Blast from the past

I unearthed these photos when I was going through some old stuff yesterday. When I saw them, it brought back so many memories, I had kind of forgotten about this. These were taken on a missions trip to Mexico I went on with my youth group in the summer of 1996.This picture was taken while we were out at the site building a house for a poor family that lived there. It was a small house, smaller than most people's living rooms, but to them, it was a huge step up from where they had been living. It was HOT while we were there -- I think the temperature was well above 100 degrees and we were outside working from early morning till late afternoon for three days! That is me on the right and my now sister-in-law Erin on the left!While we were there, we had to take bucket showers because there was no real bathroom or any kind of shower hookup. We all had to have a shower buddy that would help us wash our hair and conserve water as we were only allowed 5 gallons between the two of us per day. That is me on the left and my shower buddy, Erin, on the right.

The one thing that I most vividly remember from that trip was how poor these people were, yet how grateful they were for things that we would consider to be less than satisfactory. It really put things in perspective about how materialistic America is and how we take for granted things that people in other parts of the world would consider a huge luxury!