Day 2 - We start

Anticipation was high this morning as we left Texas and crossed the border into Mexico. Every one's spirits were high, and we were all covered in SPF 375 or higher.

The quality of the roads changed immediately upon crossing the Rio Grande. But the main roads were smooth compared to what greeted us as we turned into the colonea (small suburb towns). Old tires are everywhere.


Families own the land that they are living on, but the cost is high - around $4000 US. This price means that the families have spent basically all their savings and have sold most of their possessions to obtain the land. So while they are land owners, they have no funds left for their houses, so they use whatever the can find or afford over time to create a home.


The people are very friendly, and we find ourselves waving to kids and adults as we drive by.


We parked the bus and walked a short distance to the local church, pastored by a great couple - Valenti and Grace. These are very godly people who left a career in banking and finance to come live in the colonea and minister to this very poor community.


The teams then divided up to go to two work sites. The first is 50 yards away from the church. This site is owned by a delightful and joyful family who enjoyed showing off their youngest son's spider man shirt. The mother of this family accepted Christ as her personal savior last week.

Day 2 continued

Our second home site is a little distance way in another colonea (maybe 2 miles as a crow flies… but 15 minutes by bus as the roads continued to degrade). This was site was not the original plan for our team, but God opened a different opportunity. Our second family includes the mother and father, along with six children. The family’s old home was a small building attached to an old shuttle bus. In these conditions, people cook using one burner stoves fueled by propane. Last week, the home of this family was destroyed in a propane explosion. The explosion destroyed the building, the bus, and killed the youngest child – a two year old girl. Two of the other children are still in the hospital, and the explosion has left visible wounds on at least one of the other children.



The family was not around when we first arrived. Either they or friends had cleared the site for us, rolled the bus away, and neatly stacked the debris to the side. We started building the home, and they arrived a little later. Their pain is very real – the loss of their child, the loss of all of their possessions and home, and the uncertainty of the health of two children in the hospital. The raw emotions of this loss were clearly seen on the faces of the children and parents when they arrived on the site. Pastor Valenti talked with the family for awhile, and we prayed for the family in English. Please pray for the family for healing, comfort in their mourning, and for them to understand the love that God has for them – even when these events do not make any sense.



The construction of both homes went well today. Task one was the floor, and using comment blocks as foundations, we leveled the blocks and created 2x6 sub floors.



Everyone swung a hammer and jumped in to help. Some folks were experienced enough to sink the nails efficiently. Some others on the team gained some valuable on the job training. Taylor worked at her nails... holding the hammer close to the head and tapping away with gusto! 100+ taps later the nail was in!



By the end of the day, both sites had completed the floor and framed out the walls. Some of the moments we enjoyed the most today included working along side the families. Both families eagerly jumped in to help. Our site 2 dad worked along side me and Jim sheathing the walls. We were were sweating and red in the face, he worked silently in a zipped up fleece jacket. Communication was difficult... but not just from the language barrier. The fresh loss of his daughter was heavy upon him. I am sure that we welcomed the chance to be doing tangible something for his family today.



After lunch, the teams walked through the coloneas handing out invitations to the children's Bible school tomorrow in the church. The people were very receptive to the invites. Back home, if you were to walk door to door and give out invitations to a Bible school, few would welcome the opportunity. Yet here, families seemed genuinely interested. Tomorrow is our first morning with the Bible school. We do not know how many kids will come. Pray for us to have enough supplies and space for the kids!

More tomorrow... what adventure does God have planned for us? We are not sure - but we will enjoy the ride.

God's Blessings-
-MJ

Our Team

Team photo upon arriving at our camp. 24 folks - 13 adults and 11 teens/kids.

Thanks to all of you who helped us get to Mexico!

And it begins! (Finally!)

We have been so blessed even getting ready to go -- so our excitement today has been fantastic! Many of us made comments today about being ready and waiting for such a long time, that it feels so great to be actually flying today.

Our trip started with a great blessing (a bigger bus than we expected to take us to Boston), and a challenge (4 degree weather, and little heat on the bus). We all huddled together for warmth - some of the families using younger members for warmth!

It was an early start - the bus left the parking lot at 4AM. Everyone caught sleep when they could.



Otherwise, we made it on time and smooth sailing with the airplanes and transportation. How nice it was to arrive in 75 degree weather in Mission, Texas.

We had a nice time as a team tonight, worshipping and spending some time thinking about the word Yes... how God has said Yes to us, Yes to come on this trip, Yes to prepare us, Yes to allow us to be part of His work. And how can we say Yes back this week - to each other, to the families we will be with, with the kids, and with God.

Tomorrow we will start on two homes and get acclimatized to our surroundings. It will be an awesome day! Talk to you tomorrow night. God's Blessings -

-MJ

T minus 30 hours

Our team is packed, trained and ready to go! We are so excited about what God has in store for us.

Our team has changed a little in the past two days, as Melodee, Jesse and Molly will not be able to join us due to some unexpected circumstances. Our prayers are with them!

We have been able to find three new members to take there place. Andrea, Brielle and Tonya are joining us! For these three, this is an amazing leap of faith to join the trip with very little notice. I'm a grateful that they are able to jump in!

As we get all take care of the final arrangements before we leave, I would like to personally thank Melodee and Todd for their efforts in planning and leading the effort to make this trip a reality. Todd and I started the conversation about this trip 18 months ago, and Melodee joined in 15 months back. For different reasons, neither of them are able to make the trip. Yet both are selfless in their joy that our team is going. It has been a great privilege of mine to work with these two awesome individuals. Thank you!

Well, have to go finish packing. Our next update will be upon our arrival in Texas!

2 Weeks to go!

We are down to our last two weeks before we travel. We have been greatly blessed by the outpouring of support as we prepare for this adventure. Many of our financial needs have been met, and our request for tools for the trip has been graciously taken care of!

Our Spanish is improving... still not fluent but hopefully enough to communicate basic greetings! We have pre-recorded puppet shows in Spanish using a few of our talented, Spanish speaking teens on our team.

We have been told that the camp we are staying at will have internet capability, so watch during the week of Feb 25 to Mar 3 for updates. We will post pictures and stories.

Thanks again for your support!

Happy New Year (and 7 weeks until we go!)

God continues to answer prayers for us as financial support continues to come in. Our team is getting ready now with urgency as we are seven weeks away! Until we go, we have a good set of work and training meetings coming up:

1/20 - Saturday - 9AM-Noon - VBS planning, schedule and work delegation morning
1/24 - Wednesday - 6PM-8PM - Cross Cultural and Spanish training
1/31 - Wednesday - 6PM-8PM - VBS & mini-MOPS preparation
2/3 - Saturday - 9AM-Noon - VBS & music preparation
2/10 - Saturday - 9AM-Noon - Final VBS preparation, home building training
2/21 - Wednesday - 6PM-8PM - Final trip instructions, "Paryer Walking", safety guidelines

All of these trainings will be in the Community Center (gym) at Essex Alliance Church.

We have secured Spanish language versions of the music we used at our Summer Kids Week back in July... so while the exact words will be different, at least we will know the beat and music!

Thanks for your support & prayers!
-Mike

God is great!

Our team has been blessed with substantial prayer and financial support so far. When our team signed up for the trip, we were estimating the cost to be $1500 per person. God has provided some ways for us to reduce this cost (we found greatly reduced airfare), but God has also blessed us abundantly with family, friends and other donors who have been willing to fund our trip.

In particular, we have two single moms on our team who have been trying to figure out how they were going to be able to come up with the funding. Each has sent out letters to family and friends who have responded generously. And both have had to write out some their own checks to make our payment schedule, even when they were not sure how they could put together the funds. Today God blessed our socks off with an anonymous donor who wanted to help out with "single moms and their kids" to be able to go on the mission. This donation provided the remaining funds for each of these families to now be 100% funded to go!

With the preparation and resources that God is providing for us, I cannot wait to see what happens on the trip! He has some major things planned for us... we just have to be faithful and follow His leading! This trip really is not about us anyways... we just get to be used by Him for His purposes. How cool is that!

God's Blessings and Merry Christmas!
-MJ

Welcome!

While we have been preparing for the trip since August of 2005, this is the first post we have on this blog. Many more to come as we get ready!

Melodee, Diana and I met last week and made a few important decisions for the trip. First, we have agreed to having the children's program be for three days - Tuesday to Thursday. On Wednesday, we will try to put together a program for the mom's of the kids... kind of a mini-MOPS at the same time as we minister to the kids. Our second decision was to have the children's program be a shortened version of Fiesta! for our Summer Kids Week. We will focus on Jesus being Our Friend (Amigo), Our Life (Vida) and Our Savior (Salvador).

Team members -- watch your email for updates on training during January and February. And if you are planning on getting passports... do it now!

God's Blessings!
-Mike