Back from Mexico

Our missionary group came back from Ensenada, Mexico about a week ago. Our time down there was more than awesome.

Construction wise we... (Team A: Jesse, Kara, Danny and James) framed a bathroom/showers on the first floor, since the church currently has only one bathroom. They worked really hard!!


We had two painting teams - Team "I like boys" (Alicia C., Mel, Alicia S., Daniel, and Josue) and Team Sloth( Kevin and Marce). Team "I like boys" did a great job painting two bible murals, Daniel and the Lions Den and Moses and the Read Sea. Team Sloth, as you can see, worked very "hard" and painted the white sanctuary white. We explained to them the the sanctuary wasn't actually painted white it was the texture and if it didn't have paint on it the texture could come off very easily.


Our last team and most dirtiest team - Team Holes (Nate and Franz, sometimes Kevin and Marce). The church building had structural problems such as the second story was not properly supported so it could fall down, keep this in mind... Team Holes worked on digging 3 X 3 X holes in the ground, bending rebar, and pouring concrete for the beams that the workers were going to put up after we left.


I really didn't have a job, other than taking pictures, running errands at the stores and being pregnant. I would spend part of the day laying down in the van napping, buying tacos, taking pictures, hanging out with our kids and talking to the people from the local church.

Overall, we had a wonderful time serving the local church, La Escalera de Jacob. On Tuesday night we had a Battle of The Bands between seven churches. The worship service was great except the fact there was over 100 people in the sanctuary on the second floor that was not properly supported, with a lot of people jumping around. Let's just say a few people of from our group including myself, were praying really, really hard that the Lord would send some angels to support the building. Later the local Pastor told us he praying the entire service so the floor wouldn't collapse. We could feel the floor sway. Either way the service went well.

On our last day at the church site, the Pastor and his wife, Veronica told us that our church was a great blessing to them because now they can continue being Pastors of the church. They did not want to burden us with the fact that they were facing having to close down the church because the building was unsafe to support the amount of people in their congregation. The Pastor didn't want us to feel obligated to spend a whole lot of money to fix their church. Of course we didn't know this when we started to buy construction materials but thankfully we were able to find beams to support the second floor that weren't expensive and were approved by the local structural engineer to fix the problem.

Many, many other great things happened on this trip just ask anyone who went. Personally, for me I felt that no matter what life situation I am in I will serve the Lord wherever he calls Jesse and I to go. One our new leaders this year Alicia C. told us statement that I thought was very interesting, "Go, until you are called to stay," rather than "Stay, until you are called to go."

Melissa

Mexico, Here We Come!!

Today, Jesse and I are taking 14 people, mostly college and high school students to Ensenada, Mexico for our yearly mission trip. We are really excited to be going back to the Ranch and La Escalera de Jacob. This year we'll be working on constructing a church bathroom, possibly helping reinforce the 2nd floor, have a Battle of The Bands this Tuesday night with 4 or 5 other local churches and a soccer game.

The group has been training for weeks, for the music, soccer and learning more about christian life and being a missionary, so the group is really excited. Plus we found this awesome taco stand that won't make us sick, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

If you are the praying type, please pray that everything goes well, no one gets sick and that we can build great relationships with the Mexican churches. See you all in a little over a week!

Melissa

Mexico Mission Trip

We are back from Ensenada, Mexico. We arrived in Fremont, around 11:00 o’clock at night very tired and dirty. We’ll post more about our adventures in Ensenada but a quick overview.

Twelve people went with our group. We sent four of our people out to other groups as translators. Two others helped another group build a roof and the rest of us painted the clinic and poured concrete. No one was left in Mexico, but we did get stopped at the border for fruit smuggling. We’ll post pictures and more stories. Overall, we had a great time serving the Lord in different ways. Also, thank you Danny for making us laugh so much that our abs hurt.

By the way Ricky Borba, I wrote cemetery wrong because in Spanish it is spelled with an “n”.