Mission Ciudad de Constitucion

Only two days left until our mission trip to Southern Baja. This Thursday (Thanksgiving morning), 20 of us will pile into 3 vehicles and drive 20+ hours to the south of the Baja peninsula.

This is actually the first trip that this church has taken to Constitucion, although they did go on a pre-trip last year to see the site.

The 20 people consist of Pastor, and his wife, five Americans, 3 kids from Door of Faith Orphanage, a few guys from the rehab center, and the rest are people from the church. They are a great group of people. 10 of the people speak English pretty well, and Erin and I are the only ones who struggle with Spanish. Although we are very excited that we will be able to communicate better than we did on our last trip.

We are not sure of the work we are doing, but we know that it will be helping in the construction of a church and we will be very busy. We are going to help support the work of two missionaries and their children that we know.

Prayer requests:

• Health (Erin and I are feeling a little sick and don’t want to be sick for the trip)
• Cohesiveness with the group.
• That vehicles would work.
• Protection from the donkey meat.
• That God would be glorified in this trip.

Please let us know if you are willing to support us through prayer! This is a very important part of the trip!

2 Missions to Baja

We are excited to finally decide to officially attend two mission trips in the next month. The first will be led by our Pastor Gustavo to Ciudad de Constitucion. We will drive down for 20 hours or more and help a poor area with construction, kid programs and nightly services.

Then, on December 11th, we will be joining a group from Bethany Community Church in Seattle as they travel to an orphanage located a few hours south of Ensenada. We will help in whatever way we can with Spanish and music and build relationships from our church as we serve the children together.

We really need financial support to make this happen. If you would like to help us to raise money for these trips or even to help support someone from our church to go, please contact us or donate via Paypal on our website, or blog.

Helio to the Rescue

Chad hired Helio to do a patch job on an exposed wall we had on our house. Helio works in construction around town and like all other people is having difficulty getting regular work. As you may (or may not) recall, last winter as result of said leaky wall we had mushrooms growing up out of the carpet. So, we are very glad to help out a friend with work and to protect ourselves from leaky rainy walls. Which was finished just in time as we had 90 degree weather last week and today had rain. Just a small note of life from our side of the border.

Also, as a post note: Helio is now married. We were honored to attend his wedding October 17, 2010 to Monica.  It was a very beautiful intimate wedding up at DJ and Lynette’s house (American administrators of Door of Faith Orphanage). 

Congratulations to Helio and Moni!

 

October 31st

Normally, I like to have pictures with our posts, but I wanted to share the special time that we had this past week.
Our day started out normal. Church, lunch, check football scores.
Then we went up to the Open Arms Daycare. They were having a 'harvest' party since it was October 31st. They had kids and families come and make bags for candy, and then Erin and I played worship and we heard a sermon on the evils of Halloween.
Here in Mexico, this time of the year is rich with death. November 1st is Day of the Dead and people take meals and flowers to cemeteries and spend the night. One friend told me that they used to bring tequila to the grave of his father for that night, (because the father liked tequila) and then drink it the next day.
After the sermon, the kids were treated to carnival games and were given tons of candy and food. It was fun.
Erin helped make a cake and a pie for the cake walk!
She also made a cake for our friend Griselda. It was her birthday. We decided to surprise her and bring a cake.
We got to her house and knocked on the door. No one home. As we started to turn to leave, we heard a women's voice yelling at us to come! We only realized it was her once we saw her and her three children running down the steep dirt hill to come and get us.
We gave her the cake and she invited us up to the house of her mother. They were having a party. Her mother was a wrinkly Catholic woman with a scarf on her head. She instantly introduced us to her son (Griselda's brother) and then offered us a tortilla until the tamales were ready. We weren't intending to eat there, but there was no way we were going to leave without it. Kids were everywhere. Griselda's brother had 5 and they were trying to find costumes to go trick or treating.
It was a tense moment, as I look back. They weren't sure if we were going to be offended by the costumes. They made sure that we were not.
Soon, we shared the room with a scary bride, a duck, a pumpkin, and a couple of princesses.
No one spoke English, and Erin and I sat around the table and had a great talk with the adults as the high energy of the kids were around us.
Erin was smart enough to bring a gift and Griselda opened it up before we left. It was the only gift she got.
It's moments like these that make me so grateful to live where we do.