MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Wishing all the people we love a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A Christmas Date Night

A surprise date night was in the works for me and I didn't even know! My sweet husband took me to a nice Italian restaurant and then surprised me with tickets to The Nutcracker Ballet! It was FANTASTIC! I LOVED EVERY MOMENT OF IT! Such a great night spent with my hubby:)

Gingerbread Houses

Last weekend Rodo and I had our sweet friends Michael and Courtney over for dinner and to make gingerbread houses!
On the menu was White Chicken Chili and Coca Light (our version of diet coke)! It was delicious! Then we busted out our gingerbread house making kits and started the process. Michael and Courtney were on a team and Rodo and I were on a team. Trooper wanted in on the fun too! We decided that both of our houses were incredible so neither of us won on the BEST house.
We had a ton of fun with time of fellowship, friendship, and laughter!

Enjoy the pictures:)

ARGUELLO NEWS!

Back2Back Ministries is currently in Nigeria, India, Cancun, and Monterrey, Mexico. We (Rodo and Becca) have been serving in Monterrey, Mexico for the past 3 years and now with the opening of a new site in MAZATLAN, MEXICO we are headed out west!

FUN FACTS ABOUT MAZATLAN:
Mazatlan is the second largest port on the Pacific coast (After Los Angeles)
* Population is approximately 500,000
* It is a commercial town that has developed into a tourist destination in the last sixty years

OUR GOAL:
Our goal is to be in Mazatlan by February 1, 2012!

THE CALL:
We were able to go on a scout trip to Mazatlan in September for 3 days. We visited 6 orphanages that Back2Back will be partnering with in the city.
One of the homes we visited is for children with special needs. This home has about 30 kids living in it and half of them have special needs. The only boy we were able to connect with there was a boy that was completely blind, almost completely deaf, and paralyzed from the waist down. This home has some severe needs. With resources and group members, Back2Back Ministries will be helping get this home to the potential it has!
Another home we were able to visit is a safe house for teenage girls that have been trafficked or abused. I (Becca) am particularly excited about working with these teenage girls. I am excited to bring Jesus, hope, and love into their lives!
You all have been our support team for either the last 3 1/2 years, last couple years, or the last couple months. We would NOT be able to live out our calling form the Lord if it weren’t for people like you in our lives. We are inviting YOU along for the journey as well. Together, linking arms, we will fight to rescue the orphan children of Mazatlan!


PRAYER REQUESTS:
*Ending our time here in Monterrey is going to be difficult. We will be leaving our community, the children we have served here for the past year 3 years, and Rodolfo’s family.

*Car situation- The roads, to the orphanges, in Mazatlan are rough. We will be needing a bigger vehicle. If you know of anyone that is selling or giving away vehicles, please contact us.

*People coming alongside us ready and willing to partner with us for the call to Mazatlan. This includes:
-Praying for us specifically and the ministry site of Mazatlan.
-Financial support.We are in need of $10,000 more.

* For God to continue taking care of every detail!


WE WOULD LOVE TO TALK WITH EACH OF YOU ABOUT THIS EXCITING OPPORTUNITY! PLEASE IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR WANT TO TALK WITH US ABOUT THIS MOVE OR LIFE IN GENERAL EMAIL US AT:
r.arguello12@gmail.com

Ending the Women's Group

This was my 4th women's group since being on staff. It is always my favorite week of the entire year! It is also one of the busiest weeks of the year for us women on staff!

This morning my friend Sammy and I drove 6 women to the airport at 4 in the morning! Needless to say at the end of the week i was exhausted! I went home after the airport run and slept until 3:30pm! It was glorious and definitely needed.

These women always bring a worship leader with them! They brought Craig Aven this time. Craig is pretty much staff when he is here! He comes a ton and has a great relationship with us staffers. Every time he is here whether it is for a summer or a week, he is always such a blessing! During the year we don't have a worship leader and it is probably the one thing i miss the most from the states. Good worship services! So, even though the ladies bring him for them, he ends up blessing all of us because he is so talented and knows how to lead some worship!


Hope you have enjoyed reading about the 5 full days of the Women's Group 2011! It was a blast and a blessing to be apart of bringing Christmas to EVERY child we serve here in Monterrey!

Last FULL day of the Women's Group

This morning was more relaxed with some breakfast, a teaching time with Beth Guckenberger, a time to buy stuff at our market, and our HOW TO STAY INVOLVED MEETING!

We had a delicious lunch and then headed out for Casa Hogar Del Norte.
At Del Norte we made ornaments with the kids and let them make 2 sugar cookies topping them with icing and sprinkles.
Then we headed out for a fun fieldtrip to a place called KIDZANIA. It is basically a town that we live in shrunk down to kid size. Right when you get in, each child gets a check for a certain amount of money (like monopoly money) and they go to the bank to cash it. After that, they basically can run crazy in a place that you can learn how to make your own hamburger from McDonalds, your own pizza at Dominoes. And you get to work at places like Home Depot, a Veterinarian place with real animals, and Wal-Mart! This place has 2 stories for places to make money and then to spend it. The kids can bottle coke but they have to pay for the coke bottle. They can make a chocolate candy but they have to pay for it with the money they earned! They can become a firefighter, policeman, delivery person, a pilot, and much more.

Everytime we take a childrens home to this place the dreams of who they CAN become are more real to them! It is so fun watching them go from place to place and earn money or be able to spend it!

It was a fun filled day that is for sure!

DAY 4: Women's Group

This day was packed full!


In the morning we wrapped presents and got them all ready for Casa Hogar Imperio De Amor! There are 65 kids at this childrens home. This is the home that Rodolfo is captain of. So, he is there every week hanging out figuring out projects, building relationships, and wrestling with the older boys of the home:)

After gathering everything for the day, we headed out for Imperio De Amor. When we arrived we all went to the church they have on campus. The women brought a ton of musical instruments and so we decided to break up into teams and have an "AMERICAN IDOL" competition. Each team had 15 minutes to come up with a skit/song. They could grab any of the instruments that they needed. It was such a hoot! I was very impressed with what each group came up with!

Rodo's team won! It will be a picture ingrained in my mind forever watching all the older boys and my husband dancing around and singing!

Prior to American Idol, we had the women pre make "SNOWBALLS" out of socks filled with flour. So, we had the winners of American Idol get to peg Rodolfo first with the snowballs. Since the older boys won they were SO excited about that! The second place winners were able to keep their musical instruments. And 3rd place team got candy!

After American Idol, we went into the kitchen area and ate lunch with the children. We baked 115 potatoes and had all the toppings. We also asked Vita (our mexican cook) to make 400 tamales and her incredible salsa. It was AWESOME!

Once our bellies were full of yummy food, we had the kids open up all of their presents! They were all so excited to see their names on an individual gift. Sometimes, groups come and give gifts as a group. So individual presents are a BIG deal!

Our morning at IDA was very successful and entertaining!

We departed from IDA and went to one of our Squatter villages we call "Rio 3". We had a little church service with the community and then we had families line up for a photo shoot! We brought fancy clothes from our donation room, 5 digital cameras, and 3 awesome photo printers. This was probably the biggest Christmas gift the women could have given out because those families that live there have probably never had a picture of themselves let alone a picture of their entire family!

Then to end our day the Ladies took all of the group and all of our staff women to a nice italian restaurant here in the city. It is the equivalent to a Bravo's or a Macaroni Grill. It was such a treat for us. It made us feel so special that these ladies thought of us staff women even though they were already thinking of the 500 orphans we serve here in Monterrey! We felt very blessed so THANK YOU WOMEN FOR THAT YUMMY DINNER!

Day 3: Women's Group

This Day was one of my favorites days!

In the morning we had Santas Workshop! We wrapped Christmas presents for Casa Hogar Bethesda and we had a group that worked as santa's elves. While the kids were off at school we took homemade chicken noodle soup, their presents, and left pillows with their names monogrammed on their beds. We left their presents under their tree in the living room.
We had another group of women that went back to Casa hogar douglas. We had arranged for there to be a photo of each child with a prayer request on the back. So, the women did a prayer walk and specifically prayed for every child living at Casa Hogar Douglas!

Then we ate a yummy lunch and waited for the kids from Casa Hogar Bethany and Casa Hogar ERJ come meet us at the property. Once they were here we gave each kid their presents and a sack lunch. They ate their lunch, opened presents, and then we headed off to the movie theater.

We went to see the Muppets Movie. We got 150 people popcorn, candy, and a drink! It was such a fun time. Honestly the movie was a HUGE treat to most of the kids because there were a lot of new kids in both of those Childrens homes. A lot of the kids were saying that it was their very first movie in a movie theatre! Which blew all of our minds.

Then the most exciting part....

We put 50 pesos ($5) in an envelope for EVERY kid and they were able to walk around the 2nd nicest mall in Monterrey for 45 minutes and spend their 50 pesos with whatever they wanted. YES there was a starbucks in the mall and most of the kids went there.
Then our meeting point was at the MASSIVE Christmas Tree in the middle of the mall. They have a special event every 3 hours for it to snow at the big tree. I think they use soap. i am not 100% sure though. Anyway, we had set it up for them to do the big snow to end our time with ERJ and Bethany. It was PERFECT! They had their Christmas music going and we were all dancing and singing in the snow!

One of my favorite memories of the whole week is watching those sweet faces looking at the snow coming down!


p.s. no i do not have a baby, i am just holding one in all of those pictures :)

Day 2: Women's Group

I don't have many pictures from this day. But it was an eventful day no doubt!

Starting at 10:00 am, pretty much every day, We had what we call Santa's workshop! We split the women's group up into different teams to accomplish many tasks. The teams were either wrapping Christmas gifts for that specific childrens home we were going out with for the day, baking sugar cookies, building a picnic table, preparing lunch, preparing dinner, or going into our school here on campus, Sierra Madre Christian Academy, and helping decorate ornaments for their Christmas Tree!

Meanwhile, we have Christmas music blaring to really get us in the Christmas Spirit.

We ate our lunch and then headed out to a mountain so we could hike with Casa Hogar Manantial de Amor. The mountain is called Chimpinque! It has such a beautiful outlook over the city.
Well, during santas workshop we had some people making painter's palette's. So, each women was paired up with one or two kids from the childrens home. They had to find different things that were on their painter palette. After they found everything they all met at one specific tree. While they were out finding the stuff on their palette's, some of the staff put ALL of their presents under the tree:)
So when they all hiked up to the top of the mountain their presents were under a big forest tree! They loved it.
After opening presents the kids from Manantial had a time of testimonies and it was very powerful.


Then we headed home and had a lasagna dinner with all the teen girls that live on our property! We made 9 lasagnas, had 75 rolls, and yummy salad for everyone. The teen girls had also prepared a little something. They wanted to do a prayer time over the women. It was a very spiritual fed evening that was ended with a SUPER fun game called PIT. if you do not have it, i would plan on purchasing the card game for the holidays with family!

Christmas at CHD

This years women's group arrived here on Monday November 28th and we headed off to Casa Hogar Douglas. Before we were able to go, we did a quick wrapping presents for 75 kids and 10 care takers. We had an incredible pizza dinner (which is very rare for this childrens home), we made sugar cookies, topping them with icing and sprinkles, we handed out presents to every child and care taker, then we headed up to the chapel for some worship and fun.

Each dorm had prepared a dance, memory verse, or a skit for the womens group. I was very impressed with their dancing. One group did a dance to a song called "soy una princesa" which translates to "I am a princess".
i have heard this song many times before and i actually have it on my ipod. But, there is something about orphan girls dancing around in princess dresses singing I am a princess. The song continues to talk about how God specifically calls them His princess. And how He has great plans for their lives! i was tearing up just listening to them sing and dance to this song. They had HUGE smiles and were having a BLAST!

We ended our time with caroling and a candle light service. We sang in English and they sang in Spanish "Silent Night" and "Oh Holy Night". Honestly it was pretty magical watching all these beautiful little faces in the candle light! They loved the fact that they all got individual candles. We were a little nervous at first but it ended up to be an incredible Christmas with Casa Hogar Douglas!

A Nature walk with CHD

Every time we have a group here for the week we take them on a fieldtrip with a childrens home.
2 weeks ago i went on a fieldtrip with Casa Hogar Douglas to a local park we have here called "Estanzuela". Just the beauty of everything is incredible and puts me in my place with God. I am reminded that i am a small speck on the board and that as long as i allow God to control me and deal with me then He will continue turning me into HIS Beauty!

The mountains that surround us are beyond gorgeous and are a reminder everyday HOW BIG OUR GOD IS! I pray almost everyday that God would never let me get tired of looking at these mountains!

A DAY OF FIRSTS!!!!

This day was full of fun firsts for me!

1.) I was with Apex church at ERJ and we were digging a trench from an electrical post to a chicken coop! And they were no where close together :) 120 foot trench!

2.) I MILKED A COW FOR THE FIRST TIME! Never realizing how hard it actually is! I also only mastered it with my right hand.

3.) I felt a baby sheep inside its mama. The baby was kicking like crazy and i had never felt that on a sheep before!

4.) I LEARNED HOW TO WELD! A man by the name of Tim came down last year and taught our staff how to weld. But, i wasn't able to attend any of the trainings. So, out at ERJ, in preparation for a roof, I was taught by some of my fellow staff members. It was really fun to learn how to do that! Also, i got to wear some really cool stuff. hahha


I loved this day because it was full of things i had never done! Now, i am ready for my application for American Chopper. If they need an extra welder:)