How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

Our "Deluxe Villa" in La Mision, Baja California, Mexico

We were through the green door in the right with another family.
Bunk "beds", no heat, bathroom in the little brown house on the far left.
It was lovely!

by Karen Zimbelman
Part 1

About 8 years ago Mark and the three oldest kids left on Christmas morning to travel to Haiti with A Child's Hope Foundation to help build this orphanage:
Robbie built this swing set while there for his eagle project.
I think it's safe to say it was a life changing experience.
Amy, and then Mark and Robbie got to go a second time to Haiti and
Amy has volunteered at an orphanage in Romania two different times,
the first time she met Jordan
who was doing an internship in a nearby city,
the second time they went as facilitators after they were married.

When it came time for Christian to do his eagle project nothing else seemed to really capture his heart until it was suggested that we go with ACHF and build a swing set at an orphanage.
Since they are not making trips to Haiti we joined them on a trip to Mexico.

We stayed at a campground hosted by the Door of Faith Orphanage
The above picture is looking past our kitchen facility on the right towards the orphanage. On the left are pens where they keep goats, sheep, chickens, ducks and rabbits.

We arrived Sunday afternoon and Jenn and I (along with others) spent Monday sorting and organizing all the donations. Mark and Christian went shopping for the poles for the swing set.

In the afternoon Jenn and I went to play with the Children at DOFO
We started small, swinging Raul and Angelina (in the pink shirt)
Angelina giggled and told us "mucho, mucho!" over and over.

As the group and size of the children grew we decided
ring-around-the-rosie was a better way to go

this is me breaking the "disco" (cd) I was holding for Angelina in the pocket of my sweat jacket

Those boys loved Jenn and soon the game evolved into a game of keep away -starring Jenn's hat. She was a good sport.

Raul and I were fine on our own.
- when Raul told me his name I repeated it back to him
but he corrected me until I rrrrrrrolled my rrrrrrr sufficiently.
When we asked him how old he was he held out all the fingers in one hand plus his thumb on the other. We asked "seis?" He looked unsure and quickly counted the extended appendages, "uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis". He looked up with a big smile and nodded, "SEIS!"
He melted my heart!

That evening we had fabulous carne asada tacos at a nearby taco stand.
Mmmmmmmm they were good.

More tomorrow.