Prayers needed

For many years, the church here in La Mision has taken a group to serve a church in Sinaloa. Sinaloa is a state located in the west central part of the mainland of Mexico. (as shown in red in the map)

They pack up their cars and take the 20+ hour trip to serve a very poor part of their country. Erin and I really wanted to go on this trip, but we weren't sure if this was something that God wanted us to do.

A couple of Sundays ago, we attended the planning meeting for the trip and saw all of the wonderful people that were going to serve, and we felt God telling us to go. Not only would this be a good chance to serve a poor community, but a tremendous opportunity to get to know the people of our community better, and for them to get to know us.

We will be leaving on November 5th and driving in a caravan down to Guasave, Sinaloa. (in the northwest of Sinaloa) We will work for 7 or 8 days doing hard labor and then putting on a church service for the community every night. We will sleep in tents and work really hard. We return on November 14th. (yep, my birthday will be spent in Sinaloa!!!!)

Even though I am fully convinced that this is the will of God, I am nervous. It is very unknown and not comfortable. I am also not the group leader, so I don't feel in control. (which sadly is what I am most nervous about) Please join us in prayer as we try to serve and be a blessing to the community of Sinaloa and our own as well. Pray that we would grow and experience God in a new and fresh way.

Washington Group

Nancy, the chair of our board

The group served breakfast to 100 kids at the dump in Tijuana

We squished the group in our car

The group went to town to buy furnishings for a new house

Eight years ago, Nancy Ekrem cornered me at church and said that she wanted to be a leader on the mission trip. It was my first at Lake Forest Park Church. Her son, Greg, was going on the trip and so I made sure that it was OK with him. And then said yes! That was the start of a beautiful friendship!

Our first trip was to La Mision. And we both fell in love with the community. Nancy has continued the relationship with La Mision through visits with her family for Easter, special events, and even sent Greg, her son, down here for weeks at a time during the summer to serve and eat.

That is why she is the chair of our board. She truly loves the people here and sees the need for us to partner with the church to serve the community.

This past weekend, she brought a small group of people to serve once again. They were such a blessing to us and the community. They helped to furnish a house, fed lunch to our congregation after church, served breakfast to children at the dump in Tijuana, and worked on the church.

We spent the nights talking about breathing new life into our faith and had a special time of communion.

This group is a reminder that you really need to come down here to experience what we are a part of. The community, the joy, the worship. You will fall in love with it.

Think about coming down to visit us. Whether you bring a group, or just want to come for a long weekend to get out of the winter, we would love to talk to you about it.

Adventure to Mexicali

Sign on the bus. Who is Anton?
A much nicer field. Turf.

Memo. After a tough loss, and an injury.

This is Yahir. He caught the touchdown pass.

The three hour bus ride didn't seem so long. We drove through a beautiful mountain pass, called La Rumarosa. Rocks were everywhere on the mountains and we could see across an entire dessert. It was breathtaking. But I was nervous. Once again, I didn't know what to expect. They told me it was going to be hot, and that the team was good. But that is all.
We got there, and it was hot. But not too hot. Mexicali is often over 100 degrees. But today it was only 95. So we warmed up in the shade and tried to stay cool.

We battled. The other team, the Lobos (which means wolves), scored first. But we fought back and scored our own TD with a 45 yard pass from Oliver to Yahir. We even drove again after an interception and missed a field goal before halftime. We went into the half tied at 6-6. That's when the injuries started happening. We lost our center, Memo....our giant, Julio....our fullback, Varela, and our stud running back, Jaime. All at once. We were scrounging to put people in place. We don't really have any depth at any position. We usually only have enough time at practice to teach the first stringers how to play. And sometimes those people don't even show up to games.

We ended up losing 18-6. Coach Tony called the principal to tell him and he was excited. He thought that we should have been blown out. This team won the championship last year (apparently) and the league officials came and told us that other teams were talking about us, saying that we were good. Tony was excited because last year they didn't score until the fourth game and they were losing by 40 or 50 points.

That felt good. I like to hear about progress. But I still don't like to lose. Last Monday, after our first game that we lost, I was mad. I was grumpy and told them how much I didn't like to lose and asked them how we were going to create a culture of winning. I don't know if that was what helped, but I do know that they practiced better and started to see that we could play a lot better.

This was the only game where we have to play in Mexicali. I am glad for this. I didn't return home until 11pm. Most of the games will be played in Tijuana or Tecate. I am excited about the game this Saturday...

New Home

Last March, a group came down from Seattle and we built a foundation for a house. This house would be for three families who migrated here from further south and work in the fields. They built a little house on the side, which is barely standing up.

This past week, a group visited the orphanage, and they had them continue our project and built a house on the foundation.

Here is a picture of the house and the temporary shelter on the left.

Another group is currently working to paint it and drywall the inside. It should be completed in the next couple of weeks.

Progress takes time. But it sure feels good when it happens. Many times we would drive by the foundation and think of the hard work that Calvary Fellowship and the church put in to make this happen. Now we can see a house, built on that strong foundation.

The house is supposedly going to be home for three families and a total of 14 people. The weather is just starting to get cold, so I am glad that the timing of this happened when it did.