Saturday (2/20)

From Dad: Today started VERY early.  Last night Taylor and I stayed at the CVG Marriott with MacFarland’s and others so we could go right to the airport since we had to be there by 4:45a.

I actually got the smaller group to travel with “aka the party bus”.  We had Tay, Kelsie, Lauren, Hope, Lina, Jack Wilkowski, Mike Phillips, and Jake Duborg.  The other leaders in my group were Scott Sanders and Susan Vanderkolk. Here is the group breakdown.

Our trip to Monterrey was uneventful but when we noticed the other group still checking in at CVG, when we had just gone through security – and their flight left an hour before ours, I was grateful which group I was in.  Ultimately the other group made their flight, but they had to create some creative stall tactics, as I was told.

We were a bit delayed getting into Monterrey due to a delay on the tarmac in ATL, but only 20 minutes or so.  We were met at the airport by Jed, from back to back.  I later learned that Jed played pro soccer.  We all loaded up our luggage and ourselves on two buses for the 45 minute ride to the Back2Back campus. The drive was pretty cool as we were at the base of the mountains and they surrounded us.

We arrived at the B2B campus and unloaded our luggage from the buses.  We sorted out or donations, picked our bunks, the boys had the one in the lunchroom on the left and the girls stayed above the basketball courts. We then had PB&J sandwiches and then toured the campus. We met kids and caretakers from the Hope house and then went to the big palappa to review the rules of campus.  The temp was about 85 degrees. We all got showers and went to Norma’s Quincinera celebration. In the Mexican culture, when a girl turns 15, there is a huge celebration of her becoming a young adult.  The party was really cool.  There was dancing and all the kids had a great time. Since it was a long day, we all headed back to the campus and turned in around 9:30p[. We were exhausted!

From Taylor: Today was very exciting because I got to go back to an amazing place! We got up at 3:45 AM which was really early we got ready to go to the airport. We got there and got through all the baggage check. We went down to the gate and waited to board. While we were waiting; me, Kelsey and Duborg were playing on the moving escalator thing. Once we got on the plane we had about an hour ride and I didn’t sleep at all. We got into Atlanta airport at about nine. We went to the food court and had panda express. Then we got on the flight to go Monterrey. The second flight was around 3 1/2 hours. Finally we made it through customs and got our baggage. It was really hot and it felt so good. Then we went to the Hope program campus and we had a tour and went over rules and everything that we needed to know for the week. Then we got ready for Norma’s Quinceñera. We got to Douglas and there was a service that was about an hour but it felt longer since we could only understand about 1% of what they were saying. Then it was party time and we did a bunch of dancing and it was really fun. Then we went back to the Hope Program campus, hung out and went to sleep.

Sunday (2/21)

From Dad: We got up and had breakfast around 8 AM – cereal and toast. We then had quiet time to read our lesson for the day, then broke into our small groups for our bible lesson. I led a group with Evan Nwanko, Jake Wilkowski, Jake Duborg, and Charlie Pagnard. The lesson was about how we as Christians are Priests of God’s Kingdom. I expressed to the boys that I wanted them to remove their exterior this week and open themselves up to be vulnerable to really feel what God wants them to experience this week.

Then then we sat with one of the leaders, Hope (been there 8+ years and married to Cheque – expecting 1st baby boy in July).  She did a great story about Adam & Eve and how the connection between God and man was broken when Eve ate the fruit, and that Jesus lived as man on earth to repair that connection. 

We then went to the church where the Casa Hogar Del Norte kids attend.  It was really a cool experience singing the song, “I can only imagine” in both English & Spanish. It is only the 2nd day and my Spanish is coming back very quickly.  Several people are asking me to translate and I think I am doing ok.  After church several of the kids got on the bus with us for a bagged lunch and we went to Esphera (The Sphere). It is a trampoine place like Jumpolin, but just recently opened. We had a blast with the kids.  They were running around everywhere and it was fun watching our kids try to supervise and play with them. Taylor has a 6 year old named Juan.

We then headed back towards Casa Hogar De Douglas (CHDD) for a pizza party.  We stopped at Costco and bought 20 pizzaz.  I later learned that the Clayton family set this up for their daughter, Jackie.

After dinner, we all went down the concrete slide at CHDD.  hday. I went down the slide so fast that I couldn’t stop until the rocks stopped me.  I ripped my hand up pretty good and bruised my backside…. and my ego.  Steve Otto actually took a nice video of the event.  We then through the football around a bit with the kids and headed back to B2B campus. Had a quick snack and turned in around 10p. See Daily Updates from Senor Fite

From Taylor:  Today we woke up around 7 o’clock to get ready and breakfast was at 7:30. We talked about what we were going to do today and had personal time and devotional time. Then we went down to the big palapa and Hope talk to us about the belief system at Back2Back. Then we got ready to go to church. We met the Del Norte kids at church and they were so cute. We have a service then Mr. fight mistakenly took us to the wrong Senescu room where there were a ton of little kids and they were so happy to see us. Then we went to another Sunday school room and had a talk about always going to God first for help. Then we were assigned kids except for me and Kelsey because they ran out of kids. We had our bagged lunch on the bus ride to Jumpstart and me and Kelsey got our kid when we got there. My little boy was named Juan and he was six years old. He was so sweet and when we were jumping he was so happy but it was tough because he was going everywhere. We finished and the kids got on their bus and left and we went back to Douglas for pizza and cake. Then we went to LDM and had meeting in the palapa and shared a picture of the day. Then we had free time and went to bed. Even though I went to bed at 12:30 because me, Kelsey and Hope stayed up talking because we couldn’t go to sleep.

Monday (2/22)

From Dad: Woke up at 8 AM for breakfast. Had quiet time small groups and then homework time. Had turkey sandwiches around noon. Our Dell Norte group then stayed on campus to do three projects. One I called the Shawshank redemption roof crew in which we scraped off tar from a three-story roof. The other one was filling a drainage ditch with rocks and dirt. The 3rd was spraying and sealing picnic picnic tables and swingsets.

I led the roof crew with Senor Fite. Taylor was with me, and several of the girls.  Having them up there terrified me, but there were some amazing views from the roof. It was absolutely BRUTAL work in the Mexico sun of 90+ degrees. We used a like pic ax to sledgehammer to loosen the tar and then a pointed shovel to dig in and peal it off the roof.  We were all burning up.  It got so hot after a few hours that I rotated everyone off the roof to another project.  Susan Vanderkolk got so drained, she needed to sit down on the roof in the small bit of shade just so she could build up the reserves to climb back down from the roof.  I was the only one who stayed on the roof all day.  In fact, Scott Sanders, Lina’s dad, actually came over around 4p to make me get down and sit in the shade.   We only got about 1/3 of the roof done, but were able to complete the other 2 projects.

We had El Pollo Loco brought in for dinner and ate with some of the Hope kids.  Scott Sanders and I sat with brothers, Jonathan (17), and Adrian (19). I had a lot of fun speaking with them in Spanish.  Through our conversation, I learned that their favorite sport was soccer, and I shared that mine was basketball.After dinner we said bye to one another.

Later on, I saw them playing soccer, and asked if I could join them.  We played soccer for about 15  minutes and then they asked me to play basketball with them. I thought that was so cool. We had a blast.  Towards the end, Adrian asked me to dunk the basketball.  I explained to him that I was older, but would give it a shot.  Note that the basketball rims do not have a net.  Adrian stood under the basket out of my way and I slammed the basketball through the rim so hard that it bounced off of Adrian’s forehead.  I was concerned at first, but both brothers started laughing historically and giving me and each other high 5’s.  What a great experience.  You could literally see the outline of the ball on his forehead.

We then went to the Palappa to debrief, and the listened to a Spanish-style worship. We headed back up to LDM (the main entertaining area), and I taught a few of the kids how to play Euchre before we turned in around 10:30. See Daily Updates from Senor Fite

From Taylor: Today was a good day! We started by getting up at 7:30 and breakfast was at 8. Then we got ready and had personal time and devotional time. During devotions, Reggie is very deep and really makes us understand what we are doing and our purpose for this week. Then we had homework time for an hour. Then we went to the palapa and watched a video and talked about trauma. Then we got ready to work. We stayed at the Hope program campus today to work and we filled in the holes, took grungy stuff off of the roof and sanded and stained a bunch of holes benches and the treehouse. We finally finished and while we were sanding we were talking to Jesús and he helped us with Spanish, since he knew a lot of english too, and we taught him dance moves. We had free time next and I played soccer. Then we had dinner which was Pollo Loco and it was so good!! Then we had a little more free time and then had to briefing and an hour and a half later we had Spanish worship time then more free time and at 10 o’clock we went to bed.

Tuesday (2/23)

From Dad: Woke up to hot eggs and toast and orange juice – complements of Darryl Hammet and Steve Otto’s group. We then had quiet time, group lesson, and then homework time. I am really enjoying listening to my boys in my small group opening up and talking about what God is sharing with them this week, and how God is changing how they think about Him and how they think about being a priest of God.

Our group then loaded back on the bus for Cosa Hogar Del Norte (CHDN).  When we arrived, we had a nice tour of the facility and then had lunch at their Comedor.  The home cooks prepared a meal for us consisting of rice, a meat/potato thing with tortillas.  We then were shocked to see we got chocolate ice cream for dessert

We then began working on projects for the day.  Mine was building a “bodega” for the kids bicycles.  I took both Nwankos, Jake, and Wilco for my group.  The other projects were painting the interior and exterior of buildings, and prepping the dinner.

We made good progress on the first day and got the concrete block footers all in place.  We then had dinner with the kids (hotdogs, yes hotdogs), and then played soccer,  trampoline, swings etc  Taylor and I played with Juan on the trampoline, but his friend Carlos joined us as well. The both wanted us to keep throwing them down on the trampoline.  Juan was truly amazed when Taylor did her back flip on the trampoline.Later on we met Juan’s little sister, Kayla, who Mike Phillips was with.  She was precious.

We then headed back to campus and did our debriefing discussing our “picture of the day”. One of the Hope family caregivers, Cruz Perez spoke to us and give us his story in like a sermon. It was translated by Jen. His story was truly powerful.

We went back to LDM, played some Euchre, ate some popcorn and turned in around 10:30p. See Daily Updates from Senor Fite

From Taylor: Today was an amazing day! We woke up at 7:30 and had breakfast at eight. We had personal time, devotional time and then had homework time. We left to go to Del Norte when we got there we got a tour and lunch. We had rice, chicken and bread and for dessert we had chocolate ice cream. Then we went and started working. I painted a room which was really fun! Then played with the kids and especially Juan. I swung him around and we jumped on the trampoline. I was tickling him and we were playing and he was smiling and laughing the whole time. Then we had dinner. I ate with Juan and then we played some more. I played soccer with him and then I had to say goodbye. He gave me a big hug and we said see you tomorrow. Then we had a bus ride back which is really fun! Then we had to briefing and free time. Then a Back2Back staff member talk to us about how we are light to the kids and that there is hope. Then we had free time and had snacks and hung out. I also was racing people and beat all of them. Then we went to bed. Overall it was an awesome day!!

Wednesday (2/24)

From Dad: Back to the cold breakfast this morning of cereal and OJ. Then quiet time and small groups,  then homework and then back to CHDN.

We began the day writing in the books for each of our kids. The book consists of decorated pages,  pictures,  letters, etc. to each of the kids. When the kids leave the school, they are given the book to show them how much they are truly loved.

We then had lunch prepared by the cooks. Similar Mexican food, but today we got strawberry vanilla creme ice cream.  It was delicious.

Then back to projects. My project has been building a bodega for the bicycles. I took Noble and Jake today.  We let Noble and Jake go early and Kevin (construction manager from CHDN) finished hanging the walls. I hoped to finish the roof tomorrow, but Kevin said we were going to be doing “girly stuff” with his wife, Bethany.

We then had a hamburger cookout with the kids. Tays kid, Juan, didn’t do his homework so he was made to stay inside. It was so sad for Taylor to see Juan upset.  She tried to help him with homework, but they still wouldn’t let him out to play. It felt like Tay was being punished as well.  At the end of the day, I was very disappointed to see Juan sitting in the Comedo all by himself eating a hamburger with tears in his eyes.  I really struggled with the alienation as it seems like the compete opposite that should be done.  If he was in his room, that would be one thing.  But to have him in the big comedor alone, didn’t sit well with me.

I went up to Juan and said “chocola” which is a Spanish slang of a high 5 and fist bump.  He smiled soooooo big.  I said “”Hasta Manan, Juan. He smiled and said Manana.  I actually spoke to one fot he B2B leaders about the situation with Juan.  They explained that sometimes they disagree with what he caregiver does, but they have to support it as they are the 24×7 caregivers and know the kids the best.  Not to mention that they are B2B and not staff of CHDN.  I was more at ease after the conversation.

On the bus ride back, one of the most hilarious moments of the week by far… When we were about 15 minutes from B2B campus, Evan Nwanko came up to me and said that he had an urgent bathroom need, and couldn’t hold it in.  I asked if he could hold it, and he said no.  It was decided that everyone on the bus would look away, he would use my long sweatshirt as a shield, and he would use a water bottle.  He told me, Mr. McCracken, I really gotta go and I will overflow the bottle.  Senor Fite, near the front of the bus, didn’t hear this conversation.  Susan Vanderkolk handed Senor Fite a water bottle and he said Evan, here ya go.  Evan responded with “Sr. Fite, it won’t fit”.  Sr. Fite looks at the wide mouth bottle opening and says to Evan “really Evan, it won’t fit, as he makes a large circle with his thumb and index I said Sr. Fite, “he is concerned with the volume, not the size”.  Sr. Fite’s face went blank, and the whole bus erupted in laughter for over 5 minutes. We ended up stopping at Costco for a bathroom break for Evan.

We got back , no debrief tonight, had a snack and turned in.  There is a bug going around affecting Scott Sanders, Bo, and others., so we all need our rest. See Daily Updates from Senor Fite

From Taylor: Today was a good day! We had our normal routine of getting up, eating breakfast, having personal time, then devotionals. We had TCC in the Palapa and homework time. We then loaded the bus and went to Del Norte. We first wrote in these books for the kids. They have amazing notes for the people who connect with a certain child to write in. Then we had lunch which was rice, a beef vegetable mixture, and bread. And for dessert we had strawberry ice cream. Then we started our projects. My group finished painting the whole house! Then we played for a little bit and I played with the boy named Adrian(6) and his sister Zoey(9)! I soon found out that thy spoke both english and spanish!! Then I helped Juan with some of his homework and it was dinner time next. We had a cookout and find it and I sat inside because he was a little sad. Then it was time to go and he gave me a huge hug and smiled. Then we came back to the Hope program campus. We had free time so I got a shower and then we had activities in the palapa and played a huge game of rock-paper-scissors. Then we had more free time and I hung out with some friends. That was basically my day!

Thursday (2/25)

From Dad: Woke up to coughing kids and several are now sick. Had French toast and OJ and quiet time, small group and then the homework.

Headed back to CHDN for our last day. We took the second half of our tour led by Juan, and Bethany (Kevins overzealous wife) did the translation.  Bethany is a general practice nurse practitioner and wants Heather to come down to help with Women’s health needs.

We then made sensory objects for the kids. Our group took old water bottles, filled them half with hot water and half liquid glitter. These are used to calm the kids down. The other groups made stress balls use putting Play-Doh into balloon.

We then played with the kids a bit and said our goodbye’s around 430p, and went back to B2B campus.

One of the cooks prepared tacos for us with an assortment of chicken, beef and pork.  It quickly turned into a contest of who could eat the most between Carson Koporc and Noble Nwanko. The groups separated and cheered on each person – 13 here, 14 there, now 16, now 18, and ultimately Noble won with 19. A bit later, Noble went into the bathroom and got sick.  The funny thing is that Carson actually stopped at 8 and was going back and not filling his plate.  No one told Noble.  The boys are so funny.

The B2B staff then opened the Market, we packed, and then went to bed. What a great week this has been!

From Taylor: Today was a really fun day but it was also really sad since it was our last day. We started the dat by waking up, getting ready and had breakfast. Then we had personal time and devotionals. We went down to the Palapa where we talked about how to stay involves and how people can help. Then we got ready to go to Del Norte for he last day:( We got there and finished our tour around the home. Then we had lunch, which was again really delicious, and lime ice cream. Then we made stress relief objects for the little kids when they are upset. Then we got to play with the kids. They were so cute and i mostly played with Zoey and Adrian. They wouldn’t leave my side which made me really happy. They kept hugging me and giving me kisses and we also played hide and go seek tag. I also said goodbye to Juan and he was still sad for some reason which made me feel bad. I said my goodbyes to him before he left to go home with his real parents. Since today all the kids went home with their real parents or family if they have any or are allowed to. Then we had to say our goodbyes which was really really sad! Then we rode back to Hope campus and had dinner which were amazing tacos! Then we hung out, played basketball, went in the treehouse, went to the market, swung, laid in the grass and looked at the stars. Then everyone got packed up and ready to leave. Then we all went to sleep.

Friday (2/26)

From Dad: Today was the day for our small group to handle breakfast.  We prepared cereal and OJ, due to time constraints. We all packed the buses at headed to the airport around 8a.  The Douglas group, the larger group, had an earlier flight and a 7 hour layover in Houston. We actually have the smaller group, 11 of us, and we have to stay in Monterrey for 7 hours until our flight. We began with Starbucks, and then the kids watching a few movies on my iPad.  Scott and Susan were still not feeling well, so all the kids laid on the floor near the window a good distance from them.  We departed for Atlanta at  4:55 PM and got into CVG at 11:40 PM. I will be going back to B2B again!.

From Taylor:  Today was a very lazy day! We got up at 7 and finished packing. I got ready and went downstairs. Then I couldn’t find my gym shoes so I had to wear my old pair. Then we put all our bags on the bus and cleaned up before we left. We had an hour bus ride to the airport and had to wait there for 7 hours. We had Starbucks then just hung out. We finally got on the plane and that ride was about 3 or so hours. We got to Atlanta and had to go through customs and i got a smoothie. Then we got on the plane to Cincy and the ride was about an hour long. We finally were home!!!

Back2Back Leaders Met at Monterrey

I learned that Rob Hall, former CHCA MS principal, now leads the B2B development team.