Wow. If there ever was a truly amazing ten days, our trip down to Mexico would definitely fit the bill. It was totally evident that God was watching over our team the whole time. Thanks SO much for all of your prayers and support, there's no way all this could have happened without it.
There's so much that happened in those beautiful couple of weeks, it'll be a challenge to break it all down so you can have a taste of everything that went on. We still don't have all of the pictures from the trip, but I'll do my best with the ones I've got and maybe share the rest with you later.
The main outlining idea of our Mission's trip was to go down to this camp in Mexico called "Genesis Diez" and help out for a week. The camp ran sort of like a VBS; kids from a poor town nearby would come for a week, and the members of our team would work one on one with the kids who came. The gospel was presented to the children everyday and we'd get to build a relationship with our kid (our: "nino") while we played with them and did activities with them at the camp.
So, here we go: Part 1
"Getting to Where We're Going"
The Alaska Team
-Right Before Embarking on the Airport Ferry-
(we were actually going to do 'before and after' shots to compare them and see how beat up we all were by the end of the trip, but we never got an 'after' one so, you can just admire us all here- looking all happy an energetic) :)
Here we go!
We had a long wait at the Seattle Airport before continuing our flight down to San Diego. 
And here's the moon flying right along with us. Let's just say, by the end of that first day of traveling, we'd all gotten to know each other pretty well. :) Actually, for the whole trip, it was amazing how well we all got along. 
As you can see, we brought the moon safely to San Diego.
When we finally got off the plane we had to wait a bit outside the airport for our van to transport all of our luggage to the house we'd be staying at for the next two nights. Here are some of our friends, singing on the sidewalk in the warm, California air to pass the time.We had some very wonderful people as our hosts. Their home was beautiful: orchards, quaint walkways through groves of trees, and a huge grassy field. They were very gracious to house us all, and the time we had there with them was pretty special.
Posing for a quick picture while playing capture the flag in the orange orchard.
- Sea World -
The next day was our "reward" day. We had a some time to kill in San Diego before crossing over into Mexico the following day. Sea World was definitely the perfect place to spend our last Saturday in the U.S..
It was a fun day for the team even though by the end of it, lots of us were sporting bright, cherry red sunburns. The San Diego sun is a whole lot different from the one up in Alaska!
We woke up the next morning and got ready to go to the church of our kind hosts. Not very many of us had every been to Mega church before and it was quite an amazing experience. (our whole church back home probably would have barely filled the seats of the choir, much less the whole seating arrangement of the church body!) :)
Afterwards it was time to pack up and move on. We were going to meet up with Greg, the Genesis Diez camp director. Outside, in the parking lot of some store, near the boarder of Mexico, we met up with him and, standing in a big circle beside our vans, he gave us a brief outline of what the next couple days were going to look like. Then we prayed.
MEXICO
The instant we drove over the boarder, everything changed. For one, all the signs and everything were suddenly in Spanish, but that wasn't the only thing that was different. The buildings that lines the dirt streets were brightly colored, but covered in graffiti and coated with dirt. There were people just sitting on the sides of the streets, or some even with home-made metal detectors trying to find something of worth. What we saw out the windows of our van gave us the first taste of what we had come to Mexico for.
The camp was a ways out the road. It was a pretty bumpy ride and even though it was fun, it pretty much drained us of any energy that we thought we had.
We arrived at the camp close to nightfall and we spent the remainder of the day fixing up the tarp over what would be our eating area, and sitting around a campfire (which was going to be a nightly routine) talking about everything that was about to happen).
GENESIS DIEZ
So, before I end this fist section, I'll brief you a little bit about the camp.
These are our dorms. The two tents on the right are connected: that was the guys side. You can just barely see half of the girl's side. We had wooden bunks to sleep on, thin walls to let every sound from either dorm come through loud and clear, and earwigs to say 'hello' to in the morning, (it was usually a very LOUD hello when the earwig was found inside one of our sleeping bags) -a lot of shrieks came out of the girls side of the dorms... not so many from the guys side.
It got VERY cold at night, so a lot of us ended up doubling up to sleep. I don't think any of us were really expecting how cold it would actually get when the sun went down. :)
These were our... bathrooms. They weren't that bad though; most of us were used to camping in Alaska and using outhouses.
This is kind of a 'bird's eye view' of the camp. We were staying at the lower camp. Another missionary group was in the upper camp.
This is Greg. The amazing camp leader.
And these are the three other camp staff members (besides the wonderful cooks, and construction guides) All of them were AMAZING to work with. They were really passionate about God, and reaching the people of the community.
So, NEXT: - Part 2 - "Ninos"
