Juarez Hammer Time! -- Day 0

[rob...@robertgidley.com]

Hello? Is this thing on?
Well, it's a little dusty, but it still seems to work.

Welcome back to another Trip Log series. Yes, it's been a while (a year), but we've been poor and haven't been able to afford to travel, okay?

First, an update on us: Laura is now working as a Church Secretary at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Medina (where Bill Gates lives). It's a giant church with lots of staff and much bustling happening.

Robert is working as a Church Secretary at the Congregational Church on Mercer Island (where Paul Allen lives). It's a small church and most days Robert is the only one in the building.

As you might imagine, a lot of our dinner-time conversations revolve around how to get wax out of altar cloths, and how crazy our bosses are (ha ha--just kidding, guys!). Also, we still live on Mercer Island in Aunt Maggie's basement, next door to a $6 million house (remember when only the guy on TV cost that much?).

Anyway, Robert's headed off to Juarez (again) to do some more building with a group of folks from Holy Cross (the church where we actually worship--you will never hear the simple phrase "I'm at the church" in our house, because it's too ambiguous).

Today was the Preliminary Team Meeting!

Sun, Feb 7, 2010
(Super Bowl Sunday, but not for another couple of hours)

11:31 am
We start out the meeting in good Christian fashion by kicking the Confirmation class out of the room. There's more of us (about 22) than there are of them (about 5) so we point them towards the coat closet and commence to meet.

We go around the room and introduce ourselves, so that we can all feel guilty later on when we don't remember any of the names of the other people. This is kind of traditional; at the start of the trip, I can never remember anybody's name. Once we're on a building site, and knowing somebody's name is key to avoiding injury ("Carl, don't turn around or--ow!"), names come to mind pretty well.

Guinea Pig Ed has made all the airplane reservations, which we're sure hasn't raised any suspicions ("Hey, this guy made 22 reservations on the same plane to fly to Houston and then El Paso! That's normal, right?"). In all the confusion, Carl has somehow been designated a child and there is some discussion about who is responsible for him. It's finally decided he'll be an unaccompanied minor. We're hoping the TSA won't question his mustache.

The Holy Cross van for the airport leaves next week Sunday at 4:00 am, which seems about eight hours earlier than in prior years, but that may be because I'm getting old. It's ridiculously early in any event.

Ed also says that we should bring shower heads with us to replace the crummy shower heads that are already there. (Last year, we were asked to bring coffee and we ended up with about 20 pounds of it, so I expect we'll end up with 27 shower heads for the eight showers.)

We have the usual newbie questions ("Should I bring a cot?" Yes! And a lawn chair! "Will there be electricity?" No! Bring a generator!) while us grizzled old hands sit in the corner and laugh at the greenies--"You READ the list of stuff to bring? Uh, yeah, be sure to bring ALL of it! Especially the shower heads!"

This year, we're not building a house(!). Instead we're building a "Children's Outreach Center." This is bigger than a house (1400 square feet vs. 450 sq ft), plus it has different kinds of beams and other differences, which presumably we'll be informed about when it becomes important.

The bad news is that we won't be able to completely finish it in the four days we'll be there. The good news is that we probably won't get to the rat-bastard chicken wire nails or the stucco (yay! Thank you, Jesus!).

But we *should* end up with something that looks like an outreach center, so we can all feel good about it when we leave after four days.

The idea of the outreach center is that the kids in the area get out of school about one in the afternoon, and the government doesn't provide any after-school programs. So it's up to the church to do so. Which means Fr. Zuniga. So he organizes arts and sports programs for the local kids. Plus Sunday School on Sunday. So our humble little building will be getting a lot of use. Provided we get it built without accidentally electrifying the chicken wire, or setting it on fire or something.

Also, it turns out that I have extra responsibility with these daily trip logs. It seems that some folks have been told by their spouses that they don't need to bring their cell phones because their spouses can read the trip logs. And THAT means that I'm obligated to mention if somebody is killed or loses a limb, so that their spouses know about it (might as well save a trip to the airport, eh?).

So I promise that if somebody gets killed or maimed or abducted by Somali pirates that I will be sure to mention it in the trip logs. Which will start next week Sunday at "way too goddamn early in the morning."

Robert
Juarez Hammer Time!

P.S. We'll add a bunch of new folks to the trip logs next week, so you old hands will have to bear with us as we re-visit some familiar territory.