Mexico - Part 3 -

Construction, Cuisine and Campfire

During the afternoons, our team was put to work on construction jobs around the camp. Several of us were lining the outdoor showers with new tarp:

Nailing up the walls.

We gathered all our own fire wood and found the chore was much different from the way it's done in Alaska. Everything was dry as bone, and when we'd pick the fallen branches up off of the sandy ground we often see the tail end of an escaping lizard.

It didn't take long to work up a good sweat, working under the hot Mexico sun.

Others of us spent construction time painting things like the outhouses and picnic tables.

Us with our two amazing construction leaders. The one in brown is Enrique, and he helped some of us in preparing some new dorms. The one beside him is Tony. Tony worked with those of us re-doing the showers- He was an amazing inspiration, and as we were working not only would he joke around and make it fun, he'd bring up biblical applications and he really influenced our spiritual walk as well.

And now about the Food! - I think a lot of us went down to Mexico thinking that our meals would probably be meager and we'd probably have to force down a lot of stuff that we wouldn't want to eat. Boy, were we wrong! The cooks at the camp were absolutely amazing, and the Mexican dishes were fabulous and plentiful! We got to eat things like Shark Tacos (pictured above), cactus and cheese, and lots more. And of course, just about every meal came with yummy tortillas, beans and sometimes rice.

Our lovely outdoor mess hall!

Helping the staff BBQ some steak.

At the end of every day, we'd all come to the fire pit and sit around the blazing fire under the stars, swapping stories about the day and singing songs. During the span of the whole week, we each shared our testimonies. It was an amazing time of fellowship; laughing together and times, and crying together at others.

(the crew that painted the outhouses and picnic tables during construction also painted one of the benches as the 'Alaska Team' bench, and all of our names are still scrawled all over that long blue bench by the fire) :)

It was rather cold at night, and we always made sure to 'blanket up' before coming to 'campfire'.

We also were each given devotions to do during some time in the day, and often a couple of us would sit together on the benches by the empty fire pit and have a beautiful and peaceful time meditating on God and His Word.

There's nothing like a good group singing around a camp fire to end a beautiful day.

Part 4 -Goodbyes- Coming up!

Mexico Missions Trip - Part 2 -

"The Ninos"

Alright, so here is a little better picture of our camp:

Here is our "Dinning Hall". We were all sitting at the picnic tables when we first met the kids we'd be working with for the week.

This is in the inside of the girls dorm.

Every day that we stayed at the camp we would get up and have breakfast, then the ninos would come in the vans and we'd spend until the afternoon with them. Then they would have to go back home while we did construction at the camp. After dinner we'd sit around the campfire and talk and sing songs. During the time between these events our team would have "free time". We played a LOT of frisbee and a littl football during our time off. After mastering pretty much every frisbee trick (except the one were you catch it in your mouth; that's hard!) I guess you could say we're pretty much all pros now... pros with bloody lips. :)

...
So, it was after breakfast, and we were all gathered around the picnic tables on what would be our first full day at camp, when the vans that were bearing our kids pulled into the gravel driveway. The ninos all came trooping down and shouted excitedly all in unison: "Good morning! How are you?"

The camp leaders had all the kids sit down at the tables amongst us and one by one, amidst a loud drumroll of hands against the tables, our names and those of the ninos were called to pair us up. It was actually raining a little bit, off and on, but everybody was smiling like it was the most beautiful day in the world!

This Dayanah, and Dania. Danyanah was my little girl (above) and Joanna and Dania were paired together (below).

Looking back now and remember the fun that we had together, to me, those are the most beautiful faces in the world!
:)

That first day, we spent playing with the kids and getting to know them. It was amazing how well everybody comunicated even through the language barrier. By the end of the day it was like we'd been best friends for our whole lives.

The playground equipment was as big a hit with the ninos as it was with the bigger kids :).

We laughed together and played games and the gospel message was presented to the kids while we were eating lunch.

And meanwhile...

We saw TONS of these:

Many, Many of these:

And even though we only saw one of these, it was enough to scar us for life:

:)

Dayanah and I.

The second day, we planned to climb a mountain with the ninos. When they first told us that, all of us kids from Alaska just about passed out. It turns out the mountains in Mexico are a lot differant from the ones in up here. :)

Trooping toward the "mountain".

On our way up and down the mountain we found a LOT of lizards... we also found them later in our dorms... hmm :)

At the top, there was a cross. We all sat down and watched as Alihandro did a really neat object lesson demostrating how Jesus washes our sin away.

On the third day, we took the kids to a beach. The beaches in Mexico are also a lot differant from the ones in Alaska. We were collecting shells for a craft we'd do the next day.

It was a day that none of us will ever forget; walking along the surf, hand in hand with our kids... then running around in the sand, and drawing our names side by side...

"I love You"

"Te Quiera"

Each day was absolutly amazing!

He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation." Mark 16:15

... Part 3, coming up: "Construction, Cuisine, and Campfires"

Mexico Mission's Trip - Part 1 -

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..

Polar Bears... Penguins... Roller coasters...

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"