Darby is a young girl that shimmied up the tree and plowed right through all three portions of the course. Joshua followed several others of our kids and did great, even stopping to pose for a few pictures by his dad :).
The older of us went after all the kids had gone and it was much more intense up there than when you were standing on the ground yelling to the person as to what you thought they should do next. When we were all completed with the ropes course, Juan spent some time talking about why they take groups through the course. Certainly part of it is a break from the hard, physical labor but even more so he talked about living in “the red zone” that place where God is using you beyond what you think is possible for your life. He praised all the parents for accomplishing the high-wire portion of the course and said he watched the faces of our children as they saw us living dangerously and beyond what even they thought we could do. He encouraged us to continue living in the red zone when we return to our daily lives back in Austin. I hadn’t even thought of doing this for our kids and what it would do to inspire and motivate them.
We closed out the day with dinner at the children’s home wonderfully made by the director’s wife and several of the older girls that live there. Following that we played and loved on the kids some more before building a bonfire and eating marshmallows and s’mores. One of the consistent rules on this trip was for our kids not to solely play with each other but to always try to find a little boy or girl from the home we’re at to play with as well. Stephen and Joshua are very close friends back in Austin and spend a lot of time with each other so Cliff and Hope and I have really kept an eye on letting them have fun together but to not lose out on the opportunity to love on the other kids here.
I kept Joshua close to me tonight and asked him to look for opportunities to interact with the kids and he did a great job. Three times he tried to give one of the kids his marshmallow stick or a marshmallow but wasn’t able — but he kept trying. Finally, by the end of the night he had lots of kids to say “adios, mi amigo” to. I’m very proud of just how great all the kids have done on this trip, taking their eyes off themselves and looking for opportunities to serve the kids at the homes. We had a very late night and didn’t arrive back to the B2B facilities until after 10pm, partially due to my little run-in with local policia :).
Tomorrow we’re going to spend the day at the Rio, an even poorer portion of town along the river. We’ll bring more of our supplies with us including diapers, lice shampoo, toothbrushes and other things to give to the residents there. Good night and thank you for your prayers and support. BEA
