Thursday, November 29, 2007

Ahh a week of rest... Well for some...

Since last we wrote we have been taking it easy. Our base leader and most of our leadership have gone to a leader conference in Guadalajara, and the DTS students are in TJ for a week. So it's just been the base core that has been here. It's real quiet and a nice pace for a couple of days. This weekend we will have three teams here building homes, for our needy families. One of those teams are our very own Sparks Christian Fellowship! We are soo excited and can't wait for this team to arrive.
Juan, Eufemia, Carlos, 9 Juan, 5 this is a post from our HOH team, it has been translated from Spanish to english but you all will get the idea.


Juan and Eufemia came from the state of Oaxaca A very poor part of Mexico. They are looking for a better life here in Ensenada. Juan bought some land on credit and he built a small room with home made mud blocks. They don't have water or electricity and they decided to live in this way because they can't pay the rent of a better house. SCF will be giving the a gift of a home to this family this weekend. Please pray for SCF and the family as they begin building, it has rained all day today and it'll be muddy :) how fun is that! They are on the road as of this post but have reached Tijuana so they are in Mexico now!

We will try to keep you posted during the weekend.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Happy day after Thanksgiving everyone...



Misty has a new job here on the Base she is the new hairdresser... na, she is the personal assistant to the Operations director, Kody Sprang. she will be helping him stay organized, and on schedule, and any other duties that may need to happen i.e. cutting his and a few others hair. (Sandy Foster would be so proud) Now she has a desk to sit at, a Mac Powerbook, and her very own Nextel to communicate with; it is actually a Blackberry unit so I am jealous of her cool stuff. As you know with great power comes great responsibility so be praying for her with all the stuff she is responsible for.

We all have been quite busy here hosting lots of teams and local groups as the building goes on in the community of "Antonio Melendres", this past couple of weeks we have had large teams from the US, alongside the neighbors, rehab center, Pastors, they have built 6 homes in that community and over 14 homes in various other Ensenda locations. So within two weeks we have built 20 homes!! This is a huge praise! We will in a hard working month do about 20 homes but this has been two weeks. My head is spinning.

During that weekend we had the great experience of hosting a group from SCF, Eric, Lisa, Hilary, Dave, Matt, Dane, Stephanie, Anna, and Amy were a lot of help AND A HUGE ANSWER TO PRAYER !! They drove here all the way from Sparks, Nevada and finally arrived at almost 11PM and were up at 6am the next day working. We all cooked, cleaned, organized, visited the community Antonio Melendres, helped with the house build, went downtown to the Red Light District. We witnessed a mugging, experienced a gentlemen totally repent and give his life to Christ, listened to two guys totally wasted speak with us with more biblical truth than anyone we've heard from in a long time (Quentin, you'd be so proud). We went to a local church the next morning, had lunch and shopped and even played a bit of Domino's on Sunday evening. It was FAST and crazy; but above all it was very good. We were so so so much encouraged when we saw our friends from home and meet some new friends. We cannot wait for next week !

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and we had a big feast last night. We ate Turkey, Ham, Mashed Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Green bean casserole, Pumpkin Pie... all the good stuff. It was a great team effort and everything was delicious, and I am glad it's over. I looked at all the stuff that was left over and remembered why back home a lot of people go out to dinner at a local casino for thanksgiving dinner and skip the whole clean up part.

Joey and Emily participated in the Revolution day festivities at school earlier this week; Emily was dressed up as Adelita and Joey was Francisco Madero. He wanted to dress up as Francisco "Pancho" Villa but maybe next year. It's really cool to see them experiencing the Mexican culture!

And as the weekend comes up we have a bunch of teams arriving (SCF included) and homes are going up and families lives are changing forever. After that a quieter regular week because the 30 + DTS students are going to be gone to Tijuana for a week and... take a deep breath... Soon we will be coming home to visit before Christmas, we can't wait to see all the changes that have happened at home and visit with family and friends.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Feeding the 100


Yesterday we went to the Antonio Melendez Community center with a group from the YWAM Base. We visited with the people, our Homes of Hope staffers interviewed families to get information for the houses that will be built, and we gave sandwiches and soup to everyone there.

Much more than that happened of course; first we had to drive to the community we traveled as a family in the kitchen Montero, we had a convoy of 3 vans and us and tried to follow the directions but it took some time to find where the community was, see the first time we went it was a different way. The first attempt took us up a hill and we came to some guys property and he told us how to get there, so we all turned around and went back down the hill and went a little farther on around the mountain and up again and then we were finally on our way, about a mile up a steep dirt road and we made it to the community center building. As we drove up we passed several burned out remnants of homes. There were about 100 or so people there, and soon after everything got rolling, Interviews, lunch and clothes were there that had been donated and all that had to be sorted out.

Also we had some other cool stuff happen, we ran into a Local Pastor we know from way back I the 90’s when we went to Rancho Agua Viva, Pablo Garcia. It was nice to see him, and hopefully we see a lot more of him during the next few weeks and months. Joey and his Father spent some time throwing rocks down the canyon on the side of the road, and spent some time talking to a teenager who had rode to the meeting with his dad and 2 other guys on their horses. He let Joey sit in the saddle and Emily too. Emily also had to use a toilet and she took a poop in a toilet, unfortunately it was a toilet that was waiting to be installed so Dad got to clean it up. I saw something like this on Jackass once, it was a lot funnier on TV believe me.

Seriously though we are going to be doing a lot of extra building over the next few weeks and this is going to be an exciting time here at YWAM Ensenada. I was thinking about all this yesterday and I was really happy and want to praise the Lord that we have the system in place, the builders, volunteers that want to come down and help and the money donated to buy the materials, and are poised and ready to really make a difference in this community in the hills.

Friday, November 02, 2007

Wildfires in Ensenada





Hi gang, sorry it's been awhile since we have written, we have been in emergency mode ever since the fires started up in San Diego. A community here in Ensenada named "Antonio Melendez" was hit by a fire. 70 Families have been impacted, and 50 of the families lost everything!

These families have very little as it is! one family has lived in their home for over twenty years, the fire riped through their home and they lost it all. See here in Mexico the families that have been impacted don't have a shelter they can run to or even to get the much needed supplies they need just for survival, they are on their own.
Our first response was to take some food and survey the area and see if anyone needed a warm place to stay. We when arrived there was only a few people left to watch over the area for security purposes. We met with the community leader, and began to repair the community center. We also took up an offering and was able to buy a stove for the workers to cook on and to keep warm at night. Some San Diego staff members came down and when they met up with some of the families, than ran down to our local store and purchased tents, sleeping bags, cots, air mattress, blankets, anything they could get their hands on to help. We are committed to seeing this community back up and running. We are HOMES FOR HOPE! We'd like to bring some sense of hope to these families, we'd like to share that God is here! and really does care from them.
The more information we get out the more help we can get for this community. We have some money that has been donated by the Mayor of Ensenada and by a local builder, for materials. We are looking for others in our community to help here as well, Our goal is to rebuild 50 homes by the end of this year. I have spoke with Rich at Sparks Christian Fellowship, and I'd be happy to talk to anyone else about what's going on here and how you can be a help to us and the families that have been devastated. We do have a phone down here now it's 775-636-8650, it is connected the computer so if the Internet is running and the computer is on, and we are around we will answer. So feel free to contact us we'd love to share with you all what's going on.
Please join with us in prayer and really seek to see what part we all can play in rebuilding this community.