Schools in Mexico get two weeks off for Easter and our after school program has done the same. About half the staff has gone back to the States and Rodolfo, Amber, and I have taken a break from our morning meeting and some of our other responsibilities. I’ve still done some electrical work for a family, some house visits, and collected money for one of this summer’s houses (families are now paying about a tenth of the cost of materials for the homes we build). That last part was a real blessing: we launched a savings program with little savings boxes, but until this week no one had actually saved anything (the two families we built for this spring choose to take out high interest (60%!) loans instead. But this week Angelica and Juan-Jesus saved 400 of their 3000 pesos!
Also this week my housemates and I have been working on several projects around the house. It has been a lot of fun to work on my own house. Katie and I built a couple of fences to wall off two sides of our house for Benito (our puppy). This way he has a lot larger space to run around in. The front wall even has a door to make it easy for us to get in and out. And our little Steve McQueen, after a first day adjustment, hasn’t been able to break out yet. 
We also extended our patio and added some gravel around the fire pit. So now it is a lot easier to circle up chairs on the patio when we have people over. We can even easily fit a table to eat around out there now when we do hamburgers or carne asada.
It’s been fun to plan out new projects and be able to work on them at an easy pace. But it has also been a little strange; it has reminded me of doing projects around my home in Blue Springs with my Dad. Except this time I was in the dad role, my housemates were looking to me for instruction and I was planning the projects out. One morning Jovani (my seven year old neighbor) stopped by and wanted to help with the fire pit gravel that I was working on. I was shoveling it in a wheel barrel and pouring out. Both jobs Jovani is not big enough to do. But I remember being in Jovani’s position and it was important to give him something that actually needed to be done. So I got him spreading it around level. It was something I was doing quickly with my foot and it took him a lot longer to do it with a combination of hands (while on his knees) and a rake, but he did a good job. 
Easter was also a good time here. We had a sunrise service at church and everyone dressed in white (I wasn’t aware of the tradition, but fortunately wore a white/blue stripped shirt, so I wasn’t far off). Then we had breakfast together.
Also this week, I’ve been trying to slow down and spend some time in silence and solitude with God each day in the evenings. At the end of these little building projects it has been wonderful to stop and be still for about a half hour as the sun is going down. I’m trying to get ahold of what David is talking about here:
Psalm 131
A song of ascents. Of David.
1 My heart is not proud, O LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.
