The above photo is from a manual created by Egyptian protesters to promote unity. In the manual, they detail proper ways to shield yourself using home implements and where to aim spray paint at riot police. Notice how “positive language” is part of the battle plan.

We’ll come back to that.

Also in the news this week was Casas por Cristo in regards to the violence in the Ciudad Juarez area. The number of volunteers has dropped off in recent years since the U.S. media has picked up the story about drug-related murders.

General readership, I hate to break it to you, but Juarez was violent before we ever heard of it (technically, even back to 1911-1912 and Pancho Villa’s gangs, but that’s for another book, so to speak).

Part of what makes Juarez scary is that some of the police have sided with the cartels for their own advancement or protection. We’ve been traveling there for eight years and even in 2004, there was the drug violence. But the United States is not spared violence. The same weekend we went to Juarez this year, a police officer was shot and killed in New Jersey. This stuff happens in the fallen world we live in.

So, imagine in Juarez a people who don’t know if they can call the police and trust that they will be safe.

Now imagine those people living only in structures made from wooden pallets and cinder blocks.

There’s a need. Oh, I assume people wouldn’t dispute that. I think the issue is who God uses to fulfill that need and how to meet the need.

I’m reading the book Radical right now and it is definitely on my recommend list, although it’s taking me forever to get through. It’s very easy to read vocab- and style-wise. Heart-wise? It’s boot camp.

One section that I just read was David Platt guest-speaking about missions at a church. When he finished and stepped from the podium, the pastor said:

…brother, we promise that we will continue to send you a check so we don’t have to go there ourselves…I remember a time at my last congregation when a missionary from Japan came to speak…I told that church that if they didn’t give financial support to this missionary, I was going to pray that God would send their kids to Japan to serve with that missionary.

I don’t know what offends me more, that the pastor used serving internationally as a threat or that he held up his prayers as more important than his congregation’s. (What’s to stop the congregation from praying against what the pastor is praying? That’s when God facepalms at our stupidity.)

Now, I’m not saying that:
1. The role of sender is not important
2. I am in any way awesomer than anyone else for having gone to Juarez

What I don’t want to see, though, is someone who would have gone but chose not to based on fear. Even our team had people drop as the travel date approached, so I’m not judging people’s convictions.

What I have noticed, though, is the best way to fight:
1. Love God
2. Love neighbor

It’s a true positive message, with power and not just positive thinking. If we have people fighting in this way (and not in the “let’s protest funerals/ComicCon” way) on both sides of the border, I believe that fear will not be given the leniency we’ve allowed it.

I’m almost ashamed as to why I didn’t put up photos on Sunday night.

I had to watch the very last Hannah Montana episode as it aired on the Disney channel in the hotel. Miley had to choose whether to go to Stanford with Lily or go to Paris with Spielberg. I know, we all are faced with similar choices and, as such, the teen narrative was gripping and I fell asleep without posting photos.

[/end embarrassing apology]

This year’s build was one of our favorites, in part because of the kids we were building for.

My daughter is quite the ambassador. She gets along with every kid she meets.

This year was a year of learning new skills. My wife and her crew did the texturing for the concrete slab.

This year, Casas started bringing in cement from a local (Juarez) business owner instead of having the team mix it from scratch. Usually I wheelbarrow the entire foundation. I felt like a total slacker, like I had no identity, until it was time to drill holes. I even tried to pass off the job to a new person, but drilling is my destiny.

(You gotta admit – that’s a pretty epic photo.)

The house was finished the fastest I can remember

and the family was very thankful:

We’re back at the hotel after a great first day of building. The weather was awesome (much warmer but not too warm) and the family we’re building for is super nice (like always).

The family lives on the ranch that we’re building next to. “Ranch” has a loose interpretation. In this context, it means “place where a bunch of cinderblocks are piled up and barbed wire encircles the perimeter”. They live with their boss (can’t imagine doing that) and the whole family helps care for the goats and pigs and tasty birds. (The local church cooked for us. They had a white folding table, which I think is a global requirement for any church function.)

One of the workers said that the little one year-old had been bitten by a black widow and had been near death. The ranch is surrounded by rattlesnakes (imagine that slipping between the cinder block and under your ragged blanket), so the family is especially thankful for the house.

I’ll post more photos when I’m not on the run to Golden Corral, but I’ll leave you with what my pockets look like at the end of the day.

Also of note: crossing back into the United States took an hour and a half, which is one of the longer times. This time, though, we didn’t feel harassed; they just scanned every single car’s passports. The longer wait time has created a begging culture like what we used to see when we crossed through downtown Ciudad Juarez. This poor (in many connotations) kid had to carry around a stone carving of the Last Supper that was bigger than his torso. The beggar lines have only shown up within the past two years as our crossing sees increased traffic.

That would be the easiest bloggh post this month, but I won’t stop there.

(If you haven’t read about the build, make sure you click here first.)

Thank you, Dogwhisperer G, for watching Indiana. You’re a mercenary to the last, you old scoundrel. You’ll be paid in due time.

We just got word from the other build team that went down with us. The INS made one of the vans get out of the rental van and walk across the border as pedestrians.

What, to prove that Americans can be physically fit?

This was on Sunday, the final day of the build, when your arms are tired from slinging stucco and/or drywall. I’d be annoyed. Keep in mind that this happened at the U.S. side of the Giant Fence (where we are citizens).

While down in Juarez my mind slipped back into my college minor. I used to (I guess I still am) be trained to also be a Spanish teacher. I keep that pretty secret (good thing I didn’t post that fact on the Interwebs for all to see).

My wife and I feel like we need to practice our Spanish more. But we’re not going to re-visit my college textbooks for Spanish acquisition.

We could care less where the nearest ferrocarril tracks are or how to get the camarero’s attention for more gazpacho. I’m also pretty sure we won’t be visiting any discotecas in Juarez anytime soon, so we can skip that chapter.

Each week, though, I’m going to put up some sentences under the Casas category. I promise that the bloggh won’t be overrun by the subjunctive (no more than usual, I hope (that was a grammar joke, by the way)) but I post it for my own benefit; feel free to join in the fun.

This week’s phrases (with rough equivalent translations):

My goal is to use these sentences this week.

Yeah, we got along.

His site is justinandjuliemissions.blogspot.com. It’ll be funny when he sees the trackback to his blog.

“Booyor? I don’t remember any Booyor signing a medical release form.”

I’m the guy that didn’t need a ladder, Justin.

What I love about Casas (okay, so I love a lot of things about Casas) is that we partner with the churches in the area. Our team builds and then goes back home. It’s important to connect the family with a body of believers in the area for more support. The pastor’s sister showed up and prayed with us at the site (the pastor was at a church service…on a Sunday…imagine that). She read from Psalm 127 (the link is in English):

1 Si Dios no construye la casa,
de nada sirve que se esfuercen
los constructores.
Si Dios no vigila la ciudad,
de nada sirve que se desvelen
los vigilantes.
2 De nada sirve que ustedes
se levanten muy temprano,
ni que se acuesten muy tarde,
ni que trabajen muy duro
para ganarse el pan;
cuando Dios quiere a alguien,
le da un sueño tranquilo.
3 Los hijos que tenemos
son un regalo de Dios.
Los hijos que nos nacen
son nuestra recompensa.
4 Los hijos que nos nacen
cuando aún somos jóvenes,
hacen que nos sintamos seguros,
como guerreros bien armados.
5 Quien tiene muchos hijos,
bien puede decir
que Dios lo ha bendecido.
No tendrá de qué avergonzarse
cuando se defienda en público
delante de sus enemigos.

and I think it summarizes my feelings for this build. I really connected with the kids and I think it’s the kids of the people we build for that will have a tangible reminder that God provides for them.

The build became a community event as people from the area jumped right into our stucco workflow. Many came out to pray for and bless the family.

I chatted with Lupe, Alberto, Brian, and Itzel (the cute little two year-old) about what they liked about iglesia and who Jesucristo is. We also played quite a bit of futbol and made dibujos depicting my zapatos grandes. Day 2 involved the kids from our team starting to mingle with the family. I feel like we really provided some hope for these kids.

Each time I travel internationally I am reminded that my wife needs to have the government office of Ambassador to Everywhere. There would be a decrease in wars and an increase in dancing.
She did tell Maria that she would like to drink a photo (earning some weird stares), but acted as our extremely attractive translator.
(While I type this she’s bandaging my sliced finger. This woman’s impressive.)(Mom, don’t freak out. My finger just bled a lot. I guess that doesn’t help. Well, know that my hands work well enough to do this whole bloggh-thing that I do.)(Jeremy, I haven’t tried playing bass yet. I’ll use my Wolverine-like powers to regenerate…No, that’s right. I chose his giant facial hair, not the self-healing. Dangit!)

left to right: my hot wife in the NAU jacket, next to her is Maria, next to her is Maria, the little guy is Brian, then Norma, then Itzel

Venom (a teen from Concrete Pathways, not the Spider-man parasite) had fun trying to figure out what I was saying to the kids. She speaks Latin. I asked her how to say “square” (thinking it would spur my memory of the Spanish equivalent) but she admitted that the only vocab she knew involved words like “aqueduct” and “portcullis”. (Cuadrado is “square” in Spanish, by the way.)

Sidewalkdriver, for the record, can draw the best caballos ever. She grew up sketching horses. It makes sense, then, why my horses always look like alien beasts – that’s what I grew up drawing. I didn’t know how to say “robot” or “Star Destroyer” (didn’t draw those – did butterflies/mariposas and coches instead), but the kids sure loved my impersonation of Bumblebee from Transformers. (They had a broken version of the toy but had no clue what it was.)

“Los manos dicen pew pew pew.”

They also liked the fact that this big guy didn’t know what a grape was (they had to remind me that the word was “uvas”). Try explaining fruit snacks that our team packed. The kids didn’t know what a peach was.

Who I was most impressed with is my oldest daughter. She was right there with me speaking as much Spanish as she knew. Even though it was “Buenos dias” and “No bueno”, it still was enough to make some friends. She also worked very hard:

at shoveling, filling buckets, and then cleaning buckets. I’m a very proud father.

She was a little tired at the end of the day. Thankfully I didn’t get interrogated at the border like I did yesterday. My daughter helped the U.S. border agent figure out that she belonged to me. You try being confined in a tiny space with guys with attack dogs asking you when your daughter’s birthday is and we’ll see how nervous you get.

On the topic of dogs, Ron is one of the bravest stucco savants I know. The family’s guard dog could probably take his hand off but Ron wanted a picture of Whiskey el Perro’s really cool eyes (one normal, one evil). What’s funnier is Ron’s fondest memory of me. He hadn’t seen me for a while, walks up to me, and the first thing out of his mouth is, “You’re that guy that broke up the pack of wild dogs.” I’m glad I could be remembered for some contribution. (Ron, that was years ago!)

Here’s the store where my wife negotiated for cheap soft drinks.

This is how dusty the whole area is. I get to go back to the hotel and shower. The family lives in the dust. Every single thing that they have is covered in it. You can imagine the difference between a house made of grocery store pallets versus a house made of concrete and stucco when a dust storm hits.

I still don’t know what was going on with the crutches, but I thought they looked cool.


Casas por Cristo: Faith Foundation 2010

Here’s a paradox, though: Why do I freak out? I broke no laws today. I am a U.S. citizen.

And yet when I saw the dog sniffing the car in front of us (the SUV that cut in front of 10+ cars just to squeeze into our van caravan) I got nervous. I had been reading the inspirational music on the different pages of my passport, words about liberty for the entire human race and forming a more perfect union, and it made me sad.

Why can’t people be cool to each other? The people that we worked with in Juarez today were.

The family is super nice. It’s a grandma, her daughter, and the kids. Alberto, roughly the same age as my oldest, thought I was crazy when I told him that we were almost done building my leg.

Piedra means leg. Pared means wall. Simple mistake, but you should have seen the looks on the kids’ faces.

Mike – With the Cardinals losing today, if your character goes to the Dark Side tonight, it would be understandable. Yes, I know he’s not Force-sensitive, but I’m sure you’ll find a way.

Devin, Jesse, Steve, and Gary – I’ll pass on a word of advice about Sith temples: Don’t drink the water. Sith temple being a euphemism for the U.S. Border Patrol station.

I will uphold my photo quota when I can steal…ahem…borrow some photos from friends. When I wasn’t wheelbarrowing concrete I was negotiating prices for botellas de Fresca, so I didn’t have much chance to snap any shots.

I can, however, steal this photo from the Concrete Pathways:

Thanks for helping me appease the grandparents.

Things learned while at the dealership:

1. The Scion is ready for Casas.
2. Journaling on T9 for an hour is thoroughly satisfying even if the service manager thinks you’re in one really intense game of Breakout.
3. People should clip their nails in private. This has started an interesting string of Facebook comments and rationales. (Interesting if you’re into fingernails, to clarify.)

I also got pretty far in Ally Carter’s Heist Society, which is good since certain sites have taken to open threats against the Bloggh.

Perhaps I can appease them with something I found on Pandora. While cleaning the bedroom I left on Pandora (my Nobuo Uematsu (with Konami added for variety) is killer). Did you know that you can only listen to 40 hours for free on Pandora? Can you guess what supplied the soundtrack for Christmas this year?

Who maxed out Pandora? This guy.

We survived our trip to Hoth. It wasn’t as cold as last year and not one animal had to have its innards lightsabered, a success to say the least.

Now for the random photos:

I found this while dusting my dresser. Do you remember when 10KB was a lot for a PDA to store? Let’s just say today’s journal beat that. Yes, it has been some time since I’ve dusted the dresser.

Nothing says Christmas like hot chocolate, angels, and adamantium.

It was a tear-filled send-off, which I think is quite appropriate for Christmas. Today was bessiejo’s first day at work as a super-important numbers person. I’m pretty sure her nametag says that. She’s the big super-important numbers person for Schreiber Foods. This bloggh has always been cheesy, so it shouldn’t be too big of a stretch for my readers to support the dairy industry.

You know how you can make a guitar using a piece of wood, a box, and some rubber band/elastic strings? This is what happens when you hook up an amp pick-up to the homemade guitar.


How do you smuggle in a life-size alligator replica as a gift? This is how. You should have seen it perched high on a shelf. G walked into the other room, we heard a “What the??”, and we knew that our gift was a hit.

More pictures will come of the time with my side of the family. I just had to capture this wrapping paper on my phone. It’s safe to assume I knew what my gift was. Yep. Captain Kirk handkerchiefs. I was way off, though. I’ll have to settle with getting the best Star Trek movie instead.

How this will affect some of The BLOGgh’s readership is the Casas trip. You might want to work on your passports (legitimately or otherwise) for next year’s trip. Once people really see the bureaucracy in action (inaction…wakka wakka) they’ll start to freak out.

On the topic of Cyberdyne – If you liked action movies of the ’90s, where not everything had to line up logically, you’ll love Terminator Salvation.

I, for one, prefer Sydney Poitier’s characterization of the T-800.

A part that I did enjoy was the nod to T2 fans with a vehicle duel choreographed to Guns ‘n Roses “You Could Be Mine”. It’s fun that John Connor still has some old cassette tapes from his teenage years.

I also appreciated that John Connor ditched his Batman voice after the first few fight scenes.

Woo to Anton Yelchin! Congrats on being in two big summer movies. In Star Trek he was part of a great ensemble. In Terminator he stood out as the coolest character. (Kyle Reese has always been my favorite – the no-name soldier sent back in time that alters time.) Look for Kyle Chekov in New York, I Love You where he joins a big cast in a collection of short films.

Flashlight Peter, we can now answer two of your questions. Kate Connor is a veterinarian, so she might not have the same ethics debacle. Also – Roland Kickinger, who played Arnold in See Arnold Run, was the body of the T-800 in the current film (another Austrian bodybuilder?) and Governor “Get to the Chopper!!” had his face digitally masked over poor Roland.

The Cardinals are doing what? King Brian, what strings did you have to pull? Woo also to the Steelers. Even though I am a literate fan first and foremost, it all boils down to wanting to see Mike and Sean duke it out with laser swords. February 1st it is, people.

Also, congrats to Manbeast W for winning first in the wrestling tournament.

But the biggest MVP? My wife. My oldest woke up at 4 this morning sick. My wife woke up with her while I was still groaning, “Why are we up? Why aren’t we sleeping?”

My wife was able to go thanks to Danjo sacrificing and staying behind. We really appreciate it. The house did get built, Jesus was honored, and now for the pictures:


We will have to get photos from other people’s cameras. The first non cellphone pictures that we took were after the house was already up. Oddly enough, all of the ones posted today are from my Nokia.

Is it wrong to be so enamored with a windowsill?

One co-builder mentioned as I shaved the edges of the drywall that he had not seen such a masterpiece since Michelangelo’s David.

With Extreme Home Makeover, we did not see Ty and the crew. We were too busy building a house for people. Irony. I am glad to see that the El Paso paper defended Ruiz against the criticism from talk-radio and Internet goofballs.

Well, this is new:

Last night we had to give over all of our IDs and only one was scanned. Today we had to hand over all of them. They were handed back. We then had to hold the photos up to our faces while the van was opened up. We did not have to file out, which we expect next time. This was on the U.S. side of things.

On the Mexico side, things were tense. I guess 2,000 troops have been deployed to the city this past week. Before we freak out, though, keep in mind that the Juarez cartel is not a new thing, it’s just now getting more coverage through faster communication. Also keep in mind that Juarez is a spread-out city. There’s 1.5 million people in the city. I think I saw maybe 20 troops this weekend. Juarez is bigger than we think. We just get to the edges, where it’s more of a reservation-type landscape.

There was a soldier who was shot this weekend, but it seems like it was a drinking game gone wrong. Everyone was out and about, though, and thankfully my wife caught the word “iglesia” as we got stopped.




(That guy’s armed on the roof.)

With all of this, keep in mind that there are innocent (as much as the rest of us) people in Juarez who need help and need Jesus.

Next MLK weekend: open invitation. Mark your calendars now.

We’re back at the hotel. Our biggest hold-up was Napolitano’s fences. Very impressive but still inefficient. The border patrol collected all of our papers, ran one, and then threw the clump of passports, certificates, and licenses into our car without checking the rest.

Good thing they didn’t scan our Russian mafia talent.

With the house:
The walls were able to be put up today which is a first. I had to re-invent myself because we no longer did the wheelbarrow for concrete, we just put the mixer in the frame of the foundation. Changing workforce in an ever-expanding global economy, world is flat kinda way.

Fun was had by all three of us, and as promised for the grandparents:

More photos as we share data connections.

And by the way…my phone rocks. And the Torrent that my dad is loaning us is pretty cool, too. Dad, did you know that you have an AUX port where you can play music from an iPod/phone over the stereo system. I swear Pontiac must share some factory space with Scion. (I miss my Scion. It’s weird how over the course of a few days I am really humbled about a ding in the car.)

Torrent at Wilcox:

Torrent at Deming:

And on top of the weird goings-on, check out what one of our budding Sherwood Forest thieves did at school:

Now more than ever we need to help the people caught in the middle between flooding and conflict.

I am determined that if I ever go on a motivational speaking tour, this will be the title.
But for now it is what I said after being exhausted while trying to drill.

No cute pictures of my daughters, but I do have some ones of me working. (Sorry, Mom.)

The Haiku
I fulfilled a goal
filling the concrete slab but
failed in “Non-Psycho”

This is new with the whole newborn in a hotel room thing.

Above are satellite photos from our trip to Mexico. Notice in the right-hand photo the complex. All we saw was a big wall. We started building south of that wall. On the left-hand photo you can see a giant pictograph-type thing. I think that it’s horse. We ask the same question each year as we drive by.

Is that a dinosaur, a dog, or a horse?

We go from putting the frame up and onto the foundation to putting blackboard, chickenwire, then stucco onto the walls. We also put drywall on all of the inside, complete with pink insulation stuff. We even rig up the house with electricity, with a lightbulb and a ceiling fan. Most of the time they don’t have electricity, but when their part of the community finally gets wired, we don’t want them to be left in the dust.

 Here is the pastor’s blessing.
The family is always very appreciative. The guy that worked with me on the cement during Build Day 1 asked me today (in Spanish) if I was getting paid for the beautiful house. I said that it was a regalo, a gift. He then asked if I got paid by Jesucristo and I said, “Si.”

We also give the family a Bible in Spanish and the local pastor that we team with comes out and says some words and prays (with someone in our group translating for our benefit).

The family is always appreciative. This year we got the family an air mattress and some blankets, rugs, and pillows. We also got them a battery charger that plugs into the adapter in the car.

One of the guys that we were building for helped out. His father gave the build site a guitar soundtrack.

Oh, yeah. And a lonely goatherd showed up.

Yodelay yodelay yodelay yoohoo hoo.

Casas por Cristo is a great organization to work with. The hotel where we are staying has wireless Internet, so I thought that I’d put up some photos.

Futile Ohm and I have determined that in the future, high schools will put flashing arrows on the dancefloor to encourage more people to attend prom.

We hang out at the food court to get organized (because we have 40+ people on our team) on the first night. We hang out with one of the guys from Casas to review what the two days will look like.

A tradition of food court Chinese food (Sweet and Sour chicken and General Tso) gives me enough protein to build a house. A little known fact is that El Paso, Texas, has decent Chinese food.

The road trip is always fun. My wife and I have a crazy time.

cZe gave us a present when we stopped at BK.

I see some similarities.

My wife got in on the fun.