On July 23, one adult and four teens from Morgan Hill’s Advent
Lutheran church left for a week’s mission trip to Mexico. They
traveled and worked with a larger group from Immanuel Lutheran
Church in Los Altos.
On July 23, one adult and four teens from Morgan Hill’s Advent Lutheran church left for a week’s mission trip to Mexico. They traveled and worked with a larger group from Immanuel Lutheran Church in Los Altos.
The group of 27 youth and nine adults had been planning this trip since February. Their 12-hour distant destination was Centro Concordia, a bare-bones lodging facility in Tijuana where they would live while serving poor residents of the region.
The vans and pickup trucks were loaded with construction materials and tools as well as food, clothing and educational materials for distribution in Mexico. Advent had collected some 500 pounds of shoes and other clothing for the trip, but it couldn’t all be carried in the vans, so the excess was donated to South County charities.
Working through Lutheran Border Concerns, a denominational aid agency, the group’s goal was to build three simple houses for needy families at a site about 12 miles from their dormitory. Since the road connecting them was full of holes and other obstructions, the daily trip took about an hour each way.
Cement slabs had already been poured when the Americans arrived, so they were able to completely finish the 12-foot-by-12-foot “casas” by Thursday. When keys were turned over to the homes’ owners that afternoon, the local pastor led a ceremony, followed by a “fiesta” during which the Mexicans and Americans celebrated success.
Some of the Americans weren’t involved in actual construction, but they had important roles to pay:
* A few “chow-chow chicks” remained at the dormitory to prepare meals for everyone else.
* Other teens and adults were responsible for presenting a Vacation Bible School program at a church located near the work site. The Bible stories, crafts, playtime and snacks proved so popular that attendance doubled to 60 participants by the end of the week.
On Friday everyone packed up and left because another team was arriving for their own mission project. After finally getting back across the U.S. border, a lengthy process under tightened security, they stopped at a beach near Chula Vista for recreation time. Then they continued north to Thousand Oaks where they spent the night in the residence halls of California Lutheran University. Breakfast in the college cafeteria was followed by a long drive back to the Bay Area.
John Briese, Advent’s chaperone, is a veteran of youth mission trips. He praises the Mexicans he met as “very welcoming and open,” pointing out that the Americans “get as much out of it as the Mexicans do.”
Briese looks forward to repeating the experience next year, saying, “The kids build the casas; I go to build kids.”
The teens from Advent are enthusiastic about the week’s experience. Matt Ellis, a junior at Live Oak High School, says, “Doing good work for God is a powerful faith-enhancer.”
Monte Vista Christian High School sophomore Danielle Price remarks, “It was moving to see people living in such poverty and to be able to help them out.”
