Sunday Morning Mass with the Kids

We are in the bus, en route to mass with the kids from the orphanage Hogar Bohío de Maria. This is a favorite time for some of the volunteers, to see a Catholic Mass inundated with hundreds of orphans. This is the way all church services should be, a respite for the weary, the broken, the unwanted. More pictures to come!

Thank you for your Generosity!

The TXProject wishes to thank all those who helped make our GoFundMe campaign a success! It means a lot to us that you would put your trust in us and in our project. We made our goal and we now heading to Colombia to do the construction. Please check back with this site frequently this week for updates, pictures and stories about our progress. We want you to feel like you are a part of the team. Even though you aren’t able to be with us this week, you are a large part of our success. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Of Manual Labor, Joy and Switchfoot…

Why do we say things like “we want to make a difference”? What is actually being desired? It’s not merely recognition, it’s deeper than that. It’s not happiness, happy is a shallow word, isn’t it? In the words of a Switchfoot song “happy” is a yuppy word. There’s something much more profound that gets generated when you help someone who is incapable of helping you back. I think that something is Joy. It is hard to pinpoint, but somewhere in there is a mechanism that converts Manual Labor into Joy. So, as it says in the song from Switchfoot, I went looking for an Orphanage.

Looking for an orphanage
I’m looking for a bridge I can’t burn down
I don’t believe the emptiness
I’m looking for the kingdom coming down
Everything is meaningless
I want more than simple cash can buy

And we found The Emiliani Project, and we fell in love with the kids in Medellin, Colombia, and we found our well of Joy. Here’s the best part, you can join us by helping us raise funds to build a dormitory bathroom. We started a GoFundMe Fundraiser with the express goal of purchasing the materials necessary to build this building, so we can put it together when we get to Colombia on July 27th. Here are my top 5 reasons for why I recommend donating to this campaign!

  1. The cause ultimately benefits orphans. These are kids that do not have a home, and don’t have the means to live and grow without the aid of others.
  2. It is tax deductible. The Emiliani Project is a US-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and all donations go directly to them.
  3. 100% of the donations go towards the construction materials for this building. GoFundMe does not charge a platform fee. Emiliani does not take any off of the top. My team is already paying their own way to Colombia, so 100% of all donations go right where we are saying they go.
  4. All donations (up to $10,000) are matched. If you donate $25, you’ll really be giving $50, so every little bit helps AND counts for double.
  5. You will have a front row seat to watch the construction of this building. You’ll be able to follow first hand accounts of where your money went and how it was put to use by seeing and reading about our progress as we are blogging about it on our site https://thetxproject.com.

Find out more from our GoFundMe page!

Please consider giving to our campaign. Please consider sharing the campaign link with your friends. Most importantly, please consider following our trip from July 27th to August 4th as we build this building with the funds you helped us raise!

The attached image is our work site being prepared for us. This is where, from July 27th to August 4th, we hope to transform Manual Labor to Joy. Please check back here during that week to see the progress in action!

2018 Mission Trip Video Recap

It was an amazing trip, and we couldn’t be prouder of the work the TXProject volunteers completed this summer. THANK YOU to everyone who donated their prayers, time, and resources to this project. We had our biggest group of volunteers yet. We look forward to future efforts in support of the new Emiliani Project children’s home in Colombia.

In the meantime, we made a short (3 minute) video slideshow to recap the work we did and the fun we had. Thank you again to everyone who helped make this trip a reality. We look forward to working with you all again!

Cucharas

Have you ever played spoons in Spanish?

Or Color Cubed? It’s a good exercise for colors and numbers…

I’ll make it brief: it’s curfew and we had to say goodnight. And goodbye to some who we will not see tomorrow. We love these kids. And are thankful for God bringing us together again.

Why

An often-quoted bit of wisdom is to “know your ‘why.'” That is, know your reason for what you’re doing. That could mean knowing your reason for getting up and going to work every morning at 9 a.m. for example. It means knowing your end-goal, and how your daily actions will help you get there. This reason, our “why,” is our motivation for seeing difficult things through. Often, the “why” can drive us to keep putting one foot in front of the other when the going gets tough.

Everytime I tell someone I’m planning a trip to Colombia, the follow-up question I’m usually asked is, “Why?” And today, I was given another reminder of my “why” for returning to this wonderful country.

I write this on Friday night, just two days away from the end of our trip. This week, we completed a number of projects in Caldas, Colombia at Hogar de Christo, the new children’s home we have been helping build. Today, we put the finishing touches on the newly-painted buildings, then packed up to leave Caldas. In preparation for our departure from Colombia, we returned to the current children’s home in the city of Medellín (the home which serves as a model for the soon-to-open home in Caldas). As soon as we piled off the bus at the home, we were surrounded by dozens of kids chattering in Spanish and excitedly hugging or high-fiving us.

The kids pulled us to the playground, and for an hour (though it seemed much shorter than that due to the fun we were having) we followed them around the playground and soccer field. Each child, excited to have a volunteer following them around, shouted, “Amigo!” We helped them up the monkey bars and clapped when they completed them without falling. We laughed as they shot their soccer balls right past us and into the goal. We cried as they cried, hugging us and asking us not to leave soon. We had the privilege to give them the one-on-one attention that their unfortunate life situations had deprived them of. And it was such a joy to be with them for that. The staff at the Medellín children’s home do an amazing job of caring for these children, but they all crave that level of attention that simply cannot be offered to them in the same way it is offered to most children.

After playtime, it was time for dinner. Feeding 140 kids is no small task, and we ate a basic meal of rice, beans, and a small piece of ham. The ham was an unexpected, expensive surprise bought in honor of our stay at the home.

Later that night, I went to take a shower in our volunteer dormitory and wash the paint off me from the day’s work in Caldas. The showers at this children’s home are a different kind of cold. The water is icy mountain water that flows from a pipe in the wall, and there is no hot water knob. It was a stark reminder of the lack of comforts the children here face on a daily basis.

In two days, I will return home to my chocolate milkshakes, truck, hot showers, and extended family. The children here in Medellín don’t have that luxury. They eat rice. They don’t have hot showers, and most of them can’t/won’t return to their families. This is their home. And they are the lucky ones, as thousands of other children in Colombia face war, poverty, hunger, disease, abuse, natural disasters, and trafficking.

The 140 children of this home have the sweetest hearts of anyone I know, and they are my “why.” We came back to Medellín to help in the process of opening the new home in Caldas. The sooner that home is built, the sooner another 160 children can be brought off the streets and into a place where they are loved, cared for, and fed. The sooner 160 lives can be impacted for the better. What an honor it has been this week to serve these sweet children. I look forward to the day, soon, when the Caldas home is opened.