Keepin' Up With Jordann

Jordann is in Tijuana for the week with the youth group (aka, Flock) from our church.  You can keep up with her here.  No, I haven't heard from her but I wasn't expecting to.  They allowed the kids to take their cell phones with them this year in case of emergency but she decided to leave hers at home since it's brand new.  She's doing VBS in the mornings at a new church so I don't know what it's like.  But I can show you photos of my trip in 2007.  The photo above is where Lauren & I went.   Here's the bus that took us from our dorm to the church every day.  Fun... especially with bus drivers that don't speak English.  (Don't worry, each team has at least one translator and most learned Spanish as a first language.)
Here's our team inside the bus... see Lauren?
Singing in Spanish:
This is the street in front of the church where we had recreation.  No yards or grass anywhere.  I'd never seen so much dirt & dust!
This is on the other side of the street looking over the neighborhood.
Then in the afternoons the kids all go to different ministries around town - elderly home, orphanage, distributing food, construction.  Here's the Refuge of the Elders.  Frank takes in homeless old people that have been abandoned by their families.  Our kids feed them, sing to them, talk to them, clean them & their building, and help with building projects there.


They stay at the base camp at night and have worship services & hopefully clean themselves.  :-)

First Trip to Tijuana

Lauren put together a video from their pre-trip to Tijuana. The four students are the Senior Staff members who are helping plan the mission trip.  The trip will take place during spring break.  Last year there were 90 high school students and about 35 adults.  There first meeting is tomorrow afternoon -- yes,  Super Bowl Sunday.  They expect dedication for this trip!

Tijuana - Wednesday at the Refuge for the Elderly

Sorry I didn't get these up as soon as I thought. Been busy crafting with Lauren. G'pa asked about electricity. I think all the people in our neighborhood (Cumbres) has electricity and running water. I'm not sure about the sewer system, though. There was a gutter than ran down the center of most of the streets that looked like it was the grey water from the homes. Sometimes it smelled like laundry detergent... other times it smelled MUCH worse!

Wednesday after VBS we ate our lunches on the bus while we travelled over to the refuge for the elderly. Frank started and runs this. He "collects" people who have been abandoned by their families or whose families can't take care of them. Here's the outside of the building.


Our food crew met us there with soup and sandwiches. We served the elderly people then sat around and 'talked' to them. Our construction team also worked there all week. Imagine the worst nursing home you've ever been in and this smelled much worse. Frank loves these people but just doesn't have the manpower to take care of them. They definately wouldn't pass inspection in the US!

They enjoyed listening to the kids sing.

Some of the kids also washed feet.

Tijuana - VBS

We're back! We left last Saturday at 5 a.m. and left Tijuana to come home at 5 a.m. Friday. It was a busy trip. We slept a little late Sunday morning (8 a.m.) but every other morning wake up time was 6:30 and lights out was 10.

Sunday morning we had our own Easter worship service, lunch, then each of the 5 VBS teams went to their church to distribute fliers for VBS. There was a light rain and the roads were very muddy & slippery. Yuck. I was very impressed with our kids' ability to communicate with the people there. We had several in Spanish 2 & 3 at school and they did a great job with the language.

Here's the front our the church Lauren & I went to in the Cumbres neighborhood. The wing on the left is the restrooms and the wing on the right is the pastor's home.I took the photo below from the front yard of the church. This is the bus we rode in all week from Rancho Solo to the church. I took this photo from the other side of the bus looking down across the neighborhood.

Here's part of our team riding on the bus. Yes, it was a cozy ride every day -- about 45 minutes each way. They amused themselves by a lot of singing! We also dropped off part of the construction team every day.
Here are the kids doing music. Again, a great job. We started off the week with 40-something kids and ended with 97.
Recreation time was spent in the street outside the church. This is looking up the street to the left of the church. They loved playing football (aka, soccer) and having the boys spin them around. And lots of chasing, tackling, hitting, etc. They're very physical and really loved our guys. I'll blog more tomorrow.

Tijuana, Here We Come!

How do you like my sign?

Lauren and I will be leaving along with 92 other high schoolers and 40-something other adults this Saturday morning at 5 am Pacific time. We'll be travelling on 2 charter buses and several rented vans stopping only for lunch and supper.

Sunday we'll be visiting neighborhoods & churches to invite kids to the VBS's that will start on Monday. I think there are 6 groups that will be doing VBS in different places. Then in the afternoons they'll go to different ministries around town: distributing food, construction, elderly center, or prayer. We'll have our own services in the evenings. Maybe visiting a church one night.

There is something new happening this year. We have a couple going to provide dental care. They were both dentists in El Salvadore before moving to the US. We also have a nurse going -- for our own group -- and there are adults going that will be doing construction the whole time and a whole team that will just be cooking for us all week!

I really have an easy job. I'm an adult sponsor for one of the kids' groups so I'll be travelling around town with them. They're doing all the planning & leading but they need adults with them just for safety. So each team has a male & female adult sponsor with them all day.

We won't be able to contact you during the week, but our youth minister's wife will be making updates on the Tijuana Blog.

Oh, that reminds me, too... Lauren created a blog with info for her Peru trip this summer.

Saturday

So I was reading some of my favorite blogs and was going through them pretty fast because no one has updated in the past few days... except my super sister! (oh, yea, and my brother, too) Then I realized that I hadn't blogged anything since Monday! Oops...

She also sent me a link to some cute baby/toddler t-shirts that say "My Mom is blogging this." and "My entire life is being blogged." Cute!

We're having a very busy weekend getting ready for Tijuana. Last night was our late nighter -- 6 to 11 pm. The services tonight and in the morning are our commissioning, 4 services in all. We just have to show up in our t-shirts and sing. Lauren's in the choir, too. Tomorrow afternoon is our last meeting when we'll run through all the VBS days. Then tomorrow night is the parent potluck. We'll leave next Saturday morning at 5AM!!!

So here's my photo for today. Another salad bowl. We're trying to eat more salads so need to be a little more creative. Plain lettuce & tomato gets a little boring after awhile. This is actually Lauren's favorite so far. Romaine lettuce, dried cranberries, crumbled feta, and sunflower seeds. We ate it with Caesar dressing this week, but my favorite is to mix Caesar with raspberry vinagrette. mmmmmmmmm.....

Cumbres!

This is our Tijuana group. Every Sunday from now until Palm Sunday we'll be meeting from 3:00 - 6:00 p.m. preparing for our mission trip. Last Sunday after our meeting we had a "bonding time" at our house. (We're trying to see how many teenagers we can have in the house in one weekend!
Playing spoons... notice we ran out of spoons and they were playing with knives! Oops, sorry parents. Really, your kids are safe at our house! :-)
Delilah, the flour baby, came back for another visit. This picture was taken right after Mr. C realized that he was sitting on her! Good thing she's not a real baby!