WOW what and experience

Well I just returned from Tijuana Mexico from 9 days of some of the most amazing expereinces of my life! I went with our church from Keizer Oregon and another group from Canby. There were about 20 of us on the trip. We headed off on last Friday morning a group of 4 vehicles packed to the brim with food, sleeping bags, clothes, tools, crafts and honestly about 25 completely full bags of cookies and candy! (this was not a time to be watching what I ate!) We arrived at the church in Tijuna on Saturday around 6pm or so. I was a little nervous because of all of the negative stuff that we had been hearinf about on the news but honsetly the entire time I never really once felt unsafe. Infact I was astounded at how beautiful I found the city and Mexico in general to be. Of course there was a lot of poverty and living accomodations that are appalling at the least, but there was something about the people andthe sense of community and tradition that just captured me. The colors were different down there as well as the arcitecture, and the sky was also a different color, kind of like this blue color with this yellow orange thing in it that gave off a wonderful little bit of heat, I think it is called sun! The week was filled with LOTS of manual labor including lots of painting, digging carrying, cleaning and then yes more painting, but it was the most glorious feeling to look back at the end of the week and see what we had accomplished, it was amazing to see the amount of work that got done with 20 people working together. We also did VBS on 3 of the days. This was SOOO much fun. We did little crafts for the kids and puppet shows, plays, face painting, bubbles and then towards the end we passed out Bibles. Everyone was so nice there, I just cant get over it. There was this one little girl who loved having her face painted and there weren't many kids there so I did like 3 or 4 for her and then in some sort of communication invlolving hand gestures ( I barely speak Spanish and most of the kids do not speak English) she asked me if she could draw on me (a first) I was a little hesitant thinking of some of the drawings I have seem little people do, but she very sweetly took my hand and on the top of my hand she drew a purple (of course) cross and then colored it in behind with pink (of course). I immediatly got tears in my eyes because here we were down there to share the Lord with these kids and her she is reminding me that I also can learn from them. It was a very powerful little moment for me and it is one that I will keep in my heart for a long time. So needless to say it was VERY hard to leave, especially knowing that I will not be back next year, but I have decided to do everything I can to help Joe get down there next year so that he can experience this as well. This is a link to a blog that was kept by one of the poeple organizing our trip: http://kevinhohnbaum.blogspot.com/ Thanks to Kevin and Jane for coordinating this amazing mission trip!!!!!!!!