Saturday morning we met at Moody, packed up and left. Mom, sis and I arrived early so we had to wait a little but it was ok. The only problem was getting up at 5:30 on a Saturday morning to get to Moody before 7. I thought Dave was going to be there when we got there but he showed up sometimes around 7 so that all worked out. So, we all loaded into the two vans and pickup and headed south. We went through the tri-cities and down into Oregon. At weed California, we got onto I-5 and took that pretty much the full length of California. It was a long day in the car to say the least. The total drive down was roughly 26 hrs of almost straight driving. I unfortunately didn’t get much sleep on the way down, but oh well, it happens sometimes. On the way down, we ran into problems with the blue van and to some degree the white one, which was what I was in. The blue van I guess was having problems with the oil level or something like that; I’m not exactly sure. We stopped at a service station and in the rather extreme cold of the early morning hours prayed for protection on the vehicles. Then we continued heading down into California and for the rest of the trip the blue van functioned like it was supposed to; which was really good. The winds and rain on the highway were incredible. Seriously, the winds were blowing the van all over the road and the wipers on high could just barely keep up with all the rain that was driving down on us. We put in a worship cd and cranked it up to help pass the time. I’ll say this though, the winds made for an interesting experience in northern California. Long before that though, Jonny grabbed his guitar and at least for a little while played some worship songs. That was cool too; having some worship going on which was neat to listen to. A nice way to make the dreary long Oregon highways pass just a little bit better. It was rainy for pretty much all of the trip down. When we left Spokane it was raining slightly, also somewhat in Oregon and I already mentioned what the rain was like in California. It was a long ride, lots of short stops, well sort of lots… they were spaced probably about 5 or so hours apart at some times and shorter an others. Probably around 1 or 2am, Wendy came into the back seat where john Anyan and I were. John eventually spaced out after the 3 of us talked for a while and for the next hour or so, it was just Wendy and I talking. By the time we decided to stop talking it had to be close to 4am so maybe it was later than I thought when we started talking. The funny thing was soon after we finally decided it was time to get some sleep, we stopped for gas. So we got out and of course were awake again. It was kinda funny, here I am a huge Mariner fan deep in Oakland A territory. Haha didn’t get any comments though, guess it was wrong time of a day to run into big baseball fans as we covered California in the overnight hours. I fell asleep after that break and woke up just after we got to the far side of San Diego. That had to be about 7am or 8am. Kristen slept nearly half of the trip, which I guess was a good thing because she wasn’t feeling all that great going into the trip, but bad because we ended up teasing her about that all week.

   We arrived in Mexico and finally piled out of the car for a couple hours at a church in Tecate. Pastor Arial, whose church it was, has quite a vision for the church. He wants to see hundreds of churches spring up from the people of his congregation. The idea is train 10 men, then they train another 10, and so on. Eventually you have a huge growing, but at the same time with all these people being trained there is the need to be sure they are completely trained which is why he’d like to see a small bible college of sorts in the are to train the men of the church, or just people of the church for that matter. Anyhow, we walked in and at least I felt like I was a little out of place. What with the language barrier and all. Didn’t take too long before I felt a little less out of place. If there’s one thing about Mexican worship though, it’s loud. We’re talking concert volume here, which I absolutely loved. They had a keyboard and drums but those two instruments covered so much of the tonal spectrum it was so cool. Lots of bass coming from the keyboard which was also nice. After church got out, we headed off to our places where we were going to be staying. The guys stayed and Jorge's house and the girls stayed at Arial’s house. All the meals were excellent, as could be expected from the Mexicans.

   Monday I got up rather early, a little before 7, after a rather long night on a hard, very cold floor. It got cold every night about 5:30am. I had to put on a sweatshirt just to stay warm and this was inside my sleeping bag. This was I think the first time that I’ve had to sleep in jeans and eventually a sweatshirt just to stay warm. So, after breakfast, which was excellent, we had worship time and a short lesson before heading off to the worksite. We got to the worksite and started to plan things out, but before we could do that, we needed to get some purified water from the store around the corner. So 4 of us guys headed over there with empty water bottles fully intending to exchange 6 for 6 and be back in no time. These are good-sized bottles too, picture the light blue clear ones you see in the dispensers at businesses and the like. Anyhow, we get to the store, exchange the 6 and started to plan how to get them back to the worksite. Well, because there was only 4 of us, a couple of us had to carry 2 bottles each. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. I used the excuse of being small and it worked. Lol… anyhow we were trying to get them balanced so we could walk back when Bill said one was slipping. So I grabbed that one, as I wasn’t holding one at the time, and the other one slipped off his shoulder. Now get the picture here, you’re holding what has to be at least a 40lb jug of water on your shoulder with your arm extended out to keep your shoulder up and your hand is on the front of the jug. Now imagine the jug falling off your shoulder and rolling off the backside of your arm, past the tricep muscles. You’re hand becomes very weak very fast when that happens. Well that happened and the bottle dropped onto the concrete floor and broke scattering gallons of water across the floor. Hehe, oops, that was kind of a spendy accident but there wasn’t much we could do about that. I’m just glad it wasn’t my fault. So, after we get the other 5 and the new one outside we had to figure out how to carry them all, well meanwhile there comes a few waves of water pouring out the front door. Yep, the water we spilled… lol… anyhow the walk back was interesting as it was long and the jugs were heavy. We made it though, having to stop and either reset the grip or change holds quite often. It was almost my limit taking one of them because I couldn’t get it balanced all that great on my shoulder. I managed it but not all that easily. So then, we get back to the worksite and begin the actual projects split up by which team we were in.

   I was part of the team that was building a stage for this church, team c; the problem was we didn’t have any materials to build with so we used that time to plan how we were going to build it. Jonny came up while ed and I were planning and though he had no clue what we were talking about he grabbed a pencil and started acting like he was completely following our conversation of course he had absolutely no clue what we were talking about whatsoever but it was still a good sell… lol… good times. but eventually we got the 2x4’s that we needed and got going. By the end of the workday, we were well on our way to having the project’s initial stage completed. We had it mostly built after that morning. The front and top of the project were all that was left by the end of day 1. it was that evening though that really was the memorable part.

   That evening the guys headed off to a men’s meeting at Arial’s church. It was a cold evening but oddly enough once we got going I wasn’t all that cold. What I guess would have normally been like a bible study or something ended up being a night of testimonies. 3 Mexicans and 3 of us… I found out things about some of the people on my team that I would never have guessed. Ben Downie mostly… just the process and all that he’s been though to being him to where he is now was really cool top hear. He’s been through a ton of things, and he’s learned through them. It was amazing just how emotional that evening was. For everyone there, seeing how God works in people lives is just wow… it’s something else. I got all choked up several times during those couple of hours; yet it was still one of the highlights of the trip.

  Tuesday was a short day work wise. After the morning routine, I headed out to the other worksite along with my team. The couple of hours that day were the only ones that I got to work with Danny, who ironically was on my team. In what little time I spent with him though, Danny really strikes me as the intelligent type which just looking at him and Jessica they seem to fit quite well. Anyhow, that was a short day of work that was supposed to end so we could be back at Jorge’s place by 1pm, but at 1 the people from the church came and fixed us lunch. It was one of the best lunches I’ve had. First off, they brought in a huge propane tank followed by what looked like a huge wok type deal. Then they poured a couple quarts of cooking oil into the pan and brought that oil to a boil. Then they added chicken and fried it in the oil… oh my goodness, that was incredible; so excellent. So, after that huge meal we headed back to Jorge’s and when we got there got the basic outline for the upcoming vbs. Soon after I changed out of my work boots, we left to set up for the vbs. We got lost. Lol… It’s funny, I was sitting almost in the back seat and Jessica was lying down in the very back seat. Heather, who was driving forgot about a huge ditch when coming down a hill and hit it around 30-40 mph… I almost hit my head on the roof and Jessica went flying up almost over the back of my seat… it was not good. Jess hadn’t been feeling all that great so she was trying to get some rest. Talk about a rude awakening. Hehe…  anyhow we wondered around Tecate for a while before finally figuring out where to go. The vbs in and of itself was ok. I was a little uncomfortable but that’s because I don’t like working with kids; give me construction work any day over working with kids… we had basically 20 kids there so that was nice; considering the short notice that was really quite good. We passed out the flyers for it that day if I remember right. Tuesday night we went to a service at Oscars current church. Aside from being cold, that was ok. By the time we got there though, I was completely exhausted plus I was sore. Musically, Arial has more advanced gear so from a purely musical standpoint, the service at Oscar’s was far from good, but that really didn’t matter. Oscar had an acoustic guitar that has a single coil pickup installed in the sound hold running into an old peavey amp. It honestly didn’t sound all that great. It wasn’t a true acoustic sound at all, not even close. As bad as that sounded when listened to from a purely musical standpoint, it sounded great in that setting if that makes any sense. It was the type of thing where I knew the sound was terrible but still found it enjoyable, maybe it was a combination of listening to Oscar jr. on the drums, God, and being tired. But for some reason it was still enjoyable to listen to. We got back to Jorge’s house after that was over, and I just about crashed. I was sore and tired… we had a while before dinner though so Jonny and Jerry grabbed their guitars and started playing some worship. Ben D. wasn’t feeling all that well either so he was in bed watching all of this unfold. He had missed the service at Oscars but that was ok, as he did need his rest. Anyhow, with Jerry on guitar and Ben sick, that left the djembe open. So, I ended up taking that over for the evening. For never having played one of those, I don’t think I sounded too bad. Granted I’m used to an actually trap set, but that was cool too. Here’s the thing though, when was the last time you saw a bunch of college kids dancing around a room worshiping God? Chances are its’ been a while. Not for me it hasn’t. Only as far back as that night. With a few exceptions the whole group was really into it… maybe to varying degrees but we were all there. It seems kinda funny to hear someone with a very strong voice be slightly off-key. They would go sharp or flat because of seriously belting a note out, hence why this person lost their voice so much. But, that was definitely a cool time. One that really none of us wanted to end but it eventually did and then it was dinner time and time to start wrapping things up for the day.

   So, Wednesday we were back at Oscars church doing the drywall stuff. It was actually warm that day. Very much like how I had remembered Mexico being. It started Tuesday really but it was warmer than it had been, which I completely enjoyed. The first coat of mud was put on the day before by the previous group so I was part of doing the 2^nd coat and the finishing up touchup work. Ben G. thankfully knew exactly what he was doing as this was what he does as a job so that was neat. Before we could get to the actual mudding work we had to sand the first coat down a little. Nothing major but just enough to smooth it out and remove and burrs and stuff like that. So I did that for a while. Wearing a face mask was a definitely must do for most of that because I didn’t really want to breath in all the dust. By the time Wednesday was over, we had all the room mudded at least twice and it was pretty much ready to be painted the next day. That night, we had the open house at the church. At first mostly kids showed up but eventually the adults showed too. So we ended up wrapping things up inside while part of the group plated with the kids who arrived. After a while of that Jonny, Jerry and I headed inside to get set up to lead worship for the group. Jonny and I on guitars and Jerry on djembe. That went well, but the problem was I have no idea how much of what I was doing was being heard. Guess that’s the problem with playing a relatively quiet guitar as a lead guitar against a louder rhythm guitar. What you do has the tendency to get lost in the mix. Oh well I guess, it went ok. Missed a few chords here and there, but nothing major. Jonny knew I think 1 song completely in Spanish so we did that one and another he knew a part of it in Spanish so he made that transition. It really didn’t matter to me as I was primarily musical in nature and not vocal. That was also the night that we gave Jorge the doghouse we made. Later on when we got back to his place, a couple of us helped move it to the general area where it would be.

   That night there wasn’t anything planned for outside of the group so we spent some time on group affirmations that sort of thing and sharing. I was doing some journaling when we started that, thinking over what had happened the night before in the sharing time that seemed to being back some of the hurt that I thought I was done with. We were together as a large group sharing some of the things that had been going on in our minds, testimonies if you will but of what was going on during the trip. I was listening to Melanie share something and I started looking through my psalms notebook, which I had taken along. I guess I figured I might find something to say… I came across a couple psalms that I wanted to look at 2 and 19. Well nothing in 2 caught my attention so I headed to 19, but never got there completely. There were things in 18 that caught my eye. The whole concept of praising God among the nations. Look at where we were and what we were doing… we were in a different nation and culture praising God. I found that neat to think about, just living out that psalm or at least that part of it. The other part that stuck out to me was the whole idea of holding to God and God being our source of strength… as I shared about that all the memories and hurt from all that I’ve been through with Katie over the past semester came rushing back like a tidal wave. The hurt that I thought I had dealt with was there again; almost as strong as when it first came up. I lost it, and really couldn’t say much more. I don’t know exactly why things happened like they did that night, but really, I have no clue why lots of things happened that have happened so that’s not really that big of a deal, or at least it shouldn’t be. It was after midnight before we got to bed that night, and Thursday had arrived; the final day of the trip…

   As you could guess Thursday was the day of finalizing things. Finishing up the projects as best we could and so on. When we got back to the church we had to wait for the paint so some of us started working on something else while we were waiting. In the end they ended up concocting some off-whiteish color that it would be hard to duplicate. They had dark gray, white, and yellow all mixed together to create the color that worked for the project, which was nice. So, we spent most of the day painting, or at least my group did. The other group at that site worked at sheet rocking one of the side rooms, and when we were finished, it looked very nice. We quit a little early because of a few other plans we had and when we got back to Jorge’s it was time for a birthday party. Before that though we had lunch and that was when we had one of the huge laugh fests of the trip. Call it a hot sauce-eating contest… and yes, it was the guys who started and did it. It started as Dave taking a bite of the hot sauce as per Jonny’s dare. Well, the whole group finally was able to persuade Jonny to do the same *triple dog dare* and so it began all the guys were taking turns taking a bite of this stuff that was really hot. Pretty close to jalapeño hot so it was right up there in temp. I had no problem with it as I’d used that sauce before but for those who hadn’t it was something else. The funniest part came when John and Ben G. dared each other to drink a set amount of the stuff and did… the whole group was busting up with laughter, as was Jorge, and the girls who had started watching the insanity. We had just been using a small bowl that was maybe 8 oz or so, but midway through as a joke someone brought in the huge bowl that was at least 2 quarts. We didn’t eat all of that though, or any of it for that matter. Lol… so anyhow after that it was birthday time. I got up and everyone else proceeded to gather around for Heidi’s birthday cake. I missed this but I guess Kristen pushed Heidi’s face into the cake a little bit. Kristen ended up with some cake on her face when Heidi rubbed some off on her… better than I guess had happened to their other roommate Jessica. She had gotten a bloody nose before when one of them had done virtually the same thing to her. hehe… after that we headed out back for the traditional piñata. Jorge had it on a rope so he could pull it up and down when they would take a hack at it… brings fresh meaning to the phrase swing and a miss. She’d thing she had a good swing lined up and he’d move it leading to a miss. Lol, it was great fun to watch. It took a while but the combination of Heather and Heidi finally broke the thing open.

   Soon we headed off to where the groups will be staying this summer. When we got there, it was mid-afternoon and it was quite comfortable outside. The reason we were there at all was Heather was going to be baptized there. That was something else to see. Definitely cool… how often do you see that on a mission trip? I know I hadn’t. After that, we headed to the Tecate market for an hour or so, during which we had a run in with a guy who we think was a little drunk. The bad thing was we had no clue what he was trying to say. Eventually, we headed back or Jorge’s for our final meal before leaving. We left around 6:30 and just over 27 hrs later rolled into the lot at MNW. We would have gotten home quicker but we got lost in Oregon. Go figure, getting lost in the neighboring state. Well ok maybe not lost as in lost lost, but not on the right road so call that lost if you want to or don’t. We were heading towards the northern part of Oregon and we were going to get onto Highway 97 headed roughly towards Bend, but we ended up on Highway 26 headed toward Mt. Hood. Definitely not where we wanted to be. We discovered our mistake 45 minutes after the fact, so we ended up backtracking about that long to get back on the right road. Crazy how one missed turn can affect so many things. Sorta like life in one sense; one seemingly small choice can make a major impact on things down the road; be it for the better or not. Anyhow, on the way back I think I spent more money on junk food than I had in ages before that. I got a little more sleep on the way back than I got on the way down but still not all that much. I sat it the back the whole way by Jessica and Danny. The annoying thin was my sweatshirt disappeared on me and it got cold in the back of the van the closer we got to WA. It ended up being under my seat the whole time but I couldn’t find it so I was cold a fair amount of the trip back.

Check out the pictures from this trip here...

Also i've typed up my jounral entries from while i was down there. Read those here...