October 28th - journal entry, day 2

Me in the closet I was put it for the week... lol

Judy, Linda, and Curt - the clowns

People don't lie - the desert is COLD at night!! I was so cold and woke up a lot being pretty uncomfortable, but it was alright, for the most part.  I woke up at 4:30 this morning and was wide awake. I didn't sleep much as it was, so I don't know why I woke up so early, other the coldness and I guess time change.  We had breakfast at 7am.  My voice still sounds completely terrible (if you can hear me at all.), but it's better than yesterday, I think.  After breakfast we made sandwiches for dinner tonight.  Then we went on a prayer journey. Diana took us to 5 different Native neighborhoods, explaining about each of the different gangs, cults, tribes, schools, housing (which was sad to see) and we prayed over all of them.  The stories she told us about the drugs and alcohol and how because of things like that, people commit suicide.  And she told us other stories along the same lines -- 6 months ago a young man was killed by a gang... A mother, that was drunk, took her son up on a hill and stabbed him to death, in front of a lot of people. A 13yr old girl was about to be raped by her father (he got her drunk so it'd be easier) but because the girls mom walked in and told her to run to the 'Church Bus', that happened to be in her neighborhood that day, she was left untouched by her drugged/drunken father (she did, however, come to the Bus drunk. But she was safe, nonetheless) .....I could go on forever, the stories Diana told us were just heartbreaking!  The houses - 25 or more people would live in a one-bedroom, TINY house...and people, like my own family, thinks 9 people, in a BIG house is hard?!   After the prayer journey we went to the house that's under construction. It's built up to the point of drywall and mudding.   
My job was mudding a closet... it only took an hour or so for me to learn how to correctly do it...haha. A guy named Larry showed me how, but then Macaiah (A 19yr old Apache, who became a Christian through the Bus ministry and then joined the ARM staff last year) would come over and tell me how to do it differently...it got rather confusing. lol.  So, my entire job was sanding already done walls, and mudding/taping creases in a closet.... Your arms get really tired/sore after awhile of holding the thing of mud. It was kind of funny, cause I kept trying to go faster so the container would get emptier/not as heavy, but then, Macaiah would come over to make sure I was doing it right and would go fill up my container each time!  Guess it was a nice workout, if nothing else. haha.
Charlie, our host/cook, brought lunch out to the worksite for us. Then we all came back to our rooms around 3pm, to get shower and clean up and go to the bathroom! There isn't a bathroom anywhere within 20 miles of the worksite, so we all had to go pretty badly lol.
Then at 4:30 we all went to a carnival (we took the church bus). We had a beanbag toss with 3 of our team members as clowns (Judy, Linda, & Curt), Sierra and Katelyn did a game to win suckers.  We had popcorn, coloring pages, spin-art, etc...My designated job for this entire evening was photographer! It was pretty cool to be 'told' to take a billion pictures ;-)
There were hundreds of people crowded in the streets. Towards the end of the night I sat on the Bus talking to kids and taking pics and eating my dinner (we ate in shifts) and I caught several boys in the act of stealing things from the bus...they continually kept coming back to see if I was gone yet, so they could go through with it. One little boy, Candance, actually told me I should go outside, so I couldn't see them! Lol!
Overall, the Carnival seemed to have gone quite smoothly and was a lot of fun...but tiring!