Joy Dare - Mexico style

How do you like the new title? Do you love it? And I have a button! How exciting. My title and button are from the talented hand of my friend, Amanda. We met during seminary. She designs web pages and is a great writer. You can check out her blog here. Thank you, Amanda! Love it!

Well, I hope you are sitting down because I am going to tell you that Brent and I left our cell phones at home while we were in Mexico. We obviously made it out alive without our phones. Who would have thunk it? Leaving 3 kids with their grandparents and no cell phones in case of emergency, what is the world coming too.

Honestly, it was so nice NOT having a phone. My friend, Tanya, has a quote that says "rectangles ruin relationships." This is true. Your phone, your iPad, your laptop, your Kindle Fire, are all rectangles and sometimes whatever is going on on the other end of that rectangle somehow seems more important than what's face to face with you.

So, without a phone I could't look up the joy dare challenge of the day each morning. I did write them in my journal so I would know what to look for during the day, but I would usually forget what the topics were by the time we got to the children's home at 9:00 each day. So I improvised and kept a list of my own joys from the day. I'll just go ahead and tell you that Friday joy was finally sleeping in my own bed after 24 hour travel! Can I get an "amen"?!

If you are interested here are the days from the Joy Dare that I did manage to write down. The joys I found on my own are below the picture. Hope you can keep up!


March 9 - Three gifts carved
1. old Catholic cathedrals
2. Wrinkles in a old lady's face
3.---------

Apparently I skipped March10. Ummm....let's remember my brain was un-twisting so that was probably why I missed it!

March 11 - Three gifts read
1. Chapters 3 and 4 in Exodus
2. A children's book in Spanish to a little boy at the children's home
3. -------

March 12 - Wind, water, white
1. That the was actually wind or a breeze!
2. Bottled water
3. White board. Getting help in the ESL class.

March 13 - Three gifts round
1. Bowls of water washing little dirty feet
2. Round chairs made of tree stumps at the Seminary
3. Hamburgers for dinner - no tacos!!

Okay I also skipped day 14 and 15.

Here are the other joys I found through-out the week. This was fun.
In no particular order:

Cold showers
A fan
Purple flowers against a blue wall
Craft time
Open windows
M&M's (thanks Lauren!)
Water
Grace
Curtains blowing in the wind
Birds chirping in the morning
Seat in the truck
A mom stopping to wipe her daughter's nose with the bottom of her dress in the parking lot
Sweeping the cafeteria
Proverbs 12:4 and Miss Congenality quote
Quiet, early mornings
Purple flower trees - later I found out the name of these trees (that I have now forgotten) but apparently they are quite expensive. They were everywhere we went in the city. Maybe Mexico is sitting on a gold mine and they just don't know it!

I know that none of those make sense to you, but they were really for me.

It was joy serving during the entire trip. I am grateful that I was given the chance to go!