Mi Casa Children's Home Mural

I had the somewhat unexpected opportunity to paint another mural this past week. A friend and spiritual mentor of mine Ken LaPoint has been building a home called Mi Casa for orphans and at-risk children in Tecate, Mexico, and the walls have been calling me for some time. But each time Ken takes a team down I have some kind of scheduling conflict like I'm currently living in Kenya, for example. But this Labor Day weekend it finally lined up, and I joined a group of volunteers and headed down to Tecate.

I decided to paint the fruit of the Spirit on a wall in the living room of one of the kids' houses. This mural will be a part of their daily lives, so I wanted it to be visually appealing and spiritually enriching at the same time. What better way to learn the fruit of the Spirit than to have them right there on your living room wall? Here's the verse I used:

Galatians 5:22-23

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Gálatas 5:22-23

Mas el fruto del Espíritu es amor, gozo, paz, paciencia, benignidad, bondad, fidelidad, humildad, dominio propio; contra tales cosas no hay ley. 

The mural was completed in just 2 days thanks to the help of Emily Brewster, an American teacher who is currently living and working as an educator and missionary in Tecate. Somehow between the two of us Spanish speaking Americans we did not catch that I had misspelled the word "humildad", or humility in the mural. So on the last day before we packed up and left I humbly painted over the word and respelled it correctly!

The finished mural

Amor = love 

Painting birds with one of the volunteer's children

Thank you, Emily! I couldn't have done it without you