Let me start by saying it was awesome! It was cLife's youth group's first mission trip. I feel lucky to have been on the very first one. We carved the way for the years to come!
We left for McAllen, TX on Sunday morning at 6:30am. For those of you who don't know, McAllen is in The Valley, only about 15 minutes from the border of Mexico. We actually had to go through a border patrol checkpoint on the way back to Dallas--that's how close to Mexico it is. We actually arrived in McAllen in about 9 hours, but after Casey got lost several times we ended up at our destination in about 11 hours :)
To make this update a little shorter I will not give a detailed description like I would really like to. Basically, every morning we had a work project, whether it be painting a church or building a house. We typically had a few hours in the afternoon to play games and hang out. In the evening we loaded up and went to a nearby town called Donna. This was a really poor area with a lot of kids. We did what we called "Backyard Bible Clubs" with kids starting around 2 on up to 16. It was awesome. We had about 70 kids show up every night. That felt pretty big compared to our 23 high school students. By the end of the week we had around 15 kids accept Christ! It is always so awesome to be able to lead little children to Jesus and to be able to see kids leading other kids to Him.
It was also so touching to see how thankful the family whose house we were building were. The mother couldn't speak any English so she had her friend translate for her. She thanked us over and over. She began crying, then her translator began crying, and then I think I cried for the next 30 minutes. Some of the youth kids probably thought I was crazy! Ha ha.
The last day of mission trip is kind of a fun day! We went to Padre Island for a day at the beach! Then we headed for San Antonio for dinner at the Riverwalk! We spent the night in San Antonio and headed for Dallas early the next morning.
Here are some pictures from our trip!
Matt & I got really close to this group of kids!
The girl covering her face makes me laugh!
Janie telling the kids a story!
Casey and Jose!
Corena and Cassandra!
Wearing my sunglasses and some bracelets & necklaces I gave them!
Our group again!
Matt & the cutest little boy, Delfino!
Our entire group inside of the house we were building! Casey & I are on the right!
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