We'll see you guys next Sunday! We'll blog through our trip on here, as well as on our usual blog. We've got 36 students and 4 leaders coming your way!

Well, we  [The Tijuana House Building Ministry of The Rock Church in San Diego] are coming down again with a pretty large team to build 3 houses.  This is our first for the new year.  We just got three more leaders to help mainly with communications.  Funny thing is, the three new leaders had never attended one of our builds.  Crazy, eh.  They just stepped out by faith.  One of them will be attending; the other two still need passports.

That is it for now.  See you all [MCM'ers] in a couple of days.

We arrived home last night after a LONG (read: traffic) ride home.  BUT everyone was delivered to parents safe and sound, which means no complaints from me. 

This was , as usual, a great trip.  From the first night tacos, to the "liberation of the cat", to the Biblical call to use our blessings to bless others Caravan was an opportunity to hear God speak into all of our lives.  Thanks again Eddie and Andy for keeping us pointed the right direction-- both spiritually and geographically (I really do have a poor sense of direction!)

Another day of great weather for building a house.  Today we built for a large family on the other side of Tijuana, and the build took less time than the day before (we're all getting a bit more coordinated!)  The family was very excited to pitch in and help, and before long all the kids in the entire neighborhood showed up to check out the Americans. 

For our last night in country we went to Las Portales (a sit down style restaurant) and had all kinds of food.  It was a great time and a perfect way to spend out last evening in Mexico.

Well, our first day of house building was great!  A structure went up and no injuries!  We got to spend the day with a sweet family: a mom and two young daughters who were very excited to be entertained by 10 Americans for the day, and especially enjoyed Katherine.  Then we headed back to Caravan and had the traditional 2nd night dinner- pizza... and yes it is different than American pizza. 

We just finished up talking about our first day experience as a group, and the overwhelming sense is that we (Americans) really do have a lot of stuff.  And as strange as it may seem, we tend to not be all that happy with all our stuff, while Mexicans have very few things but seem to be very happy.

Here we are.  We made it no problem around 4:00, got settled in and got some dinner at the local taco place.  It's only about 8:00 in the evening but we're all pretty much ready for bed which will probably happen real soon.

So far the weather looks good.  Pray for no rain tomorrow andwe should be in the clear.

...or more accurately, we will leave for Mexico in about an hour.  Please pray for an easy ride, pleasant weather, and little traffic.  We'll plan on stopping in Calabasas for lunch then in Chula Vista to meet Eddie who we will follow across the US/Mexico border.

We leave this Sunday for Tijuana, Mexico.  We're anticipating a great trip.  The students have spent the last two months building a team, writing a paper about Mexican culture, and getting travel docs in order.  This week will be spent with family celebrating Christmas, then we take off nearly right away to experience a whole different side of the economic spectrum.  That's why we love coming to Caravan right after Christmas.  It's pretty easy to loose focus on what the majority of the world has to live on, while we comfortable get more and more and more... this is a small way to help keep all our heads on straight!  Christ came to serve, not to be served.  Spending a few days with Caravan is our way of pressing that truth into the lives of teens.

We made it!!! We arrived last night, with no problems during travel, we arrived at Caravan around 5:30pm. After starting our travels on Friday night we traveled from Lansing, MI to Detroit, MI. We spent the night in Detroit and were ready for our flight the next morning.

So 30 of us have arrived and are here for the week. This morning we climb Cerro getting to the top we watched the sun rise. It was a great climb, and a great time to be in God's creation. We met a guy on the way down who's name was Saul, he spoke very good english and happened to be a Christian. He invited us to go to his church and to pray with him. We did join him at his church and were able to spend a few moments praying with him. It was so neat to hear him pray for his church and then to be so greatful to God for providing this time with us in prayer.

We're home!

It was a great travelling day, beginning by leaving the dorm at 4:55 a.m.--a whole 5 minutes EARLY!