In July-August of 2000, I went on a mission trip to Colorado and then on to Mexico through a program called YWAM (Youth With A Mission). It was one of the best trips I've ever had. If you hold your mouse over a pic, a caption will pop up.
This is where we stayed while we were in Mexico. The building on the right.
This is the bathrooms inside of the compound, one of them at least. This was just he girls, but the one downstairs had actual stalls.
This was posted on the wall in every bathroom/stall there was in the place. Notice in the picture above the yellow garbage cans? Thats where it went.
While we were in Juarez, Mexico, everyday we went to a church. The same people came back each day accompanied by other friends or the kids brought their parents. One of the days we went and walked the streets around the church with a mexican kid and told them about a fiesta we were having and everyone was invited.
These are some of the kids who came to play with us everyday. Here they are singing a song in Spanish, with the paper plate tamberines we helped them make.
This was one of the cutest little girls I have ever seen in my life. We brought the stickers and her sister put all of them on her.
This is the only thing they had to paly with, a ball that we brought down with us, otherwise they were playing with sticks and cans in street.
This little kid was the fastest moving kid I've ever seen. He fell in love with me. As we walked around advertising our fiesta, he was kissing me on the neck while he was on my back. The girl is one of the chicks I went down there with who was also on the diving team with me the following year.
The day before we left, instead of going to the church, we went to Anopera, the poorest part of Juarez. While we were there, we walked the street and climbed ontop of this big sand dune to see as far as we could. While we were there, we did a skit with puppets at a school in their "district". It was one of the poorest, tiniest school's I've ever seen.
This is from ontop of the sand dune. If you look in the distance you can see the green line, which is El Paso, the American side, where the grass is always green for the Mexicans (or so they think).
This is also ontop of the sand dune looking in a different direction.
This was the biggest shock to me during the whole trip. This was an actual house that 5 people lived in. This was the biggest thing that made me think and appriciate what I have in my life and to work hard to keep what I have.
Overall, the trip opened up my eyes a lot. Not only to what I have, but my faith. The bond I had with the people I went with and the bond with God that I got was great. I'm not overly religious (not saying that's a bad thing) but after seeing that faith in God could make those people so happy with the minimal things that they had, was awesome to say the least.
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