Guest Writer

My name is Ally. My mom, asked me to write a little "exciting paragraph" from my trip. 32 people from my youth group recently got back from an amazing trip to Tijuana, Mexico. On July 12th, we flew down to San Diego, spent the day on the beach, then drove down across the border. Sunday morning, we immediately met our families and got to work. This wasn't the type of work I had ever done before. I had gone to Mexico three previous times, but my work then was mainly focused on children or women. Now, I was solely working construction. If you try to imagine 32 high school teenagers trying to build a house, you never would have thought how hard we all actually would work. We were split into two groups, and each group made one full, complete house - from nothing to being lived in. We had four work days, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. to finish the task. The house I worked on was going to be lived in by a recently divorced man, who had a child he was never able to see. Before we came down, he was living with his parents and brothers in a small, two room house - barely big enough for them. Our team, laid cement, built 7 walls, put a roof up and tarred it, and gave the house a stucco finish. Both teams successfully completed each house. Our team was very connected, and we worked together well, in a very encouraging way. It was amazing to see how big of an influence our group had been. On previous trips, you would only be able to lay the seed and hope something comes from it. On this trip, we saw the actual planted there. A week after our group left, there was a follow-up meeting with the man living in the house and a local pastor, telling the man that our group of kids went down to help him out, using the love of Christ. We just wanted to show him love and compassion for everything going on in his life, by giving him something we were able to give. This was one of the best trips I have ever been on. God was working in Mexico.