We were so excited to get started with Amor's Family Camp in Baja California, Mexico! When we signed up, we didn't realize that most families have been doing this camp for YEARS. We were one of 3 "new families" and all of the veterans made us feel very welcome. We made it to camp!
The tents were labeled with family names. It was exciting to search until we found ours!
We got unpacked and settled in, and headed to the Big Tent for dinner.
The food was de-licious! La Cocina is the on-site caterer, and I was so impressed with all of the authentic Mexican fare we enjoyed throughout the week. Here are the guys working hard on our dinner:
We had our worship and message after dinner in the Big Tent, and then got ready for the campfire. Our night event was "Smoritos", which thankfully wasn't a combination of S'mores and Doritos as I'd envisioned. Instead it was s'more ingredients in a tortilla and wrapped in foil to cook over the campfire. This is definitely something we'll be doing on our next camping trip!
Daddy and Evie supervised the Smoritos to make sure they were cooking to melty perfection.
The next day was Sunday, but not just any Sunday; it was Father's Day! We are SO thankful for this guy leading our family every single day!
Mornings were beautiful at the campsite. We started our day with breakfast and church in the Big Tent.
The band who led us in music all week was mostly youth who have been attending Family Camp all their lives. They were really good!
Our theme for the week was "The 3:16 Promise" and based on love. Max Lucado (the author of the book) gave us a message on one of our first days. Dean & Amy Mathis, the wonderful folks who began family camp over 25 years ago, attend the church where Max is the teaching pastor, and Max graciously donated all of these booklets for our week.
I loved how quickly the kids all joined together and began playing games that I believe they were making up as they went. This was a fan-favorite, called "Smash Face"-- sounds lovely and gentle, right??
There were also plenty of games in the Big Tent.
We tie-dyed camp shirts and made some real masterpieces!
The kids also presented Russ with the Father's Day present they made: a cooling rag for hot days ahead on the work site.
The work site groups were announced and we had some "team building" games to get to know each other a little better before we started working together. Competitive Calvin showed up!
The family activity for Sunday evening followed our "love" theme with a movie: "Herbie Love Bug"! Plenty of car-themed snacks kept us going late into the night. Then we headed back to our tent for some good sleep to get ready for our first day of building!
Evenings and mornings were SO beautiful at camp!
Each morning, we packed our lunches for the day, ate breakfast and had our family devotions.
Then the busses came and we loaded up for the build sites. We were heading to Site 3, but it was fun because the all three were within a couple blocks of each other.
The drive to our work site was sobering.
We arrived at Orlando's place, ready to get to work building his new home!
The first order of business was to move the lumber out of the area where we'd be working. An assembly line made that a quick task.
Day 1 is known as "concrete day" because this is the day the foundation has to be poured. This is a little different than pouring a concrete pad in America, though. The first step was to sift the big rock/sand pile.
Once the sand was sifted out, the concrete mixing could begin.
While some were "inside" mixing and pouring concrete for the foundation, others were "outside" (i.e. in the street) building the walls. I love how everyone was involved in the building process.
Evelyn and a few of the other girls had fun playing with Rebecca, the sweet neighbor girl. Evelyn can now confidently answer any question, "Si" . . .
Our first day, we got the concrete pad completed and all of the walls framed -- I'd say it was a very successful day!
We headed back to camp to hit the showers! Here were the shower houses and everyone's solar showers out getting warm. Most days, it was so hot that I preferred just using the cold bucket of water for my shower, though.
When we were done with showers, it was time to call our Violet girl -- she was always having a great time! I'm so thankful for wonderful grandmothers who love her so well, and I'm thankful we had great service to facetime her every day!
We always had a little time in the evenings before dinner to relax and play. Dan is a super nice guy from St. Louis who has been coming to Family Camp for over 20 years. He is a teacher and had all the best games to play. He was introduced to us as the "pied piper" because kids seem to follow him around. By the second day, Evelyn announced that she was moving to St. Louis so she could be in his class next year :)
The "Amor Store" also opened up in the evenings, and we splurged a couple of times to buy some ice-cold Mexican Coca-Cola in a glass bottle. And another beautiful evening to enjoy with our new friends!
After evening worship, the activity for the night was some Valentine's Bingo. All of our family except Oliver ended up winning at some point! Evelyn and Andy weren't so sure about one of their prizes. . .
Kids and adults table both had lots of laughs.
Another beautiful morning! Can you tell which tents are Dwyer tents?
The buses arrived and we got ready for our second day of building.
We moved the walls in and things really started to take shape!
I borrowed nail belts from my dad, and I think that a couple of them may have been older than me, including the Wellsville Hardware one I wore most of the time.
Lunchtime! Again, Dan kept the kids entertained with plenty of games (like Mafia and "What can I bring to the party?").
The roof boards went on and we had a structure!
We did some "shopping" out of the back of Josefina's truck. She is a vendor who always comes to the Amor camps, and she had lots of pretty stuff!
Before we wrapped the house with tar paper, everyone wrote a Bible verse or encouraging word for the family on the outside studs. (I love how Evelyn wrote, "Hope you like it.")
(Calvin was already on the roof when I took the pic of his verse, and my verse was Numbers 6:24-26 -- the Benediction.)
Calvin was quick and professional with the staple gun, getting the tar paper attached.
Once the tar paper was completed, we started with the roofing. I'd say my boys are now (kind of) qualified go work for our friends, John & Staci, who have a concrete and roofing company.
After finishing the framing, we called it a day and headed back to camp. My boys may have missed out on football in Wellsville for the week, but they got plenty of football in Mexico!
We enjoyed another delicious dinner. La Cocina rolled over 1000 of these taquitos for us! And the pico was amazing. I would have been content to just eat pico and chips for every meal!
The Tuesday evening activity was the much-anticipated talent show! I guess some families prepare all year long for this one. And others prepare for a couple of minutes. It was really fun! The Gates boys became some of my boys' best friends at camp (there are 6 of these brothers) and they did a nice little dance routine to entertain us. Another interesting act was Dan and Teague giving an interpretive dance to "Let it Go" from Frozen.
Day 3 headed to work site! The goal was to have the first coat of stucco applied before the day was done.
There were dogs EVERYWHERE. Some were much cuter than others.
The kids got busy painting the trim boards in Orlando's requested color, rojo.
And we all got busy attaching chicken wire to the house to prepare it for stucco.
We walked to the other two build sites to see our friends and check on their progress. All of the houses were coming along nicely!
When there was downtime, the kids wrote messages on scrap wood to help decorate the house.
Once the chicken wire was secure, we started mixing stucco. This was similar to concrete mixing, but was a little thinner with no rocks in it.
Then it was time to start applying it. I don't know that I'm going to go into a stucco business anytime soon. This used muscles I didn't know existed, and I was sore the next day!
That evening when we returned to camp, there were more games and time to relax. After dinner and evening worship, we had love stories by the campfire with Cowboy Bob, and we were introduced to "fried pies."
Fried pies are basically a grilled cheese with pie filling instead of cheese. They had special little frying pans to put over the fire to get them golden brown, and then they were covered in powdered sugar. They were much better than I was expecting!
And Day 3 was complete. . . And we were awakened to another beautiful sunrise for our 4th and final day of building.
In the mornings, Amy would get us going with some sort of morning exercise. They were generally very cheesy and made us smile. Evelyn helped served breakfast on Thursday morning.
When we arrived at the build site, we were able to put our things INSIDE the house, which was really exciting!
Evelyn played with Rebecca one last day.
The trim boards were attached; the second layer of stucco was applied and smoothed. All hands on deck this final day!
Each Amor house has a trademark cross in a prominent place on the front. We got the cross in place and shined up just right.
Once the house was complete, we had the "Key Ceremony" in which we presented Orlando and his daughter Katherina with the key to their new home! It was very emotional.
Before their keys, though, we presented them a new family Biblia which all of us had signed, and we prayed over them and their new home. Lucy and Josh, our site-leaders who did a fantastic job all week, did the honors of presenting and praying.
We poured them a front step on the final day and they personalized their house with their hand prints and names.
They had 5 cats, and one of them also got his paw prints in the new cement. Once they had written their names, Katherine drew a heart with a third name between them. Then she explained that her mom (Orlando's wife) had passed away 4 years ago and she would have LOVED this home.
We had a celebration feast at the house with Orlando and Katherine, and he even treated us to ice cream!
We checked out the other completed houses. . .
. . . and these awesome kids played more games to finish out our time at the build sites.
Here's all of Site 3 with Orlando and Katherine!
Their smiles were HUGE and our hearts were full. To God be the Glory!
When we made it back to camp, we indulged in some fresh, hot, delicious churros -- my goodness, they were good! And God spoiled us with another gorgeous sunset.
We had our final worship and message in the Big Tent. We were in for a treat as the local Amor workers have a band and they led us in worship, in Spanish! They were really good, and I love that we can praise God in any language. It made me think of the passage in Revelation 7:9 where a multitude "from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages" were praising God with a loud voice.
After worship we had "loco nachos" and a dance party to celebrate a fantastic week of camp.
I can't believe I didn't get a better picture, but Shannon and Paula were two of the ladies I am especially thankful to call my new friends. They are both from the Indianapolis area, and I'm thinking we'll be taking a road trip there in the future to visit them.
Dorothy is another new friend from Kentucky. We were the UK vs KU families :)
Our final night at camp! The boys stayed in the Big Tent goofing around with their new friends. Thankfully, no one was hurt in the building of this pyramid. . .
The final morning, we had to wake up early to be gone by 6 so we could catch our flight back home. We had SO much luggage to get packed up!
Thankfully, most everyone was up when we left so we could say good-bye and give lots of hugs. Jen was one of the first people we met at the airport and I had a great week getting to know her!
And the Shipman kids were with our kids pretty much the whole time. Such a wonderful family!
I'd say Amy Mathis is the heart behind the camp. She made it such a wonderful experience and I can definitely see why families come back year after year!
We said one last goodbye to the camp and the banos :)
I would've never guessed we could have so much fun with no electricity or running water, no indoor plumbing or air conditioning. But it was most certainly a week of blessings! "Praise God from whom all blessings flow" was on my lips and in my heart all week long. I truly feel as though we have made lifelong friends, and I'm excited to see them again! This group of people all know how to work hard and play hard, but more importantly, they have hearts for the Lord. I LOVED getting to know them and learn about their lives.
And I'm especially thankful for God's protection and care over my family during our week at Family Camp. It was a week we will never forget, and I'm just so thankful for the opportunity to experience all we did during our time in Mexico.
I didn't know much about Amor before, and I loved learning about their ministry throughout this trip. They have built 20,000 homes since they began in 1980! I love their motto: come.build.hope. They certainly do that!
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