Editor's note: Dinos women's basketball forward Alex Cole is blogging about her experiences during the team's trip to Tijuana, Mexico to build a house for a needy family.
Working with Youth With A Mission, the team will build a house Sept. 1-2, run a basketball clinic for local children on Sept. 3, and visit an orphanage on Sept. 4. They return to Calgary on Sept. 5.
DAY 3 - September 2
When we arrived at the site this morning, the father of the family we were building for, had all our tools and supplies layed out and organized. We still had to finish the shingles on the roof and touch ups with paint on the house. It took us a total of three hours to complete it all!
While we were building, three dinos were chosen to take the family shopping at a local uniform store and grocery store.The girls were very excited as they had never purchased brand new clothing before. If the girls do not have the proper uniforms or a uniform at all then they are not allowed to attend school. At the grocery store the family filled two carts full of different foods, some items that would be eaten right away and others that could last for a year. You could just see the love and excitement coming from the family as they shared this experience together.
As a thank you the family cooked us an authentic Mexican meal. It consisted of barbecued beef, corn tortillas, fried cactus, homemade guacamole and salsa it was delicious. At first we were all very hesitant to accept such an offer from the family because in order to provide this is would cost about the equivalent of one week of work. I realized that this was the family's only way to give back to us and they were more than happy to do so.
After lunch we gathered in a circle, held hands and each got to express tell the family just how much this experience had meant to us. The family was then handed the keys and headed into their brand new home. They were given a few moments by themselves inside the house and then we were later invited in as the first guests in their home. When they opened the door for us, all four of them were in tears. That was when everything we had done over the past two days hit me.
It was such a rewarding moment to see the overwhelming gratitude of the family, and despite any language barrier the message of thankfulness was so clear. What we were able to do for them in two days would likely have taken ten years for them to achieve on their own. I had somewhat of an expectation that it would be a very intense emotional experience for me personally, but what we did was so simple. The emotional experience really came from realizing how much this truly means to the family, to be able to recognize just for one second what this really means for them and their future.
