Visit to our new siter club

Friday October the 16th, It is a great day to start our road trip to Matamoros Mexico we all made it to our rendezvous point and off we went a little after noon, our group of seven consist of; Irene Hickey, Lindsey Kroll, Sonya Heath, DGE Eric Liu and his wife Sandra, Olga Bautista and the driver Art Bautista,  we rented a 15 passenger van so that we would have more room. On Friday evening our hosts from the Club Matamoros Profesional took us to a nice restaurant where we met most our their club members( by the way their club is an all-female club) and a local tv channel came  to interview a group of us. Saturday morning we are picked up at our hotel by some of the ladies from their club and we cross the border into Matamoros Mexico, the first thing that I noticed was the lack of locals in the downtown area, before the drug problems the down town area would be bustling with people and vendors. At the meeting point with take a group picture and we head out to the inauguration of the water project that we participated in, our convoy consists of an armed escort in front and back of our vehicle. Most of us are thinking how is it that the conditions 10 minutes from our border can be so bad, once we get to the site we forget momentarily about all the bouncing that we did because of the muddy and pot holes riddled roads, we are met by a group of people from the neighborhood who show us their appreciation for making it possible for them to have clean drinking water, I was honored to be chosen to open the first faucet, what a great feeling this was for me and for all the people that will benefit from this rotary project. Next stop the local red cross facility where they are very close to finishing the construction of a surgery center for which we have donated or participated in grants for;  Surgery lights, anesthesia machine, defibrillator, portable respirator, vital signs monitors, surgery bed, over $20,000 in used and new surgery instruments, x ray protectors and other supplies. Sunday we met for lunch with their club president Rosa Posada and she signed  the documents for our two clubs to become sister clubs.