Immigration Study Day 1

After racing off immediately after worship yesterday (which was fabulous, including a baptism and my flubbered up prayers of the people), we arrived at Luther Seminary for the night. Some team building conversations left my brain working in overdrive as we headed to bed for a very short night.

A bit after 4:00 this morning, we hauled ourselves up and out the door for a miserable, snowy, slick drive the airport (thank you to the Luther Sem student who braved the roads with us!) where we successfully navigated security only to sit on the plane for over 2 hours watching the snowplows doing some impressive quadrille movements around us. I went back to sleep. Somewhere in there we took off.

Thankful for the what was initially a 3 hour layover in Phoenix, we still had time to grab some lunch before catching the last leg into El Paso where it is warm and sunny. By this time having had no coffee since before worship yesterday, little sleep and a long day of travel, a couple of us went straight to Starbucks before we found baggage claim.

Father Bob met us and shuttled us to the Columban Mission Center where we found our rooms. Three of us women are in a room containing 6 beds on wheels. We are planning for bed races tonight. The others have their own rooms.

Oscar Romero mural

The effort to live sustainably is awesome. The dish water goes to the plants, not down the drain. We recycle. We compost. The solar panels on the house will come up again later in the week. Father Bob presented a PowerPoint which included a cool link that showed exactly the power usage of the house. We could watch it go up and down as he turned lights on and off. It makes me cringe to turn lights on at all after seeing that.

We chatted a bit, had some chips and amazing salsa, and climbed back in the van. Father Bob drove us to a gorgeous overlook called Murchison Park where we got some good pictures of the view over the cities of El Paso and Juarez.

After supper, we took a stroll to the international bridge, El Paso PND (Paso del Norte). How different it is from the north border we are used to in North Dakota! It costs $.50 per person to cross each way.

That is all for day 1.
Pax.