Fix water pressure for 2nd floor of children’s home
Our girls live on the second floor of our children’s home, which unfortunately suffers from very low water pressure causing only one shower to be able to be turned on at a time. Just imagine for a moment 30 to 50 girls trying to get ready for school each morning with only one working shower. The solution is to create a water tank that sits on the roof that is filled automatically while creating the water pressure that the second floor needs.
Redesign second floor to better serve our girls
We currently only have one full bath to serve all of the girls in the second floor of our children’s home. If you can imagine 30 to 50 girls trying to get ready for school each morning with only one bathroom, you can realize how important this project is. Our goal is rearrange the floor plan so that we have three separate dormitories for the girls, each with its very own bathroom that is attached directly to the dormitory.
New heating and cooling throughout ministry
In Juarez, we experience extreme heat over 100˚F in the summer and temperatures below freezing in the winter. Our current cooling system is based on evaporated water that simply doesn’t cool enough during the summer and brings way more mosquitos than it does any relief of cooling. Our heating solution for the winter is currently gas heaters, which is outrageously expensive if we truly want to heat everywhere our children dwell, not to mention very dangerous. Our dream is to revamp the entire heating and cooling system throughout the ministry so that rooms our controlled by a thermostat using technology that is much more effective in keeping our children happy and safe.
Large dome to cover outside courtyard and play area
Our kids love playing outside on our courtyard every day during recess, snack, and free time. We also begin every school day with all of our kids outside to begin the day with worship and prayer. However, we have sunny, hot days much of the year that make it very uncomfortable and dangerous for our children to be outside for very long. Our dream is to have a large dome constructed over our courtyard to provide shade and to free us to have more activities outside where kids love to be.
New roof and ceiling for our church
The current roof is several decades old, a patchwork of sheet metal where the sun shines through like Jesus shines through us. When we sing “Rain Down,” sometimes that happens literally. Due to the damaged roof, sheetrock from the ceiling has fallen down on multiple occasions and sometimes on top of people and children, even a baby once – no joke. We are in desperate need of a completely new roof and ceiling for this part of the ministry that is so important to us because our church is where all of our children, families, staff and community all gather in one place every Sunday to worship the Lord, discover Jesus, and learn His Word.
Putting safer fences/walls around our property
The fence around where our children play is very old and worn and needs to be replaced to be safer and more secure. As much of our property is wide open allowing anyone to come and go, the bigger project related to this would be review our property line and create new walls and gates securing the entire perimeter to be safer and better stewards of the land God has provided to us.
Learning Centers
We would like to create within the home learning centers, one for the girls and another for the boys, where the children could enjoy a library-type setting to have fun reading, doing homework, or participating in activities to exercise or heal their minds. Workshops and therapy sessions for the children could also take place here. The room could also feature a “cool-down” area equipped with activities proven to help in emotional meltdowns.
Creation of library at our school
We have started and need more funds and help constructing a library to serve in our school. The first step where we are currently at requires materials, construction, and painting. The second step requires furnishing the library and filling it with books (in Spanish), which we will also
New chairs for the church
We have been using the same wooden benches in our church that we made ourselves about 50 years ago. We have repaired and painted them endless times trying to keep the benches together and the people off the floor, but they continue to fall more and more apart as they plead to be put to rest (the benches, not the people). They will often get a nail that begins to stick out of one of them, scratching our children and ruining our best Sunday clothes. Our dream is to have sturdy, comfortable chairs like these that will also permit us to arrange the chairs different ways to serve different events.
Finish second floor of interns apartment
There is a second floor to an apartment built for interns that needs to be finished with flooring, windows, doors, stairs, etc. requiring materials and professional construction and electric work. There is significant interest from people wants to intern and bless the ministry by living for an extended time on-campus. However, we are currently out of spaces for them to live, making the completion of this second floor a real need.
Finish intern/missionary dorms
We have completed one intern dorm and need to complete the other one along with the bathrooms so that we have two fully functioning dorms, one for male interns and a separate one for female interns. This project is a part of our dream to have regular interns and missionaries that come for extended periods of time to serve our children in various ways and reduce the amount of funds needed for payroll.
Making steps to playground area safer
We are bit famous for the giant steps that lower into the outside play area of the children’s home. While they are very useful as seats for soccer games etc., it’s difficult and hazardous to walk up and down them. We would like to create sets of normal-sized steps over the giant steps that are currently there.
Cleaning up old machine shop/construction of large auditorium
We have a large building space that over the years has had many uses ranging from a machine shop to auto repair. It was even a piñata factory for awhile. Currently this huge space sits practically unused, and our dream is to transform it into a large auditorium that would serve the ministry in many ways such as for graduations, staff meetings for the whole ministry, and other ceremonies where all of our staff, children, and their families could gather in one place. The first step, however, would be to clean it up, removing many large, old (and scary) items that have collected there over our 50 year history.
Painting murals
We would love to make our entire campus, inside and out, more kid-friendly by painting colorful murals everywhere – on the walls and hallways inside and on the steps and walls outside the home, school, and church.
Painting outside of building
Apart from our dream of having fun, colorful murals everywhere, the majority of the paint outside of our buildings has worn off. A quick-fix would be to at least paint the outside with our famous yellow color.
Cleaning up our creek/transformation into beautiful green area
This would be a major undertaking requiring days of strenuous dirty work by many people and perhaps professional machinery in order to completely clean up this land which was originally used as a trash dump/landfill. The cleanup would be the first step to an even greater project of transforming this creek area into a beautiful green area for our children.
Creating areas especially designed for the various groups at the church
We would like to create rooms inside the church that address the needs of the various groups we minister to including children, mothers/adults, babies, and teens. This requires designing, painting, decorating, and equipping these various spaces.
Finish vacant spaces inside the church
There is a lot of unused, unfinished space at the church that we have many dreams for. One of the most exciting dreams is to create a recording studio where we have envisioned the children themselves creating music that will impact the world. We also have big dreams involving a vibrant missions base and leadership training center that would bless our children with a steady stream of visitors while we equip and send out missionaries and leaders even among those that were once children in our home.
Filling/patching holes in cement around campus
Over the years, holes have formed in the cemented play area outside the home creating a hazard for the children that run around there and for the adults that are chasing them. There are also cement steps around the campus that have cracked and begun to fall apart.