The Colonia Through A Camera

One of the Mexican families we are building a house for this week.



A street in the Colonia, and some kids hanging out across from Pastor Sobrevilla's church, the church we're operating out of this week.


One of the two brothers I took pictures of the other day. He loves my camera, and always has me take a picture and show it to him whenever he sees me.





Colonia kids. Most of these kids attended the VBS we hold in the church during the week. Two of our interns supervise, but it's up to the individual groups that come down to put together the content for VBS.



Some more shots from around the colonia. Pictures cannot communicate accurately how uncomfortable some of the more devastated areas make you feel. But the colonias are not without their own beauty.


This tree is growing in the heavily-fenced yard of a man who lives across from the church. Pastor Sobrevilla's wife told us yesterday he is not a very happy man, and he does not like the presence of the church in the colonia. This man, along with every one of us, is our own colonia: filled with poverty, starvation, dust and trash, but also filled with an unexplainable beauty.


This one is for my friends from Fellowship Bible Church in Arkansas, who discovered my blog while searching for Camp Cone before they came down to build.


I am doing very well, with the exception of my left ear. A wave hit my ear while we were at the ocean the day before the first campers arrived, and everything has been very muted ever since. I have tried every remedy known, and today I am heading to a clinic in Weslaco, Texas, to have my ear examined. That's all for now.