Finished Friday

We are so proud and grateful to have finished a bunch of projects this week here at Hogar de Amor. It's been a heck of a week!

Check out all the ways we've been able to make these homes even more functional and beautiful for the kids and caregivers:

Casa Leonel used to be brown and a team earlier this year painted it a cheerful new green. But the casita (the little home for the houseparents) was still brown and it looked so dingy next to the rest of Casa Leonel. So it was time to spruce it up to match!

Marco and Adriana were so happy with the finished product!

We also finished up the back of Casa Leonel

And we finished a second coat on the señoritas' balcony 

Tah dah - the whole house is now a beautiful new green!

In Esparanza, the shed had a dirt floor and during rainy season it got all muddy and icky inside, so we gave it a brand new concrete floor! And as an added bonus we now know how to mix concrete :)

The old floor

New concrete!

The plastic mattress covers at Casa Cuna had definitely seen better days, so we purchased new material and made 18 new covers for the toddler beds.

The new covers look great!

Here are the boy beds

And we also made curtains for the Matriz corner where the kids do their homework to shade them from the afternoon sun

The upstairs patio at Casa Galondrinas is a nice place for the kids to sit outside and do homework, but it's way too hot in the afternoons. So the team welded, assembled, and installed an awning to shade the patio.

The finished awning

The Matriz Infirmaria (sick room) desperately needed some sprucing up. It's a little room, and it looks so much nicer now in a bright white.

Bright and clean now!

Casa Matriz has an upstairs volunteer room that was a rather ghastly green. After seeing the repainted room, the house dad, Joel, said, "this room has never been a nice place and now it's beautiful!"

The finished room

We couldn't raise the ceiling, but at least we made it look good!

The fence in Esperanza wasn't secured at the bottom and armadillos - yes, armadillos! - kept pushing through the fence and getting into the yard. After several rounds of plans and ideas, the team finally landed on lowering the fence and securing it to the concrete base so that the armadillos can't push through.

We secured it with bolts and washers after lowering the fence

We never saw any armadillos, so here's Shane acting the part of a newly-frustrated armadillo

In addition to the work we were able to do in the houses, we were also able to bring a ton of donations down to Mexico with us. Thanks so much to everybody who so generously donated supplies, money, and household items to Hogar de Amor!

Here's a rundown of what we were able to give the homes:

• 85 towels, hand towels, and washclothes
• 125 toothbrushes
• over a hundred birthday presents
• 213 toothbrushes
• suitcase full of school supplies
• 104 pairs of boys' socks
• 116 pairs of girls' socks
• 126 pairs of underwear
• 25 fitted and single sheets
• box of crayons and coloring book for every kid!

Here's a pic of the Casa Matriz caregivers divvying up the donations to give to all the houses

You can see that the new crib sheets are super popular!

We've had such an amazing trip. Thanks so much to everybody who made this trip possible!

Tomorrow we head to the airport and with heavy but full hearts head back to Utah. Please join us in prayers for easy, smooth travels and joyful homecomings for every team member.