Mexico | Day 1

Well I am home. I arrived home from my first mission trip on Saturday around 4:30pm. What a week, I don't even know where to begin. I am definitely a different person. I asked God to change me while I was gone and He showed up and did just what I asked. I saw things this week that blew my mind and I cannot stop thinking about them. Even though I am home and back into the normal routine I find myself thinking of Mexico and the friends I spent the week with many times throughout my day. It was an awesome week and I want to thank each and every one of you who helped me financially or through prayer, I could never have had the experience I did without you.

I thought what I would do is go through my week with you a little at a time so you know what we did everyday! So here is the first day.

Saturday, July 23- I left my house around 7:00am. Todd and Jami Ruth (some of our great friends) came and picked me up so that Daryl did not have to drag all the kids out that early in the morning. I have to admit it was really hard to leave. I had said goodbye to the kids the night before but I still had to say goodbye to Daryl. I found myself crying and then the Ruth's showed up and I could see tears in their eyes (they had just said goodbye to their 6 month old son for the week) and then the tears really started to flow. I pushed through it and off we went. We met the rest of the team at the church at 7:15am. We got all of our stuff on the bus and loaded up into a bus and the church shuttle. The 49 of us headed out at 8:00am for Chicago O'Hare. We got on the toll road and were about 2 miles down the road and blew a tire in the shuttle. So those of us on the shuttle piled off while the tire was being fixed. Back on the road we got in no time flat and arrived in Chicago before the bus did.

We had a great flight, it took us about 3 hours from Chicago to Monterrey. We got off the plane in Monterrey and you could feel the heat. The Back 2 Back staff met us and we loaded into buses headed to the Back2Back campus. It was about a 45 minute ride. We got there unloaded the buses got ourselves settled into our rooms. All the girls were in one big room and the guys were in another. We then had dinner and then headed outside to the palapa for worship. We then had some time to talk about what our day would be like tomorrow and then basically off to bed.

Some of my thoughts about this day:

-Monterrey is surrounded by mountains which I did not know, it was really beautiful.
-Hurricane Emily had hit the week before we went and therefore some of the roads we took to get to the campus were flooded along with being really bumpy.
-Worship outside at the palapa was great. It was basically a hut outside with chairs set up. They had a worship leader on staff for the summer and he was great. It was awesome to worship with mountains in the background and some of your best friends by your side.
-I found myself thinking about my family and what they were doing and hoping all was well.

Tomorrow Day 2 in Mexico!