Outworked by much older Mexican men

Last week I went to central Mexico (Puebla) with a group from our church affiliated with Living Water, Int. They find and create sources of safe drinking water all over the world to reduce diarrhea and other preventable waterborne illnesses.

It was hard work from a.m. til pm. Shoveling cement, carrying buckets of it, pick-axeing into the hillside. I blistered and ached from my unworked body every night. The humbling part was watching the older village men 60-70yrs old out work me. We dredged out and bleach treated one well hole and created another. When placing the wet cement and block top on one (see the 2nd pic with multiple men) the top partially collapsed, stopping before completely falling thru. That was a good thing because 4 men on top would have fell into the pit with 2 tons of cement and concrete block and would have been a disaster.



The put us up in a nice hotel in the city an hour away...hot baths at night! It was in a plaza with restaurants and shops which was fun to be in because there the people actually hang out in them instead of watching tv or playing video games in their rooms. This may be part of the reason they are on average not nearly as obese as we are in my South Texas town, which was a most pleasant surprise.

I took a pic of a local holding our local island newspaper. We'll see if it makes the next issue on thursday Dec 4th.

We had a sight-seeing day at the end and fished/hiked near an active volcano. The guys grilled fresh trout they caught and it was fabulous.

I got a funny pic of a donkey braying for the female donkey down the stream from him. He was loudly saying "heee-hawwww!!!" but the pic looks like he ate an anchovy




When I got home, the kids were as happy to see me as I was to see them. They made me a cake and a welcome home banner.