Living a life that Matters

Well, the hardest part of leading a mission trip are the parts leading up to it. I’m not the most organized person. So collecting birth certificates, passports, money, etc was just not my thing. So I left that to Hannah.. the person I co-led with. She was awesome and I very much enjoyed getting to know her.

I loved the team we went down! We had such a good mix of people… high schoolers, college students, young adults, couples, etc. Yet I knew all of these people were hand-picked by God. And he used all of us in amazing ways. Everyone had a unique gift and talent and none of them went unused.

We spent 3 days in Tijuana. We partnered with Mexico caravan ministries. They are a mobilization ministry that builds starter homes for struggling familes. It is an amazing ministry ran by Eddie Passmore. It is the hope and prayer that many of the families that have homes built for them find Christ through acts of service of the church teams that come down.

There were some nervous people on our team. Some have never been on a mission trip and some have never even been out of the country. Yet God moved through all of us and amazing fellowship and friendships began to form as soon as we left. We got in and had our debriefing and then headed out to Gordo’s for food. There is nothing like and open grill with beef and pork tacos being served.

Eddie gave a message on using this trip to further step out and reach unreached people groups in other countries. It was pretty aparant his heart for those nations. Mexican caravan is just a stepping stone to getting Chirstians to pray about going to those countires. Phil led worship and did an amazing job.

We build a 12X12 house for a young couple the first day. We didn’t have a ton of room to work with, but we got the job done for the day. I must say that everyone worked pretty hard. It was cool to see the team unity that went on. We got to build some relationships with some of the neighbors and the family. Probably the awesome part of the day was the aunt asking us to pray for the young couple because they didn’t know Jesus.

We spent the evening playing games and relaxing. We then visited a local church and a school were kids were having recess. It gave us the opportunity to give them some gifts like candy and toys. We also gave out some soccer balls. Plugging into the children is always the fun and rewarding part of doing missions. After dinner at Renee’s (where I tried a taco made up of cow stomach lining), we had a debriefing with our group. I really enjoyed hearing some of the people of our group talk about culture and how God was working in them. We broke off into prayer triangles and prayed for the city.

I got to spent the rest of the evening chatting one on one with different memebers of the team. 3 days just wasn’t enough time to get to know everyone, but I tried. Some of us guys goofed off most the eveing before lights out. We didn’t have running water that evening which made things fun and interesting. Especially because the food was starting to take its effects on everyone.

We had another worship and sermon from Eddie the last day and went off to build another house up on a hill. The breeze made the hot day easier.We actually got this house done pretty quickly. The family made us a big bowl of pork in green chili sauce with tortillas for lunch. I enjoyed it, but it was a challenge for many. We said goodbye to the Mexican caravan staff and headed home.

Even though this was a short mission trip, it was definetly full of God filled moments.Its amazing what he can do in a short amount of time. I really enjoyed the new realtionships I built with both the Mexican caravan staff, the people of Tijuana and of course our amazing team. I look forward to many more of these trips and proclaiming the good news of Christ to those in need.