That’s it! What a quick and easy border crossing! Praise God!

One car across and the rest are just getting in line! Many people knew I (Amy) was unable to find my passport when I left home so my car left a little early in case I was detained. Not only was there no wait at the border, but we had no problem crossing!

The rest of the vans just said good bye to Yadira and are getting in a 20 minute or less line!

We will check back in when we are across!!

Good morning Michigan!

The students have been doing such a great job posting, I thought I should do one too. :) Really, I want to say what a great bunch of students and adults we have!!! One fine example is the group of 5 that, without anyone asking them, went into the kitchen to find out if they needed help. Without telling anyone except the adult who had to wake them, they started getting up at 5:30 EVERY morning so they could help make breakfast by 5:45! They then served it AND made sure they returned early enough each day to do the same with dinner!! They have been amazing!! Today I asked the other churches to step in and help as our students need a bit more sleep. If I had not intervened however, they would have happily done this the entire camp!!

This is only one example of many. God has been SO very good. The construction project that came out of nowhere, the way the kids have embraced my kids being here, at the park site the kids are even great! For anyone that doesn’t know, the park site is usually SUPER challenging bc the kids are not used to receiving love so they respond in various ways. We started using a different technique a couple years ago (instead of telling or getting upset with behaviors, we ignored and kept loving them or acted super funny in unexpected ways to throw off the bad behavior) and it appears to be working!!! The grace of God is POWERFUL!

More to come,

In His Grip,

Amy

We woke up at 6am, ate breakfast at 7, worshipped at 8 and then we were on the road by 9ish for our first site. Unfortunately, the autism center was closed for the weekend because it is a school but that didn’t stop us from continuing our day. We all grabbed a bite to eat at a taco stand for lunch and then headed over to our park site where we fed the kids lunch after our skit, played soccer with them as well as make crafts and everything went well do to our awesome translator Laura. Anna made a new little bestfriend today but are we suprised? no. We’re all having so much fun and so happy to be here. Hope Michigan is treating yall well.

Tori

Camp is set up! Boarder crossing went smoothly and we made it to camp this afternoon with plenty of time to set up and get ready for ministry tomorrow. We’re feeling tired but excited that we’re here. Our teams are worshiping and doing bible study before we crash for the night.

Our bags are packed and we’re ready to go. We plan to leave Yuma by 10 (hopefully) and get to Mexicali this afternoon to set up camp. We’ve been busy here in Yuma, hiking, doing scavenger hunts, swimming, and finishing last minute things for our VBS. We did some activities as a group and some split up but we enjoyed the time we got to spend getting to know our teams better. Today we have a long day on the road, but everyone is ready to get our ministry started. We’ll let you know how we’re doing when we make it to camp!

The hike!

As the trip slowly comes to a close, we wanted to take a minute to tell you a few things about the trip from our perspective.

First, God certainly blessed us with an AMAZING team. Your students and adults are wonderful!! Everyone put forth their best foot this week, working together and doing what they needed to do to be the hands and feet of God. They were challenged in the morning and evening to grow in their personal faith, and worked diligently to show love at their sites, even when it was challenging.

The student leadership team worked hard to lead their team and communicate with their adults. I am very proud of both the students and adults for working together to find the right balance of adult mentorship and student leadership.

VBS – written by our teams – was great as well. The imagination and creativity was impressive, as was the amount of work they out into making it work at their sites. They even gave up quite a bit of California time to prepare and organize their teams.

Each team had some serious challenges this week. I am not sure how much of the challenging stuff made it into the blog – but man, with a lot of prayer, each team really stepped up to the plate! The build team, rather than starting from the beginning, had to piece things together and make them work, which was super challenging. The Park Team had a few boys at their site that were very hard to love – throwing rocks and cursing at our team. The team took time to remember that these boys come from homes where there is not a lot of attention or love and made a true effort to shower even more love on them. The team in Soli started not 1, but 2 new sites for Octane. This is hard work and makes for a couple long days figuring out the details. Regardless of the challenges, each day when I asked how the day went, all of our students were super excited and happy, ready to go again the next day to share God’s love with more kids.

On a personal level, I am so very thankful for all of Octane’s hearts and love for my family. They made it possible – almost easy at times – to have my kids at camp. This is no small feat…a 5 month old, 3 year old, and 4 year old at camp in the heat with the mosquitoes and very little sleep. All of our team was so great and helpful – I am so absolutely thankful for each of them!!!!

Last but not least – we are FULLY FUNDED!!!!! Thank you to Trinity and their Wild Game Dinner, St. Augustine and their pancake dinner, a last minute anonymous donation, the Mexican Dinner, and all of our Aunt Polly letters, God has blessed us with FULL FUNDING for our trip.

What an amazing God we have. So many details came together just perfectly, with the right people in the right places at the right time. God is so very good.

Our trip is not over yet, though. While my family came home one day before the rest of the team, everyone else is still on their way home. Today and tomorrow are VERY long days for our team. They are exhausted and will get into San Diego any minute. Once there, they need to clean out all of the vans, shower, and make sure they know what luggage goes where. Our first flight leaves at 6:15 am, and our last one lands here in Detroit at midnight. I will meet our flights at the hotel tomorrow, get them settled in and then we will be debriefing and praying for each of our team members on Saturday morning. Please pray for a strong finish to the trip, that everyone gets along and is patient even though they are soooo very tired, that God blesses them with great travels, a heart that is ready to debrief on Saturday and an excitement to see their friends and family.

See you all soon!
In His Grip,
Amy and the leadership team

Hello everyone!!  This is Allie from VIBES giving you an update.  This week so far has been great for the VIBES.  Yesterday (Tuesday) VIBES went to the orphanage to start our day.  There we started off just making bracelets with the teens, playing soccer, and just getting to know them.  Then we decided to do our VBS with them.  That went really well and they enjoyed it a lot, so we agreed.  That was awesome because we got to spend more time with the teens than expected.  We made really good relationships and connected with all of them, despite the language barrier.

Then we went to Refugio. The men were so happy to see us again.  We ran our day 3 VBS and had them do crafts to go with the lesson.  They had a lot of fun with that.  We played basketball, made bracelets, and just made deeper connections with the men,  A team from camp also came to visit us there and they were really impressed by what we were doing.  They gave us an award and told the whole camp about us.

Though we are upset we don’t get showers this year, our team has been doing really well.  It really is incredible how good we have been getting along despite how tired we have been.

See you all soon!

VIBES