Replacement Missions Trip

When you are called at one in the morning and are told that your missions trip to Nicaragua is cancelled the day you are going to leave, you are probably really mad.  I know I was!  I was a few hours from getting on a plane and our trip was cancelled because of an airline issue.  But as God would have it Mexico in August 2011 was the replacement trip. 

It was a few weeks later into the middle of August and we got on a plane and flew over to California.  But our journey was not finished, we then got white fifteen passages vanes and drove six hours down into Mexico.  We went to a little town in the Baja California Peninsula.

This size hour drive was perhaps the scariest ride of my life.  We are driving through the mountains on a two narrow lane road with a guard rail for only half the trip.  Most of the cars that passed on the other side were primarily semi-trucks. Music was the only thing that kept everyone calm and until the song by Carrie Underwood Jesus take the Wheel came on.  


My youth pastor was driving and as this song came on he started singing loudly and every time the words 'Jesus take the wheel' came on he let go of the steering wheel.  The roads were curvy and all of us started to scream.  My friend sitting in the passenger seat a few months into having her license grabbed the wheel to steady the van.  I quickly changed the song to something else and my youth pastor continued to sing the lyrics but replacing 'Jesus take the wheel' with 'Jesus take Camille' which was the name of one of the girls in our van.

The entire trip down took extremely long but we made it into Mexico and made it to the valley in which we stayed for the whole trip.  Up to this point for me all the missions trips I have been on have been children focused, this trip was different.  We brought the extra money we raised and used it to build a house for someone.  This first step was to get the equipment needed. After we did that then we split up into three different groups to go to three different places each day.

This is the house we built

For the first day my group went to a place called the dome.  There we built the chairs, benches, and beds that were going into this house.  It was a long day with a lot of hammering and soar hands.  We were kindly given food from the neighbors that lived in the section where the dome was.  One of the houses was the pastors family of the church there as well and the other building was an orphanage.  We played with the kids for only a few minutes, but they loved every minute of it and it was a great distraction for us.  Our hands were red and our arms were weak but we kept on cutting the wood and building the furniture.

The second day my team went to the building sight and we had two purposes that day.  The group that was their before us had put up the frame to the the house.  Our job was to paint the sides blue, put up the shingles on the roof, nail in the drainage system when it rains, and to dig the hole for the outhouse.  We knew it was going to be a long day a head of us but we wanted to work hard and we wanted to make the best of what we were given.

As a person who is afraid of heights I decided  to work on the roof and it was scary but very entertaining.  We started off painting the sides blue, which means that we got blue paint on us.  They once we got one side painted we let others take over and started working on the roof.  We put down the tar and started placing the shingles.  After we were all finished we started nailing in the metal storm drainage which after a hard day of nailing wood together the day before to much more effort than we all thought.  Once that was finished we were covered in blue paint and black tar.  

Most of the guys had spent the day digging the the hole an they were getting to a point in which they couldn't fit in the hole to dig.  I then volunteered my small frame to start digging until it was deep enough that we could put the outhouse that one that the other groups had built.  The hole was so deep that I wasn't able to get myself out of the hole.  Instead two of my guy friends had to grab me by the arms to pull me out.  We arrived back to base later than we were supposed to and went straight to dinner.  Most of the group was covered in blue paint, but the exception was three people (myself included).  We were covered in blue paint, tar, and dirt.  As we tried to wash it all off after dinner we seemed to be very unsuccessful.  We attempted to use gasoline to try to scrub some of it off, it only worked a little bit.

On the third day we went to the house that the pastor of the church in which we came down to help.  The house was in the process of being built and their family was filled with almost 20 kids so it was a few stories high.  They needed to add another floor so the best option was to create a basement.  This day we then spent the whole day digging in the dirt to start to create the basement.  It was three straight days of working hard and the reward was great.  We built a house and added some electricity for a family in the church, built all the furniture for it, and dug out majority of a future basement.  It was hard but all of it was used by God to reach people, a nice addition is I can say I have built a house!

Life Lesson #16: Working with you hands for three days straight in the hot sun will be hard, but enduring through it means that God will use you for a much grater purpose and saving a life instead of just giving them a home. 

Plane Ride Alone

The greatest moment in a child's life is when they start to do things on their own without their parents.  In July of 2011 and hour before I was to leave to go on my third missions trip to Nicaragua our plane was cancelled.  Trying to get forty people on the same plane within a few days of our trip was simply impossible.  I was already packed and excited to get out of the house.  I decided that I still needed to take a vacation and visit my extended family back home in Minnesota.  

I called up my dad as soon as I thought of this great plan.  I had convinced him to look at how many miles we had and the trip would cost us nearly nothing.  I was dropped off at the airport a few days later and my dad went with me as far as he could.  It was a nerve racking experience and I slowly forced myself to calm down.  I had been in this airport so many times and this was nothing new, except for the part of being alone, but that can be fun if you let it.  I got through security fairly quickly which I was thankful for and I went to find my terminal.

As I reached my terminal I sat down and sighed a sense of relief.  I loved flying and that wasn't the part I was terrified about it was the fact that I had to maneuver through the airport by myself and making sure I did not forget my suitcase.  The flight was pleasant and I sat next to some very nice people.  I made sure I didn't forget my suitcase before I got off the plane.  I didn't check my bag because it was ultimately cheaper and my grandma bought me the liquids I would need  for the week.

My cousins picked me up at the airport and the fun started right away, we drove a few hours up to my grandmothers house and I was so excited to see her and the rest of my cousins.  We spent that next weekend out on the lake doing all the things that we loved to do on the water.  My uncle tried to knock me off of the Sedoo, but I held on like there was no tomorrow.  I got to spend a lot of time with my cousins on both sides of my family and it was a well spent week.  I got to have some great midwestern and Norwegian food that I grew up on.

Life lesson #15: Uncles are meant to have fun with you and try to knock you off of whatever you are riding on the lake, but you must fight back because sometimes you just might knock them off.