On the road again...

Thursday, March 22 2012 as finally arrived.

For those of you on Facebook, you may remember my very first post about this trip 6 months ago. You certainly have seen Adam Doty counting down the days for the past month and a half. And just like a kid on Christmas Eve, I have been counting down the hours for the past 3 days.

I am thankful that you are reading this blog. After the positive response from those that followed our recent Uganda team's blog, I thought it would be fun to have our Mexico team do a blog this year. I asked Tarena B. to put one together, and asked her to share from the perspective of a first time participant (which she and her family are). Other members of our team will also be sharing their experiences from time to time as well.

What is the Spring Break Mexico Missions Trip all about? This is our 8th year of doing it, but I bet most of you do not know what we do and who it is for. So, I thought I would give a brief history of how the trip got started and what we do. Of course every trip is unique and we are always surprised by what God has in store for us.

In 2004, I was asked to join the Missions Committee for Canby Christian Church. At the time Allison Hartwell was the head of the committee. One of the goals that I stated was that we would have a second Mexico missions trip, one that would compliment the summer trip that the High School group did. Since it was my idea, it was immediately my responsibility (funny how that works). We decided that we wanted a trip that would have a family focus, but be open to anyone that has a desire to serve our Lord. Allison had a friend that had recently come back from a Mexico missions trip and she shared with me a website for a missions organization.

I was sure trusting. Based on that one recommendation, reading a website and one phone call, I sent off our deposit of $200 and reserved the time during Spring Break of 2005. I had about 4 months to put together a team. I spoke in front of the church services several times, and spoke to each Sunday School class, inviting people to join the team.

By the time we made it through the Christams season, we had a team of 20 people - this just so happened to be the minimum number needed to have a missions team with the organization would be working with in Mexico. The trip was a huge success and we were hooked, we have been working with Go Missions to Mexico every year since (www.GoMissionsToMexico.com).

So what do we do on the Spring Break Mexico Missions Trip? Well, since it is a family focussed trip, and we have had people of all ages participate (1 yr old - 77 yr old), we knew that it could not be a construction focussed trip like the high school group does each year. During this trip, there is usually some construction work - but the reason is to build a relationship with the Mexican people we are working with, not to actually finish the project.

The biggest focus of the trip is the relationships with the people. We will be doing four evening outreach services, 2 general outreaches and 2 aimed at teens and young adults. We will be putting on 5 VBS programs - in the past we have had as many as 350 kids during one afternoon of VBS. We will be doing a door to door prayer and evangelism ministry each morning. Finally we will be doing a Bible study program for the women who's children are at the VBS each day. We will be busy and tired, and amazingly every year we come back refreshed and on fire and ready to serve at home.

I hope that throughout the next week and a half that you will get to share with us some exciting experiences - from the comfort of your home. We really do appreciate your prayers and support.

Now I had better get off of here, I have a lot of work to do before we leave Canby in six hours.

In His Service,
Brandon Chase