What's this blog about?

My name is Calvin. This blog will be my perspective on a Spring Break 2009 missions trip to Juarez, Mexico. I'm part of a team of 27 people being sent by my local church Ustick Baptist Church. I'll use this blog over the next few weeks to give updates on what is going on as we prepare to go (which we've been doing for several weeks now), as we are ministering in Juarez, and when we return home.

Let me start with some high level details that I sent out to Christians at my workplace when I asked for them to pray for our team. Here's what I said in that message:

My 9 year old son Cameron and I are leaving on a spring break short-term missions trip to Juarez, Mexico this next Sunday (March 22). We are going with our local church in Boise, ID as part of a family missions trip with a missions agency that has its home base on the U.S. side of the border (so going into Juarez only during the day). Border cities in Mexico and especially Juarez have been making news headlines for a while because of drug related violence but God seems to be setting the stage for some mighty things to happen while our team is there. The presence of the “Federales” has stemmed the violence between the warring drug cartels.

I’d ask for your prayers in a few specific areas:

1. Safety for our team – I’ve talked to the head of the missions organization near El Paso and with the presence of the Federales, things seem to be calm but our safety isn’t in the Federales but in our Great God.
2. As we feed the Mexican people we minister to as well as distribute over 1,000 pairs of shoes that have been collected, please pray that their hearts would be open to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. We can only give them a meal or two and shoes to wear. Christ is their true hope.
3. If you are led to pray daily for us, here’s our plan for the week:

• Sunday, March 22: Arrive in El Paso and spend the afternoon training and preparing for going into Juarez on Monday
• Monday, March 23: Spend the day at a children’s home (orphanage) outside of Juarez; we’ll feed them and spend the day with the children
• Tuesday, March 24: Return to the children’s home for another day, again feeding them and spending time sharing Christ’s love
• Wednesday, March 25: Day spent at a “colonia” (colonia is a large slum housing community – they have no running water and live in utter poverty). On this day we’ll serve lunch and hold a carnival for children.
• Thursday, March 26: We’ll return to the colonia to feed them again and to pass out shoes to everyone
• Friday, March 27: Visit a home for young women who’ve been rescued from bad situations; again we’ll feed them
• Saturday, March 28: Team returns home (though my son and I will go to Dallas/Ft. Worth area to visit family there for the weekend).

I'll give more details and share some pictures of the team in the next post.

In Christ, Calvin